A new beta has just been published, with some fixes and improvements based on feedback from the last beta.

There's a prototype of a new feature in this beta called Mountain Terrain, which colours terrain dynamically depending upon its threat to you. Terrain higher than 500 feet below you is red, for example. This is quite a good safety feature for mountain flying as it makes it easy to find a safe route away if the cloudbase comes down. To activate the feature in flight (or when simulating), open the Map Layers screen and select Switch to Mountain Terrain. This feature may not actually make it into the forthcoming release because it's quite immature, but testing is still appreciated.

Hi Tim,

I had a look as soon as I discovered you post

The situation awareness is the thing I was missing the most when flying with SD over (or under!) the Alps. I even start another tool in order to keep the big picture and an extra security margin to some flights.

It seems I won't have to in the near future, since the way the "Mountain terrain" is implemented is just great. You even kept the map readable, which is not that easy!

Some remarks :
- It would be great to be able to activate it when using the planning mode too (it seems it works only when flying at this time). I know the virtual radar should be enough most of the time but the Mountain view is very efficient and can be very helpful to fine tune a route.
- A shortcut or a more direct way of switching between Standard and Mountain view could be nice since. 4 clicks (if not selecting the wrong menu at a time) is a long process when in need of such a view

Anyway, perhaps it's not mature yet but the SD team never ceases amazes me.
Keep up the great work!

M

Thanks. It's actually two touches; remember that touching the North indicator is the quickest way of accessing the Chart menu.

We talked in the office about enabling mountain terrain in planning mode, but without your current altitude, what altitude should it use as its threshold?

Obviously a very good reminder



Definitely not easy to answer.

At first, I would have said the lowest altitude of a leg (meaning than planning a route is a prerequisite) but it certainly implies that the Mountain view layer is "sectored" which is challenging (not to say more) from both UI and programming points of view. Not speaking about the mental efforts you need to understand the representation (relative vs absolute)! 

Perhaps you could use the default level of every plane profile? I's not perfect but at least it's consistent with the virtual radar behaviour. The drawback is that it does not address the climbing and descending phases.

Well ... perhaps keeping the mountain view an inflight tool only is a good thing, since not showing an info is better than showing a wrong / incomplete or unclear one

M

I also fly in the Alps quite often and would appreciate this feature. Is it going to be in the iOS version, too?

Anyway, keeping it available strictly while in flight seems a good idea to me.

-- Chris.

Speaking of the Alps, I never understood the "light blue" layer that appears on top of some of the highest points of the Alps. This layer hides all terrain details and it's even more visible with the new view. I tried to hide it but it's not possible, even if I just can't interpret it

In the attached screenshot, it's the blue part around the three visible glaciers. 

Panning and zooming the map seems much much faster and smoother on the last couple of beta releases, both on Android phone and Nexus tablet. 

Android in navigation mode: The wind instrument is giving wind vectors of the form 108/9.5. Perhaps 0.1 knots accuracy is a little too much?

Android in navigation mode - problem with georeferenced charts.

Tried displaying a geo-ref airfield Aerodrome chart (in this case Bristol) when in navigation mode (comms prefs set to "live Data when Planning" only") the chart would not display, but got message that I needed to be online (even though I had previously downloaded to whole UK AIP when in planning mode).

Switching to "Live Data when Planning and Flying" and retrying to display the plate caused the download percentage bar to be very briefly displayed and even though I had no data connection (Nexus 7 with no GSM and out of WiFi range - so no data) then the chart immediately displayed so I guess it was there all along!

Subsequent attempts to display chart in "Live Data when Planning" mode worked fine.