I was just wondering if there was something I've missed to get additional visual items displayed on the SD charts (both on my PC for planning and on the iPad for Navigation).

The best example I have is the various white horses around me as whilst Avebury is noted as a VRP, the white horses aren't marked in SD but they are on the CAA charts (my 1:500,000 chart has them clearly).

As a secondary observation, the appearance of roads and rivers can be quite different - comparing the river betwen Avebury and Marlborough, the CAA map has a lot of detail (despite not being zoomable in any way) whereas the SD one is a lot of straight lines (very obvious when zoomed in).

The same is evident on the A361 between Avebury and Wroughton, there is a marked bend in the road, clearly visible on the CAA map but completely absent on the SD plot.

I understand that it needs to be sampled as straight lines, but it seems that not enough sampling points have been used to give a true indication of the river shape, though maybe this is to reduce the data footprint.

I guess as SD is being used with GPS, it is not as important to have totally accurate mapping - but as there is an option to print the route, I was a little suprised they are not that accurate...

Sorry, this is never going to happen.

No chart is perfect and different chart styles suit different people. Pointing out there are differences between two charts is interesting but not really productive, as we do not seek to emulate any particular printed chart. The fact that SkyDemon charts tend to lack lots of "scenery" detail compared to many printed charts is very much deliberate. It's the aeronautical features we emphasize in SkyDemon and on many occasions our charts have been proved to show correct information whereas printed charts (which are out of date by the time you can even purchase them) are sadly lacking in this respect. It is the nature of vector charts that labels are not cartographically and individually placed.

Well actually I didn't think I wasn’t just pointing out differences and I’m certainly not trying to cause offense.

What I wrote was ONLY in the context of the CAA style that renders your vector graphics. I can only assume, from its name, that the intention was to get us somewhere close to the general appearance look of the paper chart. I think it does that very well but I highlighted some areas where I feel the visual clarity could be improved.....but perhaps it can't.

I am not, unlike many microlight pilots I've seen posting in various threads, asking for more ground features to be depicted.  Though I can’t see the objection if users can choose to display it or not through a filter.  I do think if you’re going to show ground features of a particular category then you should and not pick what 'appears' to be a random sub-set. If you not going to show all villages and hamlets below 1km2 then personally I’d rather have the ability to turn them all off and just leave urban areas visible. More ability to filter what features you show surely wouldn’t harm anyone or make you product less desirable?

Of course I’m not suggesting you carefully place the locations of the labels cartographically and I can see that you'll potentially have bigger issue if text was placed at the centroid of an area. Even you must agree that this colour text on the same colour hatch without any kind of masking is not legible, and zooming in doesn't always help as the text flies off and appears against a different line.


Some of the symbology within the CAA chart style could be to adjusted. Clearly you've no intention of doing that which is what I expected and why I thought the idea giving users the ability to create and edit chart styles didn't seem so ridiculous.