In the last beta, you create also more simple buttons for the weather, which was still good. What I'm really missing, was that I can have a short look during flight how the rain was moving. Only solution was to chancel planning and then to have a look. Most of us have min 3G in flight, so the possibility for an update was available. Ok there will be argument again an solution, but better to switch between different program.

You can turn on rainfall overlays in flight in SkyDemon 3.5 (out this week) if you really want to, but you'll have to agree to a message stating that the data is probably out of date and therefore not suitable for tactical use in flight.

Tim,

A good solution from my point of view. Does SD show a timestamp of the last data connection anywhere on the screen?

Not the last data connection specifically, that wouldn't be helpful. You can open the Weather tab to see where the rainfall being displayed came from and at what time.

I find but already well resolved that no more current data the pink overlay appears.

The weather features are now much easier to discover being grouped together under the Weather menu. Animation is integrated well, too. What I have a slight problem with is how rainfall radar data obliterates the chart. In case of widespread rainfall you have no way of knowing what's underneath it because the map is simply gone. We should try and come up with a solution which still allows the user to see the underlying map.

Would transpareny do it? Or a form of shading?

-- Chris.

We could increase the transparency, but then you'd lose some clarity of the rainfall picture itself, and (slightly) increase the risk of someone judging some rainfall to be less serious than it is.
Under what situation is the map so hideously covered with rainfall but you still want to see what's underneath? Is it for planning your flight? If so, we envisaged people would simply turn the layer off. It wasn't designed to be on all the time, really. You can also temporarily "zoom through the clouds" to see the map underneath; they disappear once you zoom beyond 500k scale. That threshold could be changed too.

mixed views on this - I really like the feature, and I've used it for real now
personally for my flying, I don't have an issue with the transparency - I'm using this as a quick check toggle on/off - and I don't intend to take the T67M or the warrior through any significant rainfall.
however, the problem I'm having is convincing my brain that it is rain and not clouds - every rainfall radar I've ever looked at has been green/yellow/red or blue/yellow/red for different intensity of rainfall - and my brain just wants to believe that these are clouds not rain.
I also wonder if the current shading could be a bit misleading in the event of scattered thunderstorms.  On a conventional rainfall radar you see a fairly clear scattering of yellow blobs with red cores - but given a series of cloud like blobs might look less dramatic.
If you were using a blue/yellow/red scale it gives more flexibility for transparency - see mock-up.

I agree with rikur suggestions. The current color is not so intuitive. It could be better to adopt yellow / red colors.

Massimo Mangia

I-PPL

We prototyped red/yellow colouring for "normal" rain. It didn't look good at all. Developing this feature we took a good look at all our competition and their strengths and weaknesses, and ours really is the best, given the extensive scope of the data we have managed to source.

Really strong rainfall in SkyDemon does actually have a much darker blue, then red, then magenta colour. You just haven't seen any yet, I guess.