This just gets better and better.



I love the new integrated route planner/plog feature.



I've just been playing with today's beta release and would like to suggest a couple of improvements.



1) When pressing 'Accept' on the startup screen there can be a long-ish delay until anything happens - please can you indicate that the system is starting up (e.g grey out the buttons) so that I'm sure that my button push has been accepted. This applies not just to this release, but all previous releases have the same niggle.



2) The wind instrument: I would like the wind barb to rotate when using a 'heading-up' display so that I can have an immediate idea of relative wind direction and strength. Can we have a third option to show X-Wind so that the instrument can display wind barb, head/tailwind or crosswind from Left/Right.



Keep up the great work.

Previous releases didn't bother loading the roads/railways parts of a chart at all if they were not chosen for display on the map, hence the requirement to restart the software if that option was toggled. The new version only ever loads geographical features that are close to the map viewport, and it does so in the background, hence the memory saving and also big speedup to chart loading.

The best way to benchmark the actual speed of chart loading is probably to use the load/unload charts facility. It's very possible that your device is simply not a very performant device, but to measure any load time in minutes sounds beyond even the realms of possibility. I'll do a quick test with our own forthcoming 5" and give you the loading times from there to give you a guide to what you should expect from a decent device:

France: ~5 seconds

Germany: ~5 seconds

Ireland: ~2 seconds

UK: ~4 seconds

BeNeLux: ~2 seconds

This happens in the background and should not cause the device to lock up, though the screen redraw will probably be a little slower while loading is in progress. Additionally, a notice will appear in the centre of the chart saying "Loading [Country] Chart".

Having just played again with my device, I found that the height/altitude feature to be very good and hopefully will be flying tomorrow to give it a better test, I also hadn't realised until just now that the new wind direction indicator when clicked on changes to tell you whether it's a headwind, tailwind etc, so it takes away any need to concentrate on it at all, excellent product.

Hi Tim,



we also met briefly at Sywell. Since my last post I have re-loaded the previous non-beta version of Skydemon (2.1.2) onto my device (MicroSD card). The German chart (loaded in isolation) loads in a few seconds, the same as the UK chart. Adding Roads and Railways adds a little to this but even with terrain shading turned on, the chart loading time is the same as for the UK chart (quite acceptable) and re-drawing with all features on only takes a few seconds. The difference is definitely between the two versions of Skydemon, whereby the UK chart does not seem affected. Just for information, the area of Germany I am zooming into is around Stuttgart (EDDS) in case you want to compare on your device. If I revert to the Beta version (installed on another memory card), everything slows done again dramatically as soon as I select the Benelux or German Charts. The UK and France (which I have also just been checking) seem OK. Although it can take a while for terrain shading to appear, it doesn't lock the device while waiting and the map can be dragged around and it redraws as normal. I had the beta version installed on the other MicroSD card initially, so a problem with card cannot be the issue.



So the problem appears to relate to the loading of German and Benelux charts (until they appear fully on the screen) on the beta version (with or without terrain shading and roads/railways turned on). I have not tried any other charts than those mentioned here.



Trevor

Mio P550 PDA/64 MB Ram/Win Mob 5.0 + 5" Chinese Sat Nav/128 MB/Win CE 6.0 (from Chinavision)

Tim,



just to clarify, loading times for the beta version in the Chart Manager page (from when I click load until "loaded" appears are roughly similar to the benchmark times you mention. However it is the drawing time of the chart (chart appearing complete on the screen and touch screen responding again) which are far slower on the beta version for Germany and Benelux than on the previous version.



Trevor

Mio P550 PDA/64 MB Ram/Win Mob 5.0 + 5" Chinese Sat Nav/128 MB/Win CE 6.0 (from Chinavision)