In adding these 14,000-plus events to ForeFlight, Ren Scott, EAA’s director of business development, underscores the benefits to ForeFlight users and tells the press [that adding these events] “makes the ForeFlight database even more comprehensive for the thousands of pilots who rely on it for flight information.”

Scott goes on to say that “ForeFlight has always been an excellent source of flight planning and safety, but with EAA’s information, it will add more reasons to fly and destinations to discover.” And, of course, most of us pilots will take almost any reason to fly. $100 hamburger anyone?

And just in time for AirVenture, this cooperative effort between EAA and ForeFlight is now officially live and available to users. As far as local EAA chapters are concerned, this integration of EAA events with ForeFlight will also provide a mechanism for those chapters to update their upcoming activities first on the EAA calendar of events, thereby allowing local events to get uploaded into the ForeFlight database on a regular, automated basis, creating a seamless experience for users and EAA chapters alike.

• READ MORE: Lessons Learned: ADM to the Rescue

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Voyager transforms each airport into a vivid 3D environment by seamlessly integrating satellite imagery, high-resolution terrain, and live traffic data on a floating disk. That’s right—you can hover in the air like a ghost, watching aircraft. You can manipulate and view the airports from various angles, getting an unparalleled real-time aviation experience.

“ForeFlight is excited to deliver this unique 3D airport exploration experience to aviation enthusiasts with Apple Vision Pro,” said ForeFlight CEO Tim Schuetze in a release. “This exciting new spatial computing platform enables us to deliver all-new experiences that were never before possible, and the new Voyager app is a great example of our continued innovation.”

• READ MORE: Inflight Data Merges as ForeFlight Acquires CloudAhoy

The app’s features include a curated list of featured airports, global search function, and proximity sorting for nearby airports. Voyager utilizes live traffic data to portray commercial and private aircraft, including jets, turboprops, piston planes, and helicopters, with realistic altitude, pitch, and bank details. Users can select any aircraft for comprehensive information, including flight plan details, aircraft type, and real-time speed, altitude, and heading.

ForeFlight’s flagship iPad and iPhone application, ForeFlight Mobile, is also available on Vision Pro. This integration allows customers with an active ForeFlight subscription to access next-generation, flight-planning capabilities. When using Voyager, ForeFlight customers can seamlessly transition to ForeFlight Mobile for more detailed airport information.

“Voyager and ForeFlight Mobile together on Vision Pro offer an unmatched experience for aviation enthusiasts,” Schuetze said.

ForeFlight, a Boeing company, has been a leading provider of advanced integrated software for general, business, and military aviation since 2007. The company’s comprehensive suite includes ForeFlight Mobile EFB and Military Flight Bag for pilots, ForeFlight Dispatch for flight planners, Sentry portable ADS-B receivers, and various integrated products serving the global pilot and flight department community.

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Named ForeFlight Recap, the web-based feature pulls “aggregated data from a pilot’s 2023 entries in ForeFlight Logbook.” It then showcases information, including the number of flights, total distance flown, total time logged, and number of landings completed for the year. The tool also provides an interactive map thatwhich connects all airports visited by the pilot in 2023.

Pilots can choose to keep their rRecaps private or share an image and interactive preview of them on platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). In addition, ForeFlight included a “Make Private” button, so access to previously shared rRecaps can be revoked. Recaps can also be downloaded.

According to the company, Recap is now available for any pilot who logged flights on ForeFlight in 2023. ForeFlight noted that Recap will also work for pilots who have not logged flights in ForeFlight Logbook, provided they “import data from other digital platforms or from their paper logbook using catch-up entries.” 

Recap is currently not supported by the ForeFlight Mobile app but can be viewed with both computer and mobile device on ForeFlight Web.

READ MORE: ForeFlight Merges with CloudAhoy

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Everybody has memories of the original Microsoft Flight Simulator software versions. Then not too many years later, computer programmer Austin Meyer developed his Archer II simulator which morphed into the famous X-Plane simulation program we fans have grown to know and love. Today, when talking of PC civilian sims, most of us immediately think of just two. MSFS2020 and X-Plane 12 dominate the market. However, others exist for military and civilian fans and won’t be neglected in future articles.

But I want to focus on how both X-Plane and MSFS can benefit newly certificated pilots and students alike, so I will look at a few scenarios the fairly new pilot would benefit from flying virtually in a snapshot of both sims, both pros and cons.

Slow Flight, MCA, Stalls, and Spins

For this scenario, I started by using X-Plane 12, basing the simulation at Alpine Airport (46U) in Wyoming, for a somewhat high-altitude challenge (airport elevation is 5,600 feet msl), along with variable weather conditions. After starting up the Cessna 172XP in a realistic manner—partially leaned for takeoff and using live weather—I climbed up over the local area to roughly 2,000 feet agl to practice slow flight and minimum controllable airspeed (MCA). I noticed the X-Plane 12 Cessna handled all this quite realistically from what I remember years ago as a CFII: full flaps, with speeds in the 50- to 60-knot range. Then I flew some MCA with the stall horn beeping and mushing controls, watching the vertical speed indicator stay at zero with power but not too much back pressure to induce a stall—just an aerial dance of working feet, pitch, and throttle.

Slow flight and MCA were extremely realistic and accurate in XP12 as if the aircraft was alive and reacting to the world as it should.

Soon I decided to go all the way into some stalls at a fairly unsafe altitude. At only about 1,500 to 2,000 agl, I started with power-off and power-on stalls, both in turns and straight ahead. Then it was time to see if the airplane spins as I remember from CFI training days. The feeling of the flight model during this was very high and precise.

Power to idle, then back pressure into a squealing stall horn and a turn rolled me rapidly into a left-hand spin—shockingly real and startling.
Sure enough, the back pressure in a turn did the trick, with a fully breaking stall—horn screaming—and bam, the rapid roll into a spin was shockingly real. The recovery inputs felt natural and realistic—slightly sloppy but well modeled—and I recovered at about 300 agl after probably two rotations. It’s certainly not the way we teach in the real world, but having poor risk management skills is the norm on a PC. The fluidity of X-Plane 12 aerodynamics is on full tilt here.

I tried the MSFS2020 Cessna 172XP, at the same airport for the same tests, and the same live weather, only this time as MSFS interprets it.

MSFS never used to model spins nor have a really high-fidelity flight model, but in this test the modeled airplane produced a realistic spin. This was prompted by a power-on stall that resulted in a rapidly winding spin. Sounds of the stall and spin were pretty much on par with X-Plane 12, with the exception being the stall horn X-Plane 12 sounded more realistic and dynamic.

Once airborne in the MSFS 172, I tested slow flight, MCA, and spins in the same manner. Where the MSFS franchise was never known for realistic flight modeling in the past, it is clear this newest version represents a breakthrough. It felt very similar to X-Plane 12’s reactions, with still a wee bit of the “flying-on-rails” feeling we know from previous MSFS versions—but a massive improvement overall in flight modeling for this scenario. I was impressed it spun—and spun well. Recovery was realistic and responsive.

Failure and Emergency Training Scenario

No pilot training would be complete without failure and emergency options, and this is where X-Plane has always smashed the competition, with hundreds of possible failures and emergencies you can either precisely set to occur or randomize each and every option for a nerve-wracking experience.

In this example, I set up a bird strike to occur at exactly 200 feet agl. Despite this setup, I was still startled when it happened. The results were unknown until the engine oil pressure and temperatures started trending to the bad side. I cheated by looking outside and was shocked to see fire and smoke trails.

The scenery is compelling, but the overall lack of failure scenarios and a slightly less fluid flight model makes the emergency practice slightly less beneficial and startling. It’s too predictable since you must pretend a failure or emergency is unfolding. But the visual beauty and accuracy of the world around you are awesome. You’ll gain knowledge, crisis handling, and emergency off-airport planning in either sim.

The birds came out of nowhere fast in the simulation. I had nowhere to go and was coping with a big startle factor at that. You could cope in real life far better by having had the ability to experience that sudden event in simulation.

This engine had really taken a hit. Time to secure and shut down or choose to delay your response to see what might happen next.
I aimed for a road along the shore with some scrubby areas that could provide a safe landing site, although there were houses and bigger trees at the far end of the view.

With a comparable setup in MSFS2020 but without failure modeling, I cut the engine at a similar location and altitude. The scenery is more realistic as it’s based on true Earth images that load by default as you fly. Subscribing to Ortho scenery photorealistic terrain is possible on X-Plane 12 as an option.

I made a safe touchdown in MSFS in a grassy area, dodging road traffic. This is where MSFS takes the cake, “off-roading” with very photorealistic scenery by default. X-Plane will provide similar scenes via downloads and simple installations but by default isn’t as sharp as MSFS.

Convective Dangers and Weather Modeling

Simulating thunderstorms is a thrill, especially when the danger and risks involved can be simulated realistically. Fortunately, both simulations do this quite well now—a new breakthrough for MSFS and an old tried-and-true risk/danger model for X-Plane reworked and improved for X-Plane 12. I manually set up thunderstorms to begin developing, with a trend toward deteriorating weather, so storms would slowly increase in coverage and intensity, making for some cloud shots as well as danger. I know X-Plane has an advantage here.

I looked toward the bad weather and compared it to what I saw on ForeFlight. It’s easy hooking up any X-Plane session to ForeFlight to get the exact thing you’d see in real life. ForeFlight can be added to X-Plane 12 readily.

The depiction on radar, based on my area, was pretty realistic, I must say. What I really wanted to test was the weather over time, and a particularly fun exercise in X-Plane 12 is to park somewhere, use the outside view, and watch and wait. You’ll see and hear the weather forming around you and moving in.

MSFS does something similar, yet I felt the special effects, especially the audio world of these storms approaching, in X-Plane 12 was a bit more dramatic. The things that really caught my attention were the violent wind and rain noises. The rain sounds in X-Plane 12 are loud, especially in flight. Hitting rain at twice highway car speed is dramatic; at 500 knots in a jet it is mind-blowing. I recall once icing up so severely during an X-Plane 12 session that I had to set it down in the bush, with smoke billowing about. I waited, listened, and heard severe wind, rain, and hail lash the cockpit. The water was pouring over my view outside my broken world. The view out the window was scary, and I was trapped and needed rescue.

Iced-over windows as thunderstorms in high altitudes can quickly turn rain into snow and hail as happened to me in this manually set scenario.

What is this?! I had left for lunch while “tied down” as storms were approaching only to return to my horror to see the severe weather had dropped the temperatures from 20 degrees Celsius to about 5 degrees with snow or hail covering the ground. The windows actually had some ice clearly on them. The airplane had been blown far off the ramp into the grass. What amazing realism, danger, variability, and great fun this was. I wish I had stuck around to watch. On second thought, another advantage in X-Plane 12 is replay mode.

Convection building in MSFS2020 is okay. There are great skies and graphics for sure—just slightly less exciting and it just quite doesn’t have that feeling of danger I got with X-Plane 12.

Both sims have amazing weather. The realism of storms in X-Plane 12 wins in my opinion. The turbulence and dangers are genuine, with consequences. The daytime chop, thermals, and under-cumulous base roughness are all better modeled in MSFS2020, which recently had a massive weather engine redo. The cloudscapes and textures looked almost photorealistic in MSFS currently and are beautiful, but thunderheads in X-Plane 12 form, tower up, and stand more realistically than MSFS.
In X-Plane 12, using live weather was far too smooth in thermals, or sunshine versus shade. I felt that a few jumps, jarring, and/or nauseating motion was needed in X-Plane 12 when flying on a sunny day down low. All this can be tweaked by manually setting conditions.

Our two front-runner civilian sims undergo frequent enhancements and refinements. By using either sim or both, as many of us do, any level from beginner to airline pilot can find something to enjoy and use as a tool of proficiency, exploration, and adventure.

There’s never been a better time in the past 40 years to enjoy this hobby since almost daily there’s something new to discover.

The hottest links to visit often for X-Plane and MSFS include www.x-plane.to, www.x-plane.org, and www.flightsim.to. Don’t forget to grab the Honeycomb Starter set from our friends at Sportys as well to launch your sim into the next level of realism and precision.

Finally, I am a huge advocate of both XPRealistic and FSRealistic add-ons, as both sims need that extra sound, vibration, head action, and motion thrown in. 

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the August 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. 

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The answer came this week in the form of an email from ForeFlight that stated “the ForeFlight and Garmin teams identifying ‘a compatibility issue’ between ForeFlight and recent firmware versions (v3.13 and later) of Garmin’s GNX 375 GPS navigator and ADS-B In/Out transponder.” According to the email, “the issue can temporarily interrupt or disable the display of ADS-B traffic in ForeFlight Mobile while connected to this device.”

A Garmin spokesperson confirmed the situation, noting that “customers using software version 3.13 or later may experience ADS-B traffic interruptions in high-traffic environments on their ForeFlight display.”

ForeFlight and Garmin are presently working together to fix the issue.

A representative of the ForeFlight pilot support team said it is “working closely with Garmin to understand the timing and availability of the necessary firmware update to correct this issue and will advise with additional information when available.”Said Creighton Scarpone, Garmin’s director of airline & business aviation sales: “Traffic display and alerting on the GNX, or any other Garmin display, as well as Garmin Pilot, are not affected. The firmware update is expected to be available in September 2023.”

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on flyingmang.com.

The post Garmin and ForeFlight Looking into ADS-B Challenges appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

ForeFlight, a Boeing Company, has announced its acquisition of CloudAhoy, a debriefing software provider.

According to a post on the ForeFlight blog, the acquisition was completed in response to “customer desire for more integrated digital solutions.”

• READ MORE: Did You Know ForeFlight Did This?

ForeFlight, established in 2007, is one of the most widely used weather briefing and flight planning and management tools.

CloudAhoy, created in 2011, provides post-flight debriefing, analytics, and flight operations quality assurance software products. CloudAhoy allows pilots to digitally record their flight and play it back to review their performance. The software is particularly useful in the training environment where the emphasis is on meeting and exceeding the minimum standards for certification.

The details of the merger have not been announced.

For more information, visit the ForeFlight blog.

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The unit itself is about the largest portable Garmin has produced. At 7 inches diagonally, it’s not as big as an iPad mini, but it’s a good deal more sizable than all but the most comically large phones. The display, says Garmin, is very bright and easily dimmable to a low level. The battery life, at four hours with a lot of backlight and a lot more with it dimmed down, is workable for most flights, though we’d keep it plugged in. It charges via a USB C jack, so charging will be fast, and it boasts built-in Wi-Fi, which seems basic these days given the ubiquitous nature of Wi-Fi devices, but as far as aviation portables are concerned, it’s a relatively recent advance.

The newest aera can do everything you’d expect it to and then a lot more. It has 3D synthetic vision that can be hooked up to a source of attitude information to back up its built-in GPS-derived data or hooked up to a compatible Garmin attitude source. There’s a plethora of charts, of course, including instrument procedures—a number of different database packages are available for it—and for pilots who fly into previously unknown airports regularly, its SafeTaxi utility, with a rich database of airport ground features, could well be worth the cost of admission. Also available are terrain awareness, traffic (when connected to a compatible Garmin ADS-B receiver), including Garmin’s TargetTrend and TerminalTraffic utilities, and weather, both FIS-B and from SiriusXM, when connected to a compatible Garmin receiver. There’s fuel price info (which will pay for the price of the databases if not the unit itself) and more.

And seemingly like all of Garmin’s products these days, the 760 can be connected to compatible Garmin products, like navigators, though a serial or wireless connection, and it features the company’s Connext wireless transfer and data-sharing capabilities. The aera 760 can even be connected to a compatible Garmin autopilot to drive VFR procedures, including vertical nav.

So the question is, what can the aera 760 do that an iPad can’t? Well, as you just read, a lot. And because it’s ruggedized for the cockpit environment, optimized for pilot use—its user interface makes use of standard Garmin symbology—and made to work specifically with existing Garmin avionics that might already be in your panel, it has a number of features that no iPad will ever have.

Will this be enough to drive strong sales of this latest Garmin aviation portable? We’re guessing it will.

Other Great Portables

The area 760 joins a host of portable solutions for the flight deck, including the now ubiquitous iPad running the latest version (16.1.1.) of ForeFlight. But that’s not your only choice.

Aircraft Spruce offers the AvMap, an interesting alternative to the Garmin series and ForeFlight. The EKP V handheld GPS features a 7-inch display, with a built-in battery, and it’s only 8.8 inches thick. With a special docking station the EKP V can connect to a range of avionics on board, including the autopilot, Sirius XM Weather, or an EFIS. It’s worth a look at $1,815.

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