I'm a happy use of SoarPilot. On course I use it in "track up" mode
because that gives me
the most screen space along my path of flight. I'm not interested in
what's 90 degrees off
the course line (not usually anyway). While thermalling I'm not
looking at the PDA much;
the color coding that SP does for the lift is usually too far behind
what I'm doing, and it's too
hard to see. All I look at is the average lift calculation so I know
when the lift is petering out
(I leave when the 20sec average drops below that bottom-top average,
which usually means
the thermal is down to 80% of its best). Well, I do look at the
course line, but again
the depiction is usually a couple seconds out of date so it's easy to
overshoot the
course line if I depend on the PDA. Instead, I try to pick out
landmarks in the direction
I want to go so I stay oriented, and then pick out lift sources in the
last several times around
in the thermal. As far as looking at the map (I refer to that too) I
use that both "course-up"
and "north-up" depending on whether I want to find landmarks or read
the text printed on
the map.

-- Matt

PS that north-up cylindrical projection we all had in our schoolrooms
as kids had another
feature -- the Northern Hemisphere is depicted in a larger scale than
the Southern! They
did it that way since most of the landmass is in the north. The next
time you see one take
note of where the equator is. That "upside-down" map you saw, Mark,
places the equator
back in the middle so the sizes won't match what you remember even if
you look at it
in your familiar orientation.

On Dec 16, 10:43*pm, MarkHawke7 wrote:
I am one of the developers of SoarPilot which supports, north up,
track/direction up and course-up and I have pondered this many times.
I believe a given person's preference is simply that...personal. *I'm
not a neuro-scientist in anyway, but I think a given person's
preference is mostly driven by how they process spacial and/or
geospacial representations in general and by what they have been
taught to use. *Do you prefer to have what you see outside the glider
match what you are seeing on the screen OR do you prefer to mentally
convert and correlate what you are seeing outside with what you would
see on a North up map? *From elementary school we are taught to use
and read north-up maps. *So we become VERY comfortable with that way
of looking and processing geospacial information. *As an example of
what I mean, I have seen a large world wall map in the typical, oval,
equidistant-cylindrical representation. *It is normal in every respect
for one....it has the world depicted South UP. *And when you look at
it, it immediately seems VERY, VERY wrong? *But if you think about it,
it is no more incorrect a representation than a North up map. *It only
seems wrong because it's not they way we're used to seeing it.

Later!

-Mark
PS. *I like track up best as well.
On Dec 16, 8:22*pm, Ray wrote:

While flying, especially in thermals, I prefer "heads up".
W7

ContestID67 wrote:
It is winter here and the only soaring we are doing in Chicago is in
the hangar . During an energetic discussion on the pros and cons of
various soaring programs, I mentioned I fly "Direction-Up", rather
than "North-Up".

WHOA! You would have thought that I had said I was going to give up
soaring to fly helicopters by the dirty looks that I received.

Now, to be fair, with every GPS device I use (car, boat, GA), I
*ALWAYS* orient the map as north-up, and prefer it overall...except,
that is, when soaring. * I started using north-up at first, but soon
found that a direction-up display was much better in letting me
anticipate the timing of rolling out of a thermal and heading towards
the next turn point. *Attempting to coordinate the rotating glider
icon on a stationary north-up map, with the view outside and/or
compass, all while centering a thermal, is a bit like patting my head
and rubbing my stomach at the same time. *Maybe this is unique to a
thermal-only soaring climate. * *NOTE: I am not directionally
challanged.

Anyway, I wondered what others use relative to the type of soaring
they do.

Thanks, John