Best PDA or tablet soln for GPS & XM WX and gyro AI

In article 1118765521.389bb151ae2b6e24f435b75ffe6de51a@teran ews,
"S Narayan" wrote:
I have AWM (from Control Vision) with Pocket Plates. Works well, however I
hope they can improve the user interface and clean up their menus and
improve their display. Their next revision is expected to be major upgrade.
I don't have the weather package. I downloaded Mountainscope demo from
PCAvionics, it is by far the best terrain display and user interface I have
seen. The only negative is that currently they don't show roads and other
man-made features and the display only shows "track up" and no option to
switch to "North up". This is a major limitation as far as I am concerned.
CV can learn a few things from PCAvionics, otherwise I see this company
quickly taking away some of their customers.


I really don't know what major problems there are with CV's user
interface. Sure, it could be more intuitive in places, but coming from
a group of programmers, the layout and ease of use is pretty impressive.
It is certainly no worse than anything else related to Microsoft
Windows, and Microsoft supposedly employs human interface gurus.

MountainScope has the flashy terrain, but as you noted, they are missing
many things that AWM incorporates. I suspect that available processing
power on present-day PDAs forces a choice: nice, high res graphics, or
more features displayed. Personally, I'd rather have more features and
less flashy graphics. While MountainScope's display is, perhaps, ideal,
it isn't ideal at the expense of other features which are more useful in
flight, at least in my opinion.



JKG

"Jonathan Goodish" wrote in message
...
In article 1118765521.389bb151ae2b6e24f435b75ffe6de51a@teran ews,
"S Narayan" wrote:
I have AWM (from Control Vision) with Pocket Plates. Works well, however
I
hope they can improve the user interface and clean up their menus and
improve their display. Their next revision is expected to be major
upgrade.
I don't have the weather package. I downloaded Mountainscope demo from
PCAvionics, it is by far the best terrain display and user interface I
have
seen. The only negative is that currently they don't show roads and other
man-made features and the display only shows "track up" and no option to
switch to "North up". This is a major limitation as far as I am
concerned.
CV can learn a few things from PCAvionics, otherwise I see this company
quickly taking away some of their customers.


I really don't know what major problems there are with CV's user
interface. Sure, it could be more intuitive in places, but coming from
a group of programmers, the layout and ease of use is pretty impressive.
It is certainly no worse than anything else related to Microsoft
Windows, and Microsoft supposedly employs human interface gurus.

MountainScope has the flashy terrain, but as you noted, they are missing
many things that AWM incorporates. I suspect that available processing
power on present-day PDAs forces a choice: nice, high res graphics, or
more features displayed. Personally, I'd rather have more features and
less flashy graphics. While MountainScope's display is, perhaps, ideal,
it isn't ideal at the expense of other features which are more useful in
flight, at least in my opinion.

AWM (now version 1.7) One of the other issues I had was being able to
pan to other parts of the map without going through the rough air buttons
mode. That has been addressed now with 1.7. Also the airport facilities
looks page is nicely done and if that's kept up to date, that is a lot of
useful information. They have also added "virtual" IFR approaches which is
nice to have - though pocket plates does a fairly good job (except for the
lack of a variable zoom feature or declutter of the fixes). I haven't run it
with the GPS yet, but the last version did not have a detailed GPS page
(with all satellites shown, DOP etc..). I am not sure if they have included
it this time.

They have not. Take a look at "VisualGPSce" @
http://www.visualgps.net/VisualGPSce/default.htm .

"S Narayan" wrote in message
news:1119041820.c656f7f19bbdd75e1c6942a3563e3170@t eranews...
I haven't run it
with the GPS yet, but the last version did not have a detailed GPS page
(with all satellites shown, DOP etc..). I am not sure if they have
included
it this time.

In article 1119041820.c656f7f19bbdd75e1c6942a3563e3170@teran ews,
"S Narayan" wrote:
AWM (now version 1.7) One of the other issues I had was being able to
pan to other parts of the map without going through the rough air buttons
mode. That has been addressed now with 1.7. Also the airport facilities
looks page is nicely done and if that's kept up to date, that is a lot of
useful information. They have also added "virtual" IFR approaches which is
nice to have - though pocket plates does a fairly good job (except for the
lack of a variable zoom feature or declutter of the fixes). I haven't run it
with the GPS yet, but the last version did not have a detailed GPS page
(with all satellites shown, DOP etc..). I am not sure if they have included
it this time.


I agree, the additional information that they've provided in the airport
data page is excellent, and will remain so only if they keep it up to
date. It seems that they are missing fuel data on quite a few places
yet, and I don't see anywhere on their 100ll.com site for a user to
submit fuel prices; not sure how they get their fuel price updates.

Since upgrading to 1.7 (via a clean install), I've noticed that many
parts of the program seem to be a bit faster, and some slower (loading
full airport diagrams by double-tapping on the runway plan view seems
slower than in 1.6.7.)


JKG