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Satellite view

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Posts: 22
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Joined: 4 years ago

Hello,

Maybe, it could be interesting, to switch to a satellite view (google maps) to prepare navigation.

In flight, sometimes it's often interesting, to have more details (Castle, ....)

It's just an idea.

Cordially

10 Replies
Heli.Lamb
Posts: 125
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Joined: 5 years ago

yes, this features is in EVFR3 and is brilliant in principal but never quite worked as well as it could. We (rotary pilots) could really make use of this for arrival at the landing site to assist with positive identification if it had higher resolution than in EVFR3.

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Its on the wishlist, but currently at low priority. Technically its easy to implement, but there is al legal side to it. We have to review Google staticmap images license conditions, because in the past these where only allowed to be used while directly connected to the internet, and are not allowed to get cached on disk for offline usage like we would require in EV4. EV3 tries to "solve" this by losing the tiles on app restart, and from various users we understood this made the functionality much less useful.

Also there are costs involved; Every tile downloaded gets invoiced by Google to us. For average use this won't be a problem, but some protection again excessive downloads must be implemented just to be sure.

So as with many things, its not technically difficult to implement, just time consuming to figure out the side effects and legal issues. Lets see if we can somehow expedite this....

 

 

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Heli.Lamb
Posts: 125
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Joined: 5 years ago

Ah!

For my use case, the way it worked on EV3 was perfectly good enough apart from the resolution of the tile wasn't high enough and the area it covered was too large. We would just use it to identify the specific house/field to land at and it's great that it hangs around for the length of the flight until we are overhead.

 

Keep up the great work 😉

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Heli.Lamb
Posts: 125
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Google sat now implemented on EV4 and is loads better than EV3.....much clearer

(use the search function then hit the Google pin, find the place then tap the map icon. It remains in place until restart of the software.)

well done all

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Heli.Lamb
Posts: 125
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Is there a way to bring up the google sat view directly from tapping a location?

and/or by using lat/long?

I have just been given a location to land at next week as an OS grid ref. I have found it on the OS map and then found the associated lat/long (all using an app on my phone) now I would like to add it as a waypoint on EV4 and then also load the google sat view.

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Stewart Buckingham
Posts: 443
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Unfortunately at present there is not a way to do that, Andrew, but it seems a very good thing to be able to do so let's add it to teh extras to be developed!

At the moment, you can tap the map and directly set up a user waypoint, then you can use the search function to find that waypoint name and place a Google Earth tile there.

Alternatively if you want to create a point at a specific lat long you can either enter the lat long directly in teh My User Waypoints screen to create a waypoint there (then proceed to search for the waypoint name as above to place a tile), or you can tap teh map as though you were creating a waypoint by map-tapping, but while creating the waypoint you can if you want edit the lat and long. That might be useful if you can easily find the location on the map but you want to put in a precise lat and long rather than just one at about the right place on teh map. 

As you are aware (due to Google Earth licencing constraints) we are not allowed to cache tiles so they must be deleted when EV is closed down and recreated again when you restart. In view of that, setting a user waypoint where you want to place a tile might be quite useful anyway as then if you have to shut down EasyVFR (and thereby lose the tile), on restart all you need to do is  do a search for the name you used for the waypoint and hen you can directly set up the GE tile form that search.

VBR

Stu

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Heli.Lamb
Posts: 125
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Posted by: @deeahbtinternet-com

At the moment, you can tap the map and directly set up a user waypoint, then you can use the search function to find that waypoint name and place a Google Earth tile there.

Ah yes I see. We often work the other way round to this - as in we know that the house to land at is "somewhere around there" and so tap on the map in the approximate location to then bring up a sat view. Only then can we actually see the specific back garden in order to accurately add a waypoint for one-off navigation or add a user WP to the list.

The current way is quite long winded to just navigate to a WP - especially if we only ever fly there once: (tap the map, tap route, add WP, save the user WP, tap menu, then search, type in the name of the new WP, select it, then choose Google sat view, then realise the wp is in the wrong place so tap the correct place and add a new WP, then delete the first WP.

I also think that loading the sat view directly from a tap would be great.

Posted by: @deeahbtinternet-com

Alternatively if you want to create a point at a specific lat long you can either enter the lat long directly in teh My User Waypoints screen to create a waypoint there (then proceed to search for the waypoint name as above to place a tile), or you can tap teh map as though you were creating a waypoint by map-tapping, but while creating the waypoint you can if you want edit the lat and long.

This is another point I guess and off topic but would be it possible to make it so we can enter lat and long in the search box to then navigate to?

Lots of events (Aintree, Silverstone, Ascot etc) publish a list of waypoints to route via on the way in/out and so adding them to the route would be handy and we don't necessarily want to add userWPs as they are often a one-off.

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Stewart Buckingham
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Alternatively you can put a house number, street name and post code into the search function and then tap the Google search pin.  That will find the exact house location and offer you the options to put a Google tile there and to see it on the map. On the map you can then tap to append the create a waypoint and append to the route, then you can if necessary drag that waypoint to tweak its position to exactly where in the garden you want it. you can always use the “waypoint drag” (think of that as a very special case of the “ rubber banding a leg” function) to adjust the position of any route waypoint. 

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Heli.Lamb
Posts: 125
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@deeahbtinternet-com

Yeah that's great for known addresses but often we are off somewhere and either don't know the address or it doesn't even have one.

I'm thinking of waypoints to "route via" on the way to or from airfields, events etc (usually expressed as lat/long or just an aerial photo of the obvious feature)
or
landing at a site up on the moors for fighting fires, dropping off shooters, serving masts/power lines/pipes etc
or
the types of people who want helicopter collection often live in a house in the middle of nowhere with a name rather than a proper address! Google struggles.

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leif
Posts: 440
 leif
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If you find the position on the map, it is easiest to tap the location, create a waypoint from the QIW and then use the satellite view via search.

if you know the coordinates, then create a waypoint under my user waypoints.

if you have google coordinates, you can enter them directly in the search with google.  The format is with decimal numbers and a space between Lat and Long.
      N.nnnn E.eeee

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