What's in for me?
Since the last public release in January a lot has happened. With this blogpost I would like to inform you about the major new functionalities rather than just a boring summary of bug fixes.
Interested in the entire list of new functionalities and improvements instead? Go to the full changelog.
New inflight Audio & Voice notifications
After many requests from you, we have now implemented vocal airspace information to EasyVFR 4! This can come in handy if you are looking outside the cockpit, watching out for other aircraft, and enjoying the view. This vocal information also includes a leg change notification. It will tell you your new heading, altitude, and what the name of your next waypoint is. To enable these voice messages: go to the EasyVFR 4 menu, then to ''Alarms and Warnings'' and finally to ''Voice''.
At and around airports
Imagine departing or arriving at an airport. During these two critical phases, you don’t want to be distracted by (vocal) warnings about airspaces you are about to enter as you have done your flight preparation correctly. Therefore we now have the option to auto suppress airspace warnings when within a given distance of your departure or arrival aerodrome that belong to your planned route.
More about these new notifications
- Audio (Voice and Sound) Airspace Notifications
- Auto-suppress airspace warnings close to departure and arrival
- Upcoming leg change notification
Runway extension
Speaking of arrivals, we have added the option to turn the runway feathers on or off within ”Map Layers” and then ”AeroData”. However, if you mark a runway in ”QuickInfo” and then ”Airport” by tapping on its ident, EasyVFR 4 will render the specific runway extension feather regardless of the ”AeroData” setting.
New regions added
Currently, most countries are slowly opening again after their lockdowns as more and more people are getting vaccinated. With that in mind, we can start planning our holidays, but where to go? Well, as pilots we of course always want to fly, especially on holidays, so you could consider Bulgaria and Greenland as we have added those countries to EasyVFR 4!
Fuel at and around airports
The last thing I would like to mention is the fuel type shown on the map. Depending on the fuel type your aircraft (profile) uses, the availability of this fuel type is from now on shown on the EasyVFR map. If no aircraft profile is selected, all fuel types will be shown for each airport. In this way you are not bothered by seeing fuel types you don’t need. In case you don’t want to see the fuel type(s) on the map, you can simply turn this option off within the ”Map Layers” followed by ”Aerodata” just like with the Runway feathers.
Knowing your totals in flight
Time flies when having fun, so to know how fast time has ''flown'' you now can see your actual flight time (and distance flown) as route totals within the route window.
And when your flight is done, you don't have to manually convert bread crumps into a logbook entry as this will be done automatically for you.
For Dynon SkyView users
As we got a lot of questions from Dynon users, we decided to give the exchange center an overhaul. With this overhaul, one of the biggest changes we made is that we made an ''all or nothing'' operation from the approach charts that are downloaded from the Dynon Exchange window. When the Dynon Sync is done, EasyVFR will make sure all approach plates for all selected countries are downloaded, regardless of how long it takes. You as a user have no influence on this anymore. Furthermore, we fixed several issues like plates that would not be copied to your memory stick if you added a new country, but not updated your EFB. Also, never-ending download instructions experienced by some users are now part of history.
Curious what will be next?
I hope you liked reading this blog post and that you can't wait to update your EasyVFR 4 app! Currently, we are working on some exciting new features that will be implemented in next future releases. If you want to be one of the first to try them out, you can become a beta tester! Within ''My EasyVFR'' you can select the option ''Participate as beta tester'' and off you go! All beta and public updates are published at the the forum.
Let's get started
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? Download EasyVFR 4 and take it for a spin. Let us know what you think in the comments and don’t forget to check back soon for even more great EasyVFR 4 features coming your way. ?
Hello Rob and Team,
Since going public I miss the once excellent support and reply speed.
There are still many bugs and shortcomings in the otherwise very promising app. These were addressed months or even years ago, and are on the to-do list. But apart from some users still being active in the forum, there is no further improvement or official reply to any input.
what is happening? Did you all go on a deserved holiday (we probably all want to know where that may be), or is there a funding problem?
Sincerely , Leif
Hi Leif! Don't worry, there is not a funding problem at all :-). We're doing pretty fine, number of users are significantly increasing, what of course also results in more pressure on support. Most users don't visit the forum unfortunately, so email support has drastically increased last months. We've got now multiple people watching email support 24/7, resulting in (IMHO) extremely fast response times.
I personally have been a bit quite responding to suggestions and reports the last weeks; mostly because I had to focus 100% on expanding our data collecting process with new data types.
Survey results from new users showed we need to collect some additional data soon. New tools had to be developed for this, and that took a lot of my time. But that is now completed, and very soon you will see the first results from that, I am sure many users will like that a lot.
So last 6-8 weeks we focussed on expanding our data processing capabilities, what is now completed and the actual data collecting and processing has started. We do expect from now on to be able to work on app features, bugs & suggestions also again parallel to the new data collecting. Plunching through recent forum posts is then part of the job also, my silence will come to an end ;-).
BTW, if you have some money you don't know what to do with, I'm always interested ....... ;-)))
Thank you , I am glad to hear that.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the reasurances.
I too, like Leif, have been slightly concerned about what was happening because things seemed so quiet on the forum with no official replies, response or solutions offered to problems, issues encountered etc.
I too think there are still many issues with Ev4 that need to be addressed before it can be called the best Nav App available.
Thanks,
Alan.
Hi Alan!
Rome wasn’t built in one day either ;-). We are very happy with how EV4 is being picked up, and we try to listen as much as possible to all user feedback we get. 90% of this feedback comes in via email, and we try to “communicate” this as much as possible via the “vote for features” list on this forum also.
But to be honest, we are running into a situation where a lot of conflicting opinions are arisen. What one person likes a lot, is disliked enormously by another. So its not easy to “make everybody happy” and we try to make well thought decisions as much as possible now we’re on this faster moving train.
One area where we concluded needs focus on short term is additional data, and like I wrote to Leif we spent most of our time last weeks on improving our data collecting and processing systems.
There is a lot in the pipeline, and although we wish we had unlimited development and marketing resources to speedup some developments we are very happy with how things evolved last months 🙂
Ho Rob,
Yes agreed agreed Rome wasn't built in a day, but you must admit that even to its present operation the Ev4 evolution has been rather a long journey!
Moving on...
You say that 90% of the communication is now coming in via email. Maybe this is a problem in itself and if that is the way that you wish everyone to communicate with you a decision maybe needs to be taken on this? Maybe there is no need for a forum if this is happening?
Personally I would have thought that individual email communication on a grand scale was more time consuming to deal with and that it would maybe be an idea to direct the current large amount of individual email questions you are currently getting to somehow be fed into the forum so that everyone could give some input?
Just my thoughts,
Best Regards,
Alan.