Dear Beta Tester,

Many of you are contacting us on when we will release EasyVFR 4 to the public. We'd like to shed some light on that, and tell you a bit more about the five projects we feel we need to have finished before we can go to a public release. Those five topics are faster map rendering, improve geographical data, implement raster charts, optimize the knowledge base and overall app optimization. More on that below!

And now there's Breadcrumb recording, exporting, translating to a logbook entry and importing from EasyVFR 3! It all works a bit different compared to EasyVFR 3, so we'd like to share some insights.

Enjoy reading this newsletter, which is a ten minutes read. If anything isn't clear or you would like to share some feedback, feel free to contact us via your preferred channel.

Breadcrumbs & Flight Analysis, v 1.0.

Breadcrumb recording.
EasyVFR 4 keeps breadcrumb recordings on a daily basis, contrary to EasyVFR 3 which kept them on a per-flight basis.
If you have the app in the foreground, Flight Mode will automatically be triggered in this new version when your speed is over 30 KTS.
Take-off and landing are registered as an event in the breadcrumb, so that breadcrumbs can now automatically be analyzed to create logbook entries from - even when multiple flights were recorded on a day.
If you are signed in on multiple devices and have EasyVFR 4 simultaneously running and recording, you'll end up having multiple route recordings of the same day. EasyVFR 4 can merge those files into a single logbook entry so that you flawlessly can go from one to another device without having to worry about ending up with a broken route recording.
You can show breadcrumbs on the map. Two color codes are used:

• Green / white indicate an accurate position log,
• Orange / red are less accurate, where a red dotted line means date no GPS position data was available for that time.

iOS.
iOS devices can record breadcrumb continuously during the day (when EasyVFR 4 runs in the background) by enabling the option [Menu] -> [System] -> [Location Updates even when App in background]. To indicate EasyVFR 4 is monitoring your location, iOS will display a blue bar at the top of the screen when you swap EasyVFR 4 to the background. Power consumption is somewhat increased in this situation, but we've spent quite some time minimizing this when not traveling.

Android & Windows.
When background location updates are not working or when used on Android or Windows, EasyVFR 4 records breadcrumbs as long as it's in the foreground. We'll keep looking for ways to make it record in the background.

Logbook entries.

• EasyVFR 4 can automatically convert a breadcrumb into a logbook entry.
• These auto-created logbook entries can be edited, and are stored in the logbook with a copy of the breadcrumb data for the timespan of the flight. That's why both breadcrumbs and logbook entries have the option to show the track of the flight on the map or export to Google Maps.
• Since the track data is stored in the logbook file itself (an XML based file now, contrary to the binary format EasyVFR 3 used), you don't lose the track details when you lose the breadcrumb file.
• To edit entries, tap the light-blue colored text.
• You can import breadcrumbs and logbook entries from your EasyVFR 3 account. Please be aware that for some large accounts this can take up to an hour.

Where to find what.

• You find the breadcrumb and logbook menu at [EasyVFR 4 menu] -> [Flight log maintenance].
  Files from your EasyVFR 3 account can be loaded from the EasyVFR Cloud. Tap the tool symbol on the top bar to enter [Breadcrumb and Logbook Tools].
• Select one or multiple breadcrumbs and then tap the tools symbol on the top bar. Here you can choose what to do with those selected files. You can show multiple breadcrumbs on the map, export them to Excel and show them in Google Earth.
• Below the breadcrumbs you'll find the logbook entries. You can edit them by tapping the blue pencil or by selecting one or more logbook entries and then tapping the tool symbol on the top bar. You can show multiple flights from your logbook on the map, export them to Excel and Google Earth.

This new breadcrumb and logbook system will be included in EasyVFR 4 from now on. Please be advised this feature is still under development (alpha), so see the beta testers forum for the current bugs and known issues. If you found a bug yourself or if you have a suggestion, please post it there or send an email to ev4betafeedback@pocketfms.com.

Airfield Summary bar and Airport Plate download.

Now when you tap at an airfield, not only will the Quick Info wheel appear but also the Airfield Summary bar. This bar contains the airfield's georeferenced approach plates, its name, elevation, main frequency and its runway details. You can close the bar with the X top-right and open the Airfield Info window for that airfield with the airfield info button on the left. The bar will only appear if you tap on an airfield or heliport.

If your internet connection is of sufficient quality, the latest airfield plates will be downloaded automatically. If you use a mobile internet connection of 2G or less, it will show empty plates to indicate that there are plates, but none were downloaded yet.

Work in progress.

In the coming weeks, we will not only work on addressing your bug and issue reports but also on five projects that we wish to have implemented before going public.

1. New Vector Data Structure and Map Rendering.
After progressive insight, we are now working on a new vector data structure that should improve the map rendering speed. The first tests are showing highly encouraging results. How big the upgrade will be we dare not promise, but it looks like it's dramatically faster on many systems. Moving to this new structure means we need to rebuild our whole database into the new schema which can take up to six weeks of hardcore processing time. So if we do that, it's an excellent opportunity to simultaneously improve the geographical data as well.

2. Geographical data improvement.
Many of you have reported missing railways, roads that are cut in many pieces, misspelled names and so on. We have looked for better data sources and are happy to inform you that we have found a great one. It's professionally maintained for all countries in and around Europe. We plan to start using this data simultaneously with the new vector data structure described above.

3. Adding new regions.
Plan is to include all regions that were supported in EasyVFR 3. We postponed adding more regions to the beta because we wanted to improve the vector data structure and geographical data source first. Once we have implemented those we will rapidly add more regions.

4. Raster charts.
We can be short on this one: EasyVFR 4 will eventually load all your purchased raster charts from DFS, SkyGuide, Air Million and so on.

5. Knowledgebase.
It's far from ready but you can already visit at support.easyvfr4.aero
If your question is not covered please ask it via helpdesk@pocketfms.com We will help you personally and will flag the topic to be added in the knowledge base.

Optimization hunt.
As always, we ask your help in the optimization hunt. If you encounter any bugs or issues, it would be very helpful if you would post them on the beta testers forum or send an email to ev4betafeedback@pocketfms.com.

Best is to include a screen recording or screenshot, your device's model name, the version number of the device's operating system, and some explanation on how the issue occurs so that we can try to reproduce it. Every report you send does help to find pieces of the puzzle.

Top-level Roadmap.

Already implemented:

• SmartMap 1.0:
  • EasyVFR AeroData: AIP Airfield info, Airspaces, NOTAMs, routes, waypoints etc.
  • Hide inactive airspace.
  • High detail zoom.
• Route Planning.
• Automatic Routing.
• Flight Mode.
• Georeferenced Airport Plates: AIP, Pooleys, DFS and Skyguide
• Weather:
  • METARs and TAFs.
  • SIGWX, wind and low clouds on the map.
  • Clouds and wind on the Vertical Profile View (VPV) for 13 altitudes.
  • Density Altitude for all airports for which a (nearby) current METAR is available.
  • Wind automatically used in the Route Planning calculation.
• Breadcrumbs.
• Logbook.
• Now 24 European countries and counting.
• 6 Languages:
  • Checked and up-to-date: English, Polish, German, French.
  • Work in progress: Finnish, Spanish and Dutch.
• Connectivity: many ADS-B / FLARM receivers and Dynon SkyView.
• Sources: Eurocontrol, Deutscher Wetterdienst, NASA and many other more locally-focused sources for extra weather and geographical data.

In development:

• Improved map rendering engine
• Geographical terrain update.
• Raster charts
• Weather:
• More GAFOR areas: Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria, Croatia, France
• WX time loop
• Gusts, temperatures and icing conditions
• Warning system for Airspaces
• Current position infobox
• Including all the other areas that EasyVFR 3 covers
• Knowledge base

Planned:

• Weather:
• WX during flight mode.
• European Precipitation radar.
• Nowcast in 5 minutes interval.
• Save and edit user waypoints.
• SmartMap 2.0

Vote on and submit features.
You can influence the order of development by voting on the topics you value most at the beta testers forum section 'Development wishlist: Vote and help decide!'. The more upvotes a feature gets, the sooner it will be implemented. Do you feel that something is missing or do you have suggestions for improvements? Add them here and help us set development priority. We try to listen as much as possible!

So... when will EasyVFR 4 will be publicly released?

We have decided to do the releases country-based and only if the current beta testers in that country are positive that EasyVFR 4 is sufficiently complete for their region. We now have planned to start in Germany, and then add the other supported regions one by one at a steady pace.

We do like to take the time to make EasyVFR 4 as stable and complete as it can be before it goes public. On the other hand, we feel that it is already a better system than EasyVFR 3 for many supported devices and use cases. Therefore we would like to give all the current EasyVFR users access to the beta before the public releases, so they can evaluate it, as well as help us finalize the product. These people will get another invitation by email. Feel free to invite your aviation friends to sign up for early access!
The more beta users that can give feedback we have in a country, the earlier we can see if it is ready for the public release in that country.

Direct update links.
Having said that, we invite you now to download the latest update EasyVFR 4.0.627. You can read the complete release note at the download page.

Enjoy the testing and please do not hesitate to contact us on any question you have.

Greetings from Lelystad Airport.
The EasyVFR team