I traveled a lot the last week and used Skydemom (newest version) on my Ipad. In all previous trips I used  the Garmin 695, from now on this will be obsolete.

During this week I learned a lot more of the many features and discovered some things which I think can be made more handy:

To call for details like Pilot Log, Radio, Scratchpad Direct to you need to press the Skydemon logo and then the specific button which is a two step way and when it is a bit turbulent difficult to do. Probably solution: make the specific buttons available at the bottom of the screen, the vertical navigation strip, as this is of less use during real navigation. You can have this vertical navigation as button too. The popup screens should be away from your tracks and should disappear as soon you press on the navigation screen. Even nicer make this buttons user definable i.e. only radio and scratchpad etc.

Probably I missed something out but I miss the ICAO codes on the map?

I use the flightplan from Skydemon to forward my own plan. As I use VRP points in my plan, they are rejected because these are not recognised by the authorities. Option could be to translate these points to coordinates?

Again there is no system so complete as Skydemon!!

 

I support the idea of direct access buttons and I advocate to put them at the left side. This part is unused. I personally like seeing the altitude profile of my planed flight at the bottom.

Suggestions for direct access screens at the left
Radio
Pilot log (live!)
Notes

The ICAO code of airfields is visible in every mode of Map layer/map appearance/general/map appearance (translated from german) except in the german mode. This is a bug. You may use the italian one, this one is modeless similar to the german one.

There are already shortcuts to the screens, if you read the documentation you can learn all sorts of handy tricks to make SkyDemon quicker to use. The solution is not to add a screen full of buttons. Scratchpad: swipe to the left along the virtual radar. Pilot Log: tap on the now/next instrument at the top of the screen. Virtual Radar is one of SkyDemon's most useful features in navigation mode and an essential safety instrument; arguably more useful than the main map even. There's no way we would hide it.

Please do not use the imitations of paper charts such as the German or Italian styles if you want to get the most out of SkyDemon. They are not true vector maps and you will lose out on the many mapping features in the SkyDemon 1 & 2 styles which 95% of our chart development efforts go on.

That is interesting, could you point me to some sort of feature list to compare SD's different chart styles? Up to now, airspace color coding is the main difference for me (and unfortunately the omission of ICAO-Codes in the german style)

Tim, Thank you for your explanation. And yes I have to read the manual, but these are such small (but very nice) options that you miss them when reading the main options. That was the reason that, in the past, I asked for an offline manual! Probably there is also an option to have the pop-up messasges, like frequencies during flight, a bit longer visual, now you easely can miss them,

I believe we have made the selection of ICAO codes on the main map work in all chart styles ready for the next version.
We have no feature list comparing the different chart styles. In general the "national" chart styles are designed to mimic paper charts, will not adapt themselves to different zoom levels, and will not have specific drawing modes for all types of national airspace in all covered countries.
The SkyDemon chart styles are designed to adapt (sometimes subtly, sometimes greatly) to different zoom levels and have all sorts of knowledge of special types of airspace in different countries, to help ensure a consistent (and therefore safe) international depiction of aeronautical features.

Tim, I think having a slew of different chart styles only two of which offer the full feature set is counterproductive. My suggestion is to do away with them alltogether. If you want to offer different "looks" then make them all substyles of the SD chart style so that they inherit all functionality and just differ in graphical style.

-- Chris.

I am inclined to agree. Option 1 will result in backlash, Option 2 is a lot of work, so we have pursued neither at this time.