We've just posted a very rough beta which includes a prototype of this feature. This is not a promise that we'll release the feature, but we are hopeful.
We are prototyping a third-party library to render the PDF contents so you'll see a watermark on embedded PDF maps, but don't worry about that. What matters is that they're accurate and they render ok. The button to display a georeferenced PDF is the big gray blob to the right of the Plates window listing for the document. We'll improve the graphics for it if/when we release the feature, obviously.
Feedback wanted!

Worked first time for me on Nexus 7. Brilliant this is the Android feature i've been waiting for the most!

I like the fading out of inactive sectors (for multi-sector routes) - it's much better than just the blue outline for the active sector which in my opinion is no longer necessary as it's hardly visible anyway and drawing it probably uses up valuable resources.

Unexpected behaviour: Double-tapping anywhere on a displayed plate re-centres on the centre of the plate not on the point tapped.

Will keep playing....

Where do I download the beta please?

Mike
_________________________________________

Here http://www.skydemon.aero/start/android.aspx

Having problems downloading and installing the beta to my Nexus 7. Can anyone help with step by step instructions please?

Mike
_________________________________________

1) Un-Install existing SkyDemon from the settings/applications

2) Open a web browser and go this forum page and click on the link above which should start the download.

3) When the download completes open the notification bar and tap the file downloaded notification and select the option to install the app from the downloaded file.

PS Ignore warnings about untrusted sources etc which will appear as you are not loading from the app store.

Works fine for me too - Asus HD7/Android 4.2.2.  Rendering is a bit slow on big pdf´s though. Apart from this the basics, like scrolling/paning & screen rendering have improved a lot. I am impressed ;-))

Thumbs up !!!!


mike@edtg

I add my vote for this feature !

Meanwhile would it be easy to enable easy printing of the plate as it appears when clicking on the aircraft icon - with the route overlayed like below, thanks !

I do not see Visual approch charts for Belgian Microlight airfields
Would it be possible to use the following charts into Skydemon, and georeference them ?
These sites are available (and geo-referenced) in the following website:
http://www.fed-ulm.be/db/ulip/ulip_list.asp

thanks !

As far as I could tell these aren't even aviation maps at all. The ones I looked at appeared to be taken simply from Google. No airspace information, no traffic pattern information.

-- Chris.

I don't think we will be including such things, no. I don't know where those maps come from or who builds them, but they do not look to be drawn to a professional aviation standard.

Hi,

I've spent some time testing that feature and so far I'm really impressed.
Yes, the initial rendering is a little slow, but the result is just perfect. I can't find a single glitch render-side or positioning-side.

Brilliant!

M

Hi SkyDemon Team,
need some help regarding georeferenced plates. I want to use the plates in the Austrian AIP. For some airports there are such plates marked with the special symbol as I understood. After clicking on that symbol a light gray rectangel will be overlayed to the chart with a white cross on red ground closing symbol but no more. No additional information appears. Are there some setup adaptions necessary?
Thank you for your help!
I am using a Nexus 7 2013 device with WLAN and SIM card, KitKat 4.4.3 and the latest beta of SD.

Kind regards
Herbert

Can you give an example of a specific plate? From memory, those plates are particularly huge/complex and may therefore take a long time to complete rendering on Android.

Dear Tim,
for an example - use this function for Zell/See LOWZ. In the Austrian AIP there is a plate for this airport. In the information box of SD you will find under 'Information' and looking for charts a chart for 'VFR-Flights', marked with this new icon. Tapping on that opens the light gray transparent rectangle on the SD chart but nothing further happens. I interruped the waiting process after about 8 minutes. This behaviour is the same for all other AIP charts too.Hope I could give you an idea!

kr

Herbert

I can get some Austrian plates in their full glory, e.g. LOAN and LOAV. Others don't seem to be georeferenced, though, e.g. LOWL or LOWG.

-- Chris.

Sorry no, also LOAN and LOAV are not working.
Kr
Herbert

Dear Tim,
only to bring back my problem to the top.
I tried the new beta some minutes ago but my problem with no rendering of the Austrian AIP plates on a NEXUS 2013 still exists. Are there any ideas and a timeschedule to find a solution?

kr

Herbert
 

When approaching an airfield (e.g. EGSC Cambridge) how is the auto-displayed approach plate chosen when there are several available such as different runways and approach types?

Herbert, it sounds like plate rendering simply isn't working on your device. Unfortunately there isn't an easy way for us to determine what is wrong, though we will add some debugging/reporting functionality to the final version of 3.1 to help us diagnose.
Simon, there are only two georeferenced plates for Cambridge and they're both airfield diagrams. IFR plates are not georeferenced.

If I try to display the georeferenced plate for LOWZ on my PC it takes ages to download and then several minutes to render even on a PC. I think it may be a very complex or faulty PDF file that is taking a VERY long time to render on Android devices. Just tried it on Android (Nexus 7) and can replicate what Herbert is seeing.



I have IFR approach plates enabled and in addition to the above I have available two georeferenced IFR approach plates for Cambridge (ILS/DME/NBD RWY 23 and RNAV(GNSS) RWY 23). This is fantastic having georeferenced IFR plates.  I was just wondering how SkyDemon chooses which plate to auto-display on approach when there is more than one?

Edit: Gloucestershire and Carlisle also have georeferenced IAPs

Ah. That's a prototype from back when we investigated the possibility of georeferencing IFR plates. Enjoy them while you can, but we currently have no plans to georeference IFR approach plates which would be a HUGE amount of work for us to do when only a tiny percentage of our subscribers would benefit.

The answer to your question, I believe, is that IFR plates are not candidates for automatic loading.

Shame, but thanks for the info. 

This Beta works fine on a HiSense Sero8. Just one cosmetic bug, when you stop naviagting  and return to route planning screen the virtual radar section below the chart is just black.

Please do keep the geo-referencing feature - and put some pressure on AFE to bring their plates up to date!

An annoyance, which your support people seem to have stopped replying to me about despite me checking with Google as requested and proving it is a developer issue, is that the Play Store installer settings include a GPS feature that my tablet doesn't have so Google shows it as non compatible with my device. Clearly it isn't a required feature as the Beta works on the tablet with an external GPS receiver and mock locations enbled. Hopefuilly when 3.1 is released this will be resolved.

We require no more permissions than are absolutely necessary:

Internet
WriteExternalStorage
AccessFineLocation
AccessCoarseLocation
AccessNetworkState

To my knowledge, it is these and only these which the Play Store uses to determine whether an app is compatible with your device. I am happy to be corrected with a specific setting that I'm not aware of, but you really will need to be specific. Perhaps you could share your response from Google with us?

I already did give Google's response to Hannah, who said I needed to contact Google as it was my problem.

"According to our records, the app you're referring to is not compatible with your device because your device is missing a GPS feature and so it won't be advertised to you in Google Play.

App compatibility is determined by individual app developers, not by Google Play, so I'm afraid I can't help further - I can't change the requirements this developer has set for their app.

That being said, I'd recommend contacting the app developer directly to see if they plan to expand compatibility in the future or if they have other options for your device. "

As the Beta direct download works fine there would appear to be no reason for the "GPS feature" Google say is the issue.

Hope this helps.

If the settings can't be changed how about having a permanent download page in the Customer area of SkyDemon?

I suspect there is not a resolution to this issue for you. There is no setting that we set to tell Play Store which devices SkyDemon will run on. There is no such thing as installers for Android apps. All there is, is a list of permissions we have to ask for including the GPS permission otherwise SkyDemon wouldn't be able to receive location data (which is obviously critical). I suspect that the Play Store sees this permission and decides that devices which don't have GPS shouldn't be shown apps that require GPS permissions. It's an imperfect system and not one we're able to do anything about.

I have sympathy with the idea of also hosting the latest version on our website, that might be something we can implement later this year. If it helps, the forthcoming 3.1 release will barely have changed between the current beta and release. That's the nature of a beta system.

Thanks for getting back, also Hannah replied soon after I posted with the same message. Hopefully you can host the current version file on your website at some point.

I will also get back to Google as they aren't being consistent if waht you say is correct. I have another tablet without built in GPS and Play Store makes Skydemon available to that device.

Just tested this on a Samsung Galaxy 10.1.  Very nice...initial rendering of the plate a little slow.  Pans a zooms OK but then the re-rending of the plate when zoomed in a little slow.  Certainly not enough to spoil the use of this great feature though.

Hi Tim,
because I was not able to test the function of the actual beta for georeferenced plates from the Austrian AIP (see my e-mails before), one simple question for my clarification. Some months ago I purchased the jeppersen chart collection for all airports in Austria (all plates are in pdf format). Is there a possibility to use them as georeferenced plates. If yes, where must these plates be stored and when no, is there a possibility to convert them beeing georeferenced?
Thanks in advance

Herbert

No, you cannot load third-party plates into SkyDemon in a way where they could be georeferenced. Georeferencing is a manual process that we do at SkyDemon HQ for each plate.
If you download the latest beta (from Friday) and certain plates continue to fail to render, we will be notified of exactly what the problem is automatically. Please do this if you can. I just looked at these reports and cannot see any from you (I searched for the name Herbert).

Dear Tim,
exactly at 22:28 local time I tried the georeferenced plate (marked with the new symbol) for LOIH from the Austrian AIP. The whole time was connected to the internet. The reaction of SD is the same as in the days before. I have a valid license and I am locked in with my registered name.
I hope this was a helpful information! 

Kind regards
Herbert

Thanks. I think I know what the issue is, and we're working with the vendor of our PDF rendering component to get it resolved. Even if it is resolved, though, it's still a 10mb PDF (most of the Austrian PDFs are produced very inefficiently) so it will still take a long time to render properly on Android.

Thanks Tim,
in the meantime I have detected some new details regarding the rendering of georeferenced plates. For an example, if you look for plates for LIPB (Bozen in Italy) there a 4 plates marked as georeferenced. Three of them work fine and are displayed quickly on my Nexus 7 2013. The fourth plate will not be displayed. So I am sure that there is no principle problem with SD on a Nexus under Android, but it must have to do with the quality of the plates itsself. For further operation with such big plates - would it be helpful to download the whole AIP in advance?
kr

Herbert

That appears to be the same problem. It should be resolved soon in a minor update.

Upgraded to latest released SD version 3.1.0.25633 with support for georeferenced plates. Fantastic!! Works great on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. Congratulations and many thanks to SD for implementing this also for Android!!!

This is great and brings it up with the other versions.  I have found a bug in one of my local plates though.  This is that,

'Sainte foy la grande' (south west France) is in the correct location, but comes out as a very thin long compressed image in place of the correctly laid out plate.

Many thanks

Andy.