What’s cooking at FSWidgets?
While we await the release of the new product currently being tested, we thought we’d let you know about another little tool we have been toying with and developing for around a year. It’s a flight planner with a difference which uses an enhanced version of the GMap engine, powered by the Google Maps API.
What’s the difference? Most flight planners out there use predefined routes or depend on VOR’s, NDBs and airways which is great for IFR pilots who need that, but what about VFR pilots? As any bush pilot will tell you, out in the wilds of Alaska or the Australian outback navaids can be very sparse. Even within busy airspaces nearer to big cities VFR pilots generally navigate in relation to large, easily identifiable features like buildings, roads & intersections, lakes & rivers, shorelines, quarries, mountains and other things that are marked on aeronautical charts (e.g. WAC and TAC), things that are not going anywhere in a hurry.
The FSWidgets VFR Planner will extend the capabilities of the existing GMap system allow GA and bush pilots to create flight plans totally free of any airway or navaid system. Any point or feature on the map can be used as a VFR waypoint. The flight plan can be composed completely of user-created waypoints, from departure to arrival.
However, never get the impression that VFR flying is a dumbed-down version of IFR navigation. It’s not just about looking out the window, seeing a feature and pointing the plane’s nose towards it. That is what’s known as pilotage which is needed at times, especially when the departure or arrival consists of flying very short legs in and around busy airspace. In those cases flying an extended leg using a clock and compass may not be practical. Outside those kinds of areas, VFR flying requires careful planning and execution. In fact it takes just as much skill to plan and execute a VFR flight where the plane is not following electronic or radio based navigation, where it is the pilots responsibility to accurately track from waypoint to waypoint based on the calculated headings, performing 1-in-60 corrections to get back on track if the wind alters significantly from the forecast winds. The VFR Planner will require some pilot input, but will automatically create the VFR flight plan, calculating the magnetic wind-corrected headings, ETE’s and fuel burns. It will also include 7 different map types, including one special terrain map created from scratch by FSWidgets.
This tool will be available for FSX only to begin with, other simulators may be added later. We don’t know when it will be finished but it is at an advanced stage of development. Watch this space!
Work is currently underway on a Mac edition of GMap for X-Plane, our freeware moving map system. As you can see from the screenshot we are making rather good progress and have an initial working version. So far we have replicated 95% of the functionality of the Windows edition.