I’m considering getting rid of Navigraph for a host of reasons, one of which they never really bring any new features to the Navigraph Charts “app” and the Hub and their communication is pretty below average.
With what appears to be an improving native EFB and the quality of the flight planner always improving, what is the need for this subscription?
Someone convince me otherwise…
I believe that both have value, and I use both (default and Navigraph). I primarily maintain a Navigraph subscription for the following reasons:
I’m not sure which way I’ll go in the short-term but I appreciate your thoughts, Zad.
In the last three years a few features what we have release (long before MSFS2024):
Upcoming:
Cheers
Richard
Nice forthcoming update, Richard. Thanks.
Mostly convenience for me. I enjoy it alot.
As I said. It has better coverage for most simmers, and is easier to handle (better for CPU and memory). As it is easier for us to work with you pay less for our time.
Mathijs Kok
PMDG
Hi Richard, for msfs 2024, how will the decision to close VORs affect Navigraph for simmers? Will we be allowed to keep them? And secondly will there ever come a day where the military airports the world over could be included in Navigraph?
Only to then pay someone else $10/month in perpetuity - sorry, I can’t say I’m anything but disappointed by developers who decide to take this route instead of giving users the option to use default OR Navigraph. An unfortunate blight on what are otherwise very great products from some developers.
You pick out one of the reasons I mentioned and ignore the others; yet they are valid from our point of view. As always, it is not possible to make everybody happy, but we know that our customers would not be happy if we made it slower and used more memory (for sure our Cloud and Xbox customers!). At this moment, we see no reason to change our ideas on this. Your comment is a rare one.
Mathijs Kok
PMDG
I’ve done benchmarks on aircraft that use both and see no difference whatsoever in using Navigraph data over default (unless the suggestion is that the mere architecture present to use the default causes more memory usage, in which case I’d love to see evidence of that).
I chose to ignore the other points you made because they don’t affect the end-user at all. The only valid reason I’ve seen on this thread so far to use Navigraph data are the examples provided where Navigraph has more/more accurate data than default, and that’s incredibly valuable information to have. Whether or not that’s worth it to the consumer is entirely up to them.
And my comment may be a rare one, but I’m positive the sentiment is not. If explained the total picture of what they stand to “lose” by having default navdata available as an option, I cannot imagine many (if any) players reasonably arguing against it.
To be clear, I am a Navigraph subscriber for more reasons than just the navdata, and I have been a PMDG owner for years (and will continue to purchase PMDG products in the future) - I just cannot help but express the disappointment I feel around their (and other developers’) choice to ship an incomplete product in this way when alternatives exist. If you’ve got any documentation or evidence to back up the claim that giving users the ability to access default navdata hinders performance in any significant way, that would be valuable in this conversation.
One word about the technical reasons:
We offer more information in our datasets, which will be used by most of the third-party addons. This information is not available (and can´t be provided by the SDK) in the default navdata. That means you need to make compromises when you want to offer both worlds, like Inibuilds. Compromises that are possible are not visible to the end user, but the effort required to support both is substantial.
With the default navdata, you are utterly dependent on the sim version, which means that when something goes wrong with version X (and that’s not a scenario - it still happens a few times), you need to wait for the next update Y. With a completely independent dataset, you have more flexibility - flexibility to switch to another provider, flexibility to get a fix faster, …
Some aircraft developers go the dual way, some use only the default data, and some use the external data approach. All three scenarios are valid/acceptable, suitable for the market, and should not lead to an endless discussion about the why.
No one questions the other way - why do so many (more than the other way) default navdata addons not support Navigraph? They are happy with it and don´t need more - good and acceptable. Everyone prefers another approach - that´s good.
Cheers,
Richard
Last:
I am not clear about the aim of this discussion, what outcome do you expect?
When you need an answer of your question from your subject:
If you want to compare purely the data - the data are nearly the same, so there is no better or worse.
Cheers,
Richard
That’s all I’m looking for really - understanding what value it is to the user (not the developer) to have a system be Navigraph dependent.
Sorry but if the developer, in order to make a plane NOT cause ctd’s in sim, uses a less vram and graphics hungry system, doesn’t that benefit us if you are a 3rd party plane user?
We all give our money to something in this sim one way or another. Personally, I prefer to fly than have CTDs.
Sure, if that’s actually the case. I’ve never observed any significant difference between Navigraph-driven aircraft vs those that use default navdata when all other things are as close to comparable as possible.
If anyone has any data to back up the claim that Navigraph results in “fewer CTDs and less VRAM usage” that would be something worth shouting from the mountaintops, I would think.
Sorry @Zadma, I repeat my question to you again:
What do you expect from this discussion? What should be the outcome?
As I have written before, from the core source data point of view, there is no difference. It seems that other arguments are not valid enough for you, which is okay. You can find a counterargument to every argument - everywhere. Every company has its own goals, its own vision, its own ideas.
Be lucky, because you have multiple options to use real-world navdata. You don´t need the Navigraph data when you are happy with the stock data, and when you don’t need the “background noise”. So, what exactly is your problem/question?
Cheers
Richard
I’m confused - I believe I’ve answered this: I want to understand the value of external navdata over default. I’m satisfied with the several examples that have been provided above that show where the default navdata falls short and Navigraph fills the gaps.
This is true if the aircraft supports default navdata, which unfortunately not all do. But that’s not the purpose of this thread.
Could we integrate the functionality of simbrief（for example “plan”） into charts? simbiref’s web version is really hard to use for me (it’s difficult to access in China).
I won’t presume to speak on Navigraph’s behalf (oh that’s fun to say) but I would be willing to bet they would prefer you make requests like that on their own forums found here.