I heard mention of tablet for all airplanes. Has there been any details on this?
It would be cool to have ForeFlight on a virtual tablet in the sim.
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I doubt we’ll ever officially see Foreflight in game since it runs on iOS. It would be really hard to see too with all its fine details compressed into an even smaller part of your screen.
The good news is you can interface your iPad with Flight Simulator and use Foreflight like you’re flying for real. I know that’s not a great solution for VR users though.
What I think would be even cooler is if you could put the in-game tablet on your real iPad. Then you wouldn’t have to donk around using a screen inside of a screen.
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Definitely a great idea. Then, it could be independant from the app. I’m using Skydemon in Europe and Foreflight when flying in US.
And fully agree with the (highly)(very)low probability to have Foreflight supported inside a virtual tablet.
If I can run Skyvector on it in VR, I’ll be thrilled. Or if the tablet just natively contains all the functionality that Skyvector has. I use the Oculus import window tool to do that now but that also means I need a mouse to navigate it and in VR, I’d rather not have to do that. So I also hope that in VR, the tablet can be fully manipulated with VR controllers. So there would also have to be a touch keyboard that pops up on the tablet for alphanumeric input using VR controllers, at least optionally.
I sim in VR though. Which would also make the details tough. I use Navigraph and the maps can be a challenge.
I think a good VR focus view could help.
I suppose popping out to see a tablet wouldn’t be too bad.
Maybe a pipe dream, but how about an AR add-on where your real tablet is projected into the Flight Simulator world space. That would be pretty slick. Then you wouldn’t need to really implement ForeFlight within Flight Simulator, it would just be a copy of the tablet’s screen.
I’m always impressed that people try to fly IFR or use these kinds of displays in VR. It seems ideal for VFR joyriding like I do, but having to look through goggles to see details on tiny screens and instruments sounds like a headache.
I’m guessing the in-game tablet is just going to be an incremental upgrade to what third parties are already doing with their tablets: controlling states of the aircraft, loads, configuration, displaying the map and checklists. Hopefully the nav map gets some attention, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
In a G1000 or G3000 equipped airplane it’s not so bad as you have everything you need built in.
Doing cross country VFR navigation in an older airplane is perhaps one of the hardest things in VR. It kind of puts you into the airplane for real.
I had the same thought on using augmented reality!
Although, resolution with current technology would still make it tough. Those VFR maps have a crazy amount of detail.