Browse the Imagery view in ForeFlight Mobile and you will notice big changes have taken place! In addition to some basic spring cleaning, we nearly doubled the number of collections in the USA Ensembles.
What are all these new charts?
Like anything else that’s new, it’ll take some time for you to fully benefit from all of the imagery we’ve added to the ForeFlight Mobile app. We understand that some of these new charts may be unfamiliar to many customers. Therefore, in the weeks and months to come you can expect to see us offer more insight on how to effectively use this guidance in your day-to-day preflight planning regiment. So stay tuned to Twitter, Facebook, and the ForeFlight blog for more details.
What’s with the order of the collections?
Previously in ForeFlight Mobile, the USA collections were roughly ordered alphabetically with Alaska being first and Winds Aloft positioned last. With such a large number of new collections, we want to do a little better than to simply alphabetize the weather guidance. While there is no perfect way to order these collections to meet every pilot’s needs, we implemented an order that we think you will find useful. Here’s what we were thinking…
Picture a preflight weather briefing as a funnel with large-scale features at the top of the funnel and route-specific details at the bottom. At the top of the funnel you start out with the synoptic overview (big picture) such as the location and movement of high and low pressure systems, fronts and associated areas of precipitation and clouds. The timing of your proposed round-robin flight is often critical, so we’ve placed outlooks and long-range forecasts near the top as well to help you decide which day may provide the best opportunity to minimize your exposure to adverse weather. As you work your way to the bottom of the funnel, this will include finer route-specific details such as en route advisories to include G-AIRMETs and SIGMETs, icing, turbulence, regional satellite, ground-based radar and last, but not least, pilot weather reports.
What happened to my favorite and recent images?
We made an honest attempt to preserve all of your favorite and recent images with this update. A careful mapping was done to point to the right image even for those that were moved from one collection to another. There were also a dozen or so images that existed in more than one collection; so we removed those duplicates. If your favorite image was the one we removed, it was mapped to the other location. Nevertheless, there may be a few images that were deleted and a few favorites or recents that were not preserved. If you are having trouble finding one of those images, please e-mail us at team@foreflight.com and we are happy to track those down.
Speaking of recents and favorites, there is now a recents button for imagery on the iPad version of the app as shown below. Now you can view and swipe through all of your favorites and recents on your iPad or iPhone. These settings sync across your mobile devices. As always, don’t forget to check out the Pilot’s Guide to ForeFlight Mobile to learn more about the new imagery.
