Foreflight Continuing Ed

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
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west Texas
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Display name:
Dave Taylor
A) Mine wont dl if you leave the page.
Even if you open the music app to change the song; boom Foreflight Downloads Stopped.
Normal?
Controls for?

B) Any way to send copilot the “Flight” (as referred to by FF)?
I know about the pdf, the email options.
Id like to connect via BT ideally, failing that, wifi and have one flight popup in his Flight list.
Possible?
 
Yes you have to stay in the Download area while downloading. If you must do something else, there is a pause feature. You can’t go a minute or two without music? The downloading needs to be done in a single processing environment.
 
MBDiagMan said:
Yes you have to stay in the Download area while downloading. If you must do something else, there is a pause feature. You can’t go a minute or two without music? The downloading needs to be done in a single processing environment.
Click to expand...
I don't think the issue is going without music; it's that downloading can often be a very long process. You don't have to stay on the download tab; you can use other features in FF, but you can't switch to another app.

I thought I read something at some point from ForeFlight suggesting that there would be an upgrade that would allow downloads to take place in the background. As best I can tell, that never happened.
 
I don’t think downloading updates is a good candidate as a task to run in the background. Just set it down and let it grind for a few minutes. Isn’t there something else you can do for a few minutes once a month or so? I download about 15 states worth of data as it becomes available. They all download pretty quickly.
 
Well if Garmin does it, it MUST be better, or at least the price will be higher.
 
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A few minutes!?
Ahahahaha you people with your >5mbps connections - go ahead, rub my nose in it!
Or maybe you only need one small state?
I set it last night at 10pm; 6 states (and I need most everything) - it took well over an hour.
Doing both devices at once means no changing music (you can listen to music just not adjust it)
 
Salty said:
Garmin pilot downloads in the background. Just sayin
Click to expand...

Garmin is probably the only one that does it. FlyQ has the same, stare at the download section crap. Like I have nothing better to do.... like read POA or watch paint dry
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
A few minutes!?
Ahahahaha you people with your >5mbps connections - go ahead, rub my nose in it!
Or maybe you only need one small state?
I set it last night at 10pm; 6 states (and I need most everything) - it took well over an hour.
Doing both devices at once means no changing music (you can listen to music just not adjust it)
Click to expand...

Why don’t you set it up for download at bedtime, and it Will be waiting for you in the morning.
 
MBDiagMan said:
Why don’t you set it up for download at bedtime, and it Will be waiting for you in the morning.
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Because his flight is today and the updates just hit this morning.
 
Brad Z said:
You don't have to stay on the download tab; you can use other features in FF, but you can't switch to another app.

I thought I read something at some point from ForeFlight suggesting that there would be an upgrade that would allow downloads to take place in the background. As best I can tell, that never happened.
Click to expand...

I believe it's still a limitation of iOS. They can start downloading a file and then continue in the background, but once all the files it was downloading when you switched out of ForeFlight are complete, they can't start any new ones without the app being in the foreground.

Salty said:
Because his flight is today and the updates just hit this morning.
Click to expand...

The updates never hit same day. They usually come out on Sunday and are effective the following Thursday. Download them Monday or Tuesday night and you're good to go.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I believe it's still a limitation of iOS. They can start downloading a file and then continue in the background, but once all the files it was downloading when you switched out of ForeFlight are complete, they can't start any new ones without the app being in the foreground.



The updates never hit same day. They usually come out on Sunday and are effective the following Thursday. Download them Monday or Tuesday night and you're good to go.
Click to expand...
Sigh. Garmin pilot does it in the background on iOS.
If the updates came out since he last flew and he needs to fly today, that suggestion doesn’t work. Foreflight is a good product, but like anything else it has its weaknesses, this is one of them, accept it and move on with life.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I believe it's still a limitation of iOS. They can start downloading a file and then continue in the background, but once all the files it was downloading when you switched out of ForeFlight are complete, they can't start any new ones without the app being in the foreground.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I remember when this feature came out the first time. I knew iOS had security and OS structure restrictions around background operations. I was curious what the delineating line was for what continued in the background and what didn't.

I'll bet Garmin got around this issue by structuring the download all as one file and deserializing the mess internally. That suggests Garmin has more sophisticated backend servers, which would not surprise me in the least. Though we think of ForeFlight as the premiere EFB, Garmin has far more experience overall and much larger engineering team. Especially in the case of service infra. That would make this easy for Garmin, but ForeFlight would have to craft such functionality from scratch.
 
I have a very slow internet connection but do the downloads overnight while I’m sleeping. I really don’t care how long it takes as l9mg as it’s done when I get up the next day.

gary
 
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