onwards
Pattern Altitude
This is a crosspost from the internal forums for the Aero Glass beta testers.
For some comments that are not included below: I do like the technology, and the glasses are surprisingly comfortable in flight even worn on top of my near-vision glasses (surprise!). The augmented reality aspect is tres' cool, and integrates well in the flight environment, just takes a bit of getting used to. But it's not fully baked yet - until they can fix the tendency of the glasses to drift, they won't be able to implement the features that really matter (flight plan/moving map and airspaces).
===CROSSPOST STARTS HERE==>
Here are my reactions from the first couple of experiences with the glasses.
This involves two flights I took in the past week - the first was a 70nm or so flight, the second a local one. I did not realize there were some docs available on setup before taking the first flight, but had gotten the link to them before the second. I played around with the glasses at home first, just to familiarize myself with the interface.
On the first flight, I waited until I was S&L before trying them on. It ended up being a mistake - I was certainly finding it difficult to get everything going in the air, even though the plane was in S&L. The cursor on the virtual screen was too faint for me to see, and coupled with a low response time, navigating the menus became a frustrating experiment in trial and error.
So tip number 1 - set these things up on the ground for your flight.
I eventually did get it going and it was neat to see the overlay, but by that time I got to the final phase of the flight so I had to take them off as they were too distracting.
My passenger enjoyed looking around with them on for a couple of minutes, but it was more of a "whoa" about augmented reality than anything else, since they were not pilots.
Flight 2 was much better. First of all, I had read the docs I set everything on the ground, using mixed iLevil mode. One thing that caught me by surprise is that I did not see the taxi/ground stuff - I guess it's not in the software yet?
I did remove the ILS overlay which cleared up a lot of clutter for me. It was neat to see the various airports around by turning my head, but I wasn't sure how far each was. I wish there was some visual indication of the distance to each (maybe show the closer ones in ever-larger font on the scrollbar? size and color would be even better)
I found myself recaging a lot this time, too. About every minute. Not a big deal because it was a simple double tap on the left button, but still a bit irritating. That really needs to be fixed.
Beyond that, I really need the flight plan and airspaces (like in the concept art video) to be included before this becomes really useful for me.
For some comments that are not included below: I do like the technology, and the glasses are surprisingly comfortable in flight even worn on top of my near-vision glasses (surprise!). The augmented reality aspect is tres' cool, and integrates well in the flight environment, just takes a bit of getting used to. But it's not fully baked yet - until they can fix the tendency of the glasses to drift, they won't be able to implement the features that really matter (flight plan/moving map and airspaces).
===CROSSPOST STARTS HERE==>
Here are my reactions from the first couple of experiences with the glasses.
This involves two flights I took in the past week - the first was a 70nm or so flight, the second a local one. I did not realize there were some docs available on setup before taking the first flight, but had gotten the link to them before the second. I played around with the glasses at home first, just to familiarize myself with the interface.
On the first flight, I waited until I was S&L before trying them on. It ended up being a mistake - I was certainly finding it difficult to get everything going in the air, even though the plane was in S&L. The cursor on the virtual screen was too faint for me to see, and coupled with a low response time, navigating the menus became a frustrating experiment in trial and error.
So tip number 1 - set these things up on the ground for your flight.
I eventually did get it going and it was neat to see the overlay, but by that time I got to the final phase of the flight so I had to take them off as they were too distracting.
My passenger enjoyed looking around with them on for a couple of minutes, but it was more of a "whoa" about augmented reality than anything else, since they were not pilots.
Flight 2 was much better. First of all, I had read the docs I set everything on the ground, using mixed iLevil mode. One thing that caught me by surprise is that I did not see the taxi/ground stuff - I guess it's not in the software yet?
I did remove the ILS overlay which cleared up a lot of clutter for me. It was neat to see the various airports around by turning my head, but I wasn't sure how far each was. I wish there was some visual indication of the distance to each (maybe show the closer ones in ever-larger font on the scrollbar? size and color would be even better)
I found myself recaging a lot this time, too. About every minute. Not a big deal because it was a simple double tap on the left button, but still a bit irritating. That really needs to be fixed.
Beyond that, I really need the flight plan and airspaces (like in the concept art video) to be included before this becomes really useful for me.
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