At last handheld 3d at sensible money
 

Check out this new 3d handheld at www.zetaero.com


I was lucky enough to see ad fly with this thing when they were at prototype stage - the guy who's behind the company keeps his plane here at Enniskillen. He was kind enough to give it to me for a flight test and asked my to appraise it for him one day after he landed. I loved it.
I didn't hear any more about it till I heard it was for sale and just found the website on friday. I called them and they are already snowed under. They're telling me delivery is running about 3-4 weeks as the 1st batch are sold out. Ordered one so now roll on 3 weeks!!!!!!


Does anybody on here have one yet? I'd be interested to see what you think. I thought it was an amazing piece of kit.

4B

It looks great, but it's a pity they are not selling just the software.

Any half decent bit of hardware could run that stuff.

I agree Peter, and I wasn't very keen on this as a statement on their website

** If you do not keep your program updated
after 3 months the unit WILL NOT display airspace**

Yes, I think we should insist on the option of acquiring hardware and software and data separately. Actually I think European ruling could be interpreted to impose this option.

That might be for liability reasons. Can they get sued if a crash is blamed on a bad map?

Which ruling is this?

I doubt it, so long as it is sold as an uncertified VFR product.

Selling hardware+software is a gamble. These people have been doing it for years, and have picked up a little market for themselves, but they won't be going anywhere now.

The problem is that cockpits are not that big and people are mostly looking for a "universal" solution.

The other thing is that anybody can buy, for peanuts, the complete 6-DVD set of the SRTM radar imagery, and write a visualiser prog which gives you 3D rendering of the flight path ahead. Every flight sim does it, and if you are not rendering silly stuff like water textures then you can do it on a smartphone... And it would sell, for say 50 quid. But not hundreds. One would do an Android version and an IOS version.

The same ruling that forbids selling a mobile phone together with the associated services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)
But I am far from an expert on this kind of matter.

[[edit: I meanwhile found that my national laws are for this once stricter than the European ruling. Still, Europe did fine Microsoft for marketing their Media Player coupled with their Winwoes o/s ]]

€1,195 is sensible money for 3D?

PocketFMS's iOS and Android app has 3D synthetic vision for just €150pa, including all airspace updates, advanced weather and pc planning.

(In Apple App store and Google Play)

I got this by PM from the developer of this product; he was concerned about what he saw as inaccurate coverage here

We are not using SRTM. Originally we were but it just covers 60N to 60S. So we have had to purchase worldwide data from another source.

Also we have European and US IFR enroute, approach and aerodrome charts loaded in the program so it is not VFR only.

To date we have over 200,000 lines of source code written and the terrain is a very small part of it. The flight planning and aviation databases are the biggest part.

4B can you give us an update when you receive your unit & give it a review after a couple of flights. I am using sky demon & love the fight planning & plogs but don't really like the actual unit to be honest. I am not one for following the line more so a plog & a little auto p now & then. I like to be fully aware of my surroundings at all times especially when imc. 3D helps a little in that sense so I like what I am seeing & will buy a unit if your review is good as I was considering the garman 796 I think it is but at £1700 this may compete on price Thanks

android, iOS Pocket Fms
 

The Pocket Fms 3d is barely an alpha release, I would say. So basic and clunky as to be virtually unusable.