SPEED So what's the big deal? Well, it can be summed up in one word: SPEED. As you may have noticed, Voyager's strongest suit wasn't its chart drawing speed, so we rewrote the charting engine from the ground up. This time we could take advantage of the same technology that powers Google Earth and Microsoft Flight Simulator, something called Microsoft DirectX. In essence, it means we take all the aviation data, terrain data and the like and put it into a virtual 3D model that mirrors the Earth. Thanks to DirectX, all the heavy lifting of actually drawing the Chart is then handled by your machine's video card at blinding speed.
The result is spectacular and essentially means real-time drawing. For example, in places that the old charting engine might take five seconds to draw a chart, the new drawing engine draws in about 1/5 of a second or less. That is, very conservatively, the new engine is about 100 times FASTER, better if you have a good video card. This speed makes a night and day difference in using Voyager. Zooms and pans are now silky smooth and GlassView GPS position updates are now every second rather than every five seconds (in fact, the charting engine can do much better than once per second, but most GPS units only update that fast).
SCANNED CHARTS You asked for it; now you have it. Scanned, original, current Sectional, High and Low Enroute, TAC, and WACs can now be used as layers on any Voyager chart screen. And just like our "vector charts", this means you can create your flight plan over any scanned chart, click on an airport (for example) and get airport data, and overlay weather; Clouds, radar, Metars and TAFs. Switch to GlassView moving map, and now you have your current position shown on top of a scanned chart. Everything you could do before, you can now do on the new scanned charts!
3-D Not just for Disney movies anymore! You can now turn, tilt, zoom, and rotate charts in all three dimensions! "Pre-flight" your route to visua
