ForeFlight releases 3D airport view tool
Mobile integrated flight app provider ForeFlight announced the release of Airport 3D View, a new tool that gives pilots and aircraft operators an interactive way to become familiar with destination airports and their surrounding areas.
Airport 3D View leverages ForeFlight’s mapping and synthetic vision platform to offer “stunning global aerial imagery with Jeppesen-sourced high-resolution terrain to create a realistic and interactive simulation of the airport environment,” Houston-based ForeFlight said in a Feb. 7 news release.
Working within the ForeFlight app, users can pan and zoom 360 degrees around any airport for a 3-D representation of the airport and surrounding terrain. The view tilts from a three-degree approach path all the way to a top-down view, letting users preview from any angle.
A data readout provides information about the camera’s current position, altitude, distance from the pivot point (the airport center or runway ends), and inclination in degrees, along with the airport and touchdown zone elevations. Buttons for each runway allow users to quickly reposition the camera to one nautical mile from the end of the selected runway, inclined to depict the published glideslope, or a six-degree approach-path angle if no glideslope information is available. Users can zoom in and out without rotating the camera to get a view of the runway and airport environment from any point along the glideslope, ForeFlight said.
Airport 3D View can be accessed in fight if the pilot used the pack feature during preflight planning on the ground, making it easy to download current charts, data, weather, fuel prices, and notices to airmen—now including 3D View information for any airport in the planned route string.
The feature is included at no additional charge in ForeFlight's Performance Plus and Business Performance plans, according to the ForeFlight website.
Visit ForeFlight online to learn more and watch an Airport 3D View video.
