Foreflight is about to push out a potentially great new feature for us backcountry pilot types next week with Foreflight 7.7. A new terrain map that can be downloaded and used offline. This is something that we gave to foreflight team, and Barnstormer helped to prioritize with the Foreflight team. I'm looking forward to checking this out. Thanks, Phil!

https://blog.foreflight.com/2016/07/12/new-terrain-map-available-for-download-ahead-of-foreflight-7-7/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=77%20Terrain%20Map%20Download&utm_content=77%20Terrain%20Map%20Download+CID_efb054b0f61afc0881555a6350e5c3bb&utm_source=campaign%20monitor&utm_term=Read%20our%20blog%20post

soyAnarchisto wrote:Foreflight is about to push out a potentially great new feature for us backcountry pilot types next week with Foreflight 7.7. A new terrain map that can be downloaded and used offline. This is something that we gave to foreflight team, and Barnstormer helped to prioritize with the Foreflight team. I'm looking forward to checking this out. Thanks, Phil!

https://blog.foreflight.com/2016/07/12/new-terrain-map-available-for-download-ahead-of-foreflight-7-7/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=77%20Terrain%20Map%20Download&utm_content=77%20Terrain%20Map%20Download+CID_efb054b0f61afc0881555a6350e5c3bb&utm_source=campaign%20monitor&utm_term=Read%20our%20blog%20post

That's pretty awesome. Excuse my ignorance, but does Phil (Barnstormer) work for/with Foreflight?

asadarnell wrote:
That's pretty awesome. Excuse my ignorance, but does Phil (Barnstormer) work for/with Foreflight?

I'll let him speak up if I'm wrong - but to my knowledge he is not associated with foreflight in any way other than he took initiative to advocate for some additional features for us. here's the thread:

https://www.backcountrypilot.org/forum/your-foreflight-wish-list-17749

Okay, I may have jumped the gun.

I just realized this is a 114Mb worldwide map - no way this can have detailed topo information for each state. I don't think this will be what I thought.

soyAnarchisto wrote:Okay, I may have jumped the gun.

I just realized this is a 114Mb worldwide map - no way this can have detailed topo information for each state. I don't think this will be what I thought.

Maybe not topo in the classic sense, but 114Mb is pretty close to one byte of information for each square kilometer of earth (148 million sq/km). So the resolution should be usable for "don't crash into the mountain" kinds of scenrios, but not for "let's hike around after we land". That actually sounds pretty close to what it looks like on my Garmin 530, so I bet the data is probably from the same source.

I too am curious to see what this is, and no, I'm not associated with Foreflight.


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I downloaded it yesterday. I think it's pretty much what rw2 says. It could easily stop you from taking a wrong turn and ending up in a box canyon.

I'll be interested to see this. For reasons that made perfect sense at the time I recently flew from Gooding, Idaho across the Frank Church to Hamilton, Montana...at night...in a storm. Most of the flight was uneventful once I covered the oil pressure gage so I couldn't fixate on it, but the descent into the West Fork and on up to Hamilton was far more interesting than it's ever been in daylight. 30 knot winds over the peaks and five distinct thunder storms made approach paths pretty limited. Actually, there was only one.

I was running foreflight on a Mini, as well as a two GPS's, one with satellite weather and terrain. And I know the country I was descending into pretty well, but dropping into that black trench surrounded by mountains was still a WHOLE lot more attention grabbing than you'd suspect. Any extra bit of situational awareness I could have milked out of my electronics would have been welcome. A King Air with weeping wings would have been more welcome, but that ain't going to happen this year.

Edit: I love foreflight on my Mini, but I'm still absolutely and completely vehement that it's a EXTREMELY poor platform to bet your life on. In the above anecdote foreflight was just one of the tools I was using for situational awareness. I also had a pre-planned retreat (two of them, actually) and the fuel, instruments, and skill to use them. I'm in no way recommending people use foreflight or any other single means of navigation to fly in the mountains at night.

I doubt I'll use this feature in Foreflight very much. I have however experimented with the synthetic vision feature in my Garmin 796 with a GDL39 3D providing reference for an artificial horizon display overlayed on the synthetic vision. I was over Upper Arrow Lake in BC. I found that I MIGHT be able to keep wings level and stay away from the valley walls if I had to without reference to any other information, but not confidently.

I've managed to stick myself in a valley (Hope Slide) for what seemed like a long time in cloud, and fear that happening again. That and the possibility of finding myself in the mountains at night have caused me to try to visualize and mentally prepare for it. A 2D terrain feature hasn't found its way into my scheme. I'm finding that the most important thing is to have everything set up, and ready to transition.

Pinecone wrote:I doubt I'll use this feature in Foreflight very much. I have however experimented with the synthetic vision feature in my Garmin 796 with a GDL39 3D providing reference for an artificial horizon display overlayed on the synthetic vision. I was over Upper Arrow Lake in BC. I found that I MIGHT be able to keep wings level and stay away from the valley walls if I had to without reference to any other information, but not confidently.

I've managed to stick myself in a valley (Hope Slide) for what seemed like a long time in cloud, and fear that happening again. That and the possibility of finding myself in the mountains at night have caused me to try to visualize and mentally prepare for it. A 2D terrain feature hasn't found its way into my scheme. I'm finding that the most important thing is to have everything set up, and ready to transition.

That is a bitchin valley to be in a cloud!! Glad ya came through it OK, I followed the hiway through there one time, when I came out on the west side RADIO was looking for me as a Mounty had called in my N# when I went by them under the clouds!! Just wanting to know if I made it!! Kinda glad they were looking out for me!

I didn't word that very well. I got to Hope and couldn't go any further toward Hope, the valley being blocked by cloud, I tried to back track to Princeton, but it had closed behind me. I had about 5 miles clear behind me, and was able to loiter in the valley until it cleared a bit. Never again. My out was to fly until I was low on fuel, then put it on the highway.

Back to the thread, I used to use the terrain feature on Google maps when I was learning some of the routes in the Canadian Rockies that aren't identified on the VNC (sectional) as preferred VFR routes. The terrain maps in Foreflight might be useable in that manner.

soyAnarchisto wrote:Okay, I may have jumped the gun.

I just realized this is a 114Mb worldwide map - no way this can have detailed topo information for each state. I don't think this will be what I thought.

Such is life. I use Gaia Pro for topg. I think 1km res is great for modelling the earth's climate, but not for flying in the lower troposhere.

Yes I've played with this for a couple of days now. I'm disappointed. It's not at all what I thought we'd asked for. Oh well. I'm still a foreflight fan.

The "Terrain map" is grotesquely inaccurate in depicting estuaries, lakes and rivers. Elevated terrain is blurred and low quality in the chart scales I like to view.

Not ideal in my opinion. Needs work for the "Low and slow" flight planning/piloting preferred for my little bird.

I thought this was not going to really help things until after the 19th with there new version of FF??

I followed the BLOG guidance per FF (ver 7.7) and SoyA:

You may be right. But I also thought the new maps would be able to be viewed. But the terrain maps are not individual states like all the other data that is downloaded for offline use. It's one giant map - I just don't see how it can be detailed enough to be used for what we do. I was hoping it would be like standard topo maps.

I guess we shall wait for foreflight 8 to see for sure. I'm not sure when it will be released - but they are demoing something at Oshkosh:

http://foreflight.com/campaigns/eaa/?utm_campaign=Newsletter+pre-OSH+2016&utm_term=Come+see+the+future+of+maps+at+EAA+Airventure&utm_medium=email&utm_source=campaign+monitor&utm_content=Newsletter+pre-OSH+2016+CID_ac534b3b9c615a912c6cbf87f0446c26

M6RV6 wrote:I thought this was not going to really help things until after the 19th with there new version of FF??

7.7 is supposed to be available tomorrow. The terrain maps are available for download, but FF says they are used by 7.7.

So we haven't seen what it will actually look like yet, but as has already been noted the resolution isn't high enough for it to be topo-like.

EDIT: Withdrawn. Had my dates wrong.

I updated to ver. 7.7 a few days ago...

7.7 was available last week. As is the new terrain map as a map choce like vfr/hi/lo ifr etc. It's not even as good as the street map - which can't be used offline.