;D No offense intended ;D The other poster had asked the question and gotten "crickets" so I was just wondering.
What I'm talking about is the new feature in v6.50 of the GTN software. Here's the response I got from Garmin over on VAF:
"VNAV (VPATH) guidance is different from glidepath/glideslope approach guidance, and thus anyone providing support for VNAV A429 data would need to add this support separately.
Garmin has already added this support and released new V5.50 software for G5 systems (with/without autopilot), and is currently testing the new V6.20 software with this capability for G3X Touch systems."
I have no idea what's involved here and assumed there was a standard for VPATH...I gather that assumption is incorrect. If Skyview could support coupling the autopilot to the VNAV info, that would be really nice.
In all fairness to Dynon, AFS, et al, no EFIS vendor that I'm aware supported vertical data when in the enroute mode of the GPS. It is only supported in the approach mode when the approach is activated and the vertical mode has been armed. Even Garmin's EFIS don't support these features at release time and they were the developers. It's no surprise that they are going to be the first on board.
There are two new features that Garmin released this past week. The first is to set an altitude for each fix in the flight plan. This enables you set different altitudes for different segments of you flight. If I understand this mode properly, you start your descent or ascent once you reach the fix.
The other is a slight variation of the above in that you can set a point in which you want to be at a specific altitude. This will enable started an ascent or descent so that you are at the desired altitude when you reach that point.
This is going to require new code from all the vendors. The question is if it's in their development cycle and when it's anticipated to be released. I doubt that it will be a quick release for any of the vendors other than Garmin. But I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.
To clarify my "crickets" comment, when I asked on the AFS forum, I was expecting some sort of response ranging from "what new feature of the 650" to "not in the current development schedule" or "give us x months, we're working on it". No response was given.
From the comments given here by Support, I'm interpreting that it's still in the discovery phase for Dynon (and probably all other vendors too) and there isn't a plan yet until they can get the code and see what is on the ARINC bus. I suspect that vendors probably got the code the same day we did.
