3D

WinPilot 3D is the first flight analysis and planning software, that lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth,

leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission elevation data.

WinPilot 3D lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

It allows preparing a task, transferring it to a Pocket PC, and then analyzing the resulting flight log after the task in finished.

The Thermals window can be open via Menu.View.Thermals. This window shows thermals or Wave segments extracted from IGC flight logs that has been uploaded to our web site (see below). To see thermals or Waves in your area, do the following:

1. Navigate the 3-dimensional globe to the area you want to see the thermals for (the Thermals window shows only thermals/waves from the area currently focused on in the 3D Window).

2. If you want to see Waves, select "Wave Flights" from the toolbar (otherwise, because 'Thermal Flights' is the default setting on the toolbar, only the thermals from your area will be shown).

3. Press the 'Refresh Available Files' button. If there are any files uploaded for your region, they will show up in the upper window.

4. Select files you want to download thermals from. Multiple files can be selected by pressing and holding the CTRL button, while clicking a file name with the mouse.

5. Press 'Fetch Thermals'. A list of the extracted thermals or waves will be shown in the lower window. It is possible to select the relative strength of thermals to be downloaded. This can be done using the drop-down list (which shows '>80% in the example on the left). The strongest thermal in a given file is assigned strength of 100%, a thermal half that strength would have relative strength of 50%.
This has no effect in 'Wave Flights' are selected.

6. Click on a given thermal/wave to see it exact location in the 3D window.

7. To export the list of Thermals/Waves to your Pocket PC, press the 'Pocket PC' icon. To save the list to your PC, press the 'Floppy Disk' icon.

Uploading Thermals and IGC files to our web site can be done via Statistics.Thermal window. When a new IGC flight is open on your local computer using Menu.Files.Open, A new Tab should be shown next to the 3D Window tab, showing the IGC file name (see picture on the left). This is the Statistics Tab. By clicking it, and then by clicking Thermals it is possible to see all thermals in the selected file. These can be then uploaded to the web site by pressing the 'Send To Internet' button. It is possible to select which thermals should be uploaded and which not by first selecting a thermal, and then pressing the 'Add/Remove' button. To see the exact location of a given thermal on the 3D map, press the 'Show' button while the 3D window is visible. After the the proper thermals are selected, press the 'Send To Internet' button. The person who submitted the thermals, has then an option to remove them from our web site by pressing the 'Delete From Internet' button.

Marking and Uploading Wave Spots. In addition to database of thermals, WinPilot also contains an on-line database of wave locations. All registered users can upload their wave flights/locations to that database. This data can then be transferred to WinPilot ADV/PRO on a Pocket PC, and used during a blue wave day, or when a blue segment of terrain needs to be crossed during a cross-country wave flight. Here are the steps:

1. Open a wave flight log using File.Open.

2. On the Toolbar, switch from 'Thermal Flights' to 'Wave Flights'. This enables wave segment selection buttons (see left), and sets them into the 'Select Start of Wave Segment' mode (see left).

3. Touch a portion of a flight log where you want a given wave segment to begin. This will change the color of that spot to blue, and change the default button to 'Select End of Wave Segment'.

4. Touch a portion of a flight log where you want a given wave segment to end. This will change the color of that spot to brown, and draw this wave segment on the screen.

5. If the segment is located properly, click the 'Plus' wave button to add that segment to the local database. If you want to change this segment, press the 'Delete' wave button (red square), and start over, or press 'Start' or 'End' wave, and edit these locations.

6. After all wave segments for that flight log have been added to your satisfaction, you can upload them to our global database using Statistics.Thermals.Send To Internet.

Note: If you are preparing for a wave flight, you can also select 'Wave Flights' on the main Toolbar. That will narrow the focus of the On-Line Thermal Browser to only download wave spots, when the 'Fetch Thermals' button is pressed.