You have to love Phillip Greenspun, though, for the way he gave a shot to Garmin:
The one big thing that Garmin was missing was synthetic terrain, a feature offered by Microsoft Flight Simulator for $39, in experimental airplanes for $2,000, by Chelton as part of a $90,000 retrofit system and as of a few weeks ago by Garmin as a $10,000 option.
I always wonder how much of a price disparity like that comes down to liability issues. Note the increase when you go from 'virtual' to 'Experimental,' which is, of course, the difference between a software representation and actual hardware (and marketing, I suppose) costs.
ReplyDeleteThen there is the massive increase whem you go to the certified market, an increase that could only be explained by 'soft' costs since the hardware cannot possibly cost that much more.
Every time I start thinking about going back to a store-bought plane, something like this comes along to remind me why I prefer Experimental.