Access to GPS elevation (not pressure altitude)

I guess the answer will be the same - not available by design and due to safety reasons.

https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?362498-App-Approval-Exceptions-(Updated-11-01-2016)

Also Vertical precision is much poor than horizontal.

Thanks for your answer, a1234.garmin.

1/ Safety
I don't see how it is a threat to safety to be able to use the GPS altitude in a GPS watch designed for flying, to display GPS data. Actually, any stock app in the D2 Bravo already displays GPS elevation properly, but this datapoint isn't accessible from CIQ. It just makes CIQ apps that need to display altitude a lot less useful.

There is no threat to safety. No jumping, no diving...

2/ Design
I understand Garmin designed their watch, and in this case the location module, based on their best assumptions at the time. I think it was based on sport profiles: merge GPS and altimeter into one datapoint to increase reliability when running, cycling, etc... That works great for sports.

Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to flying because it is critical when flying to know where data comes from, and to select and set data source. Altimeter has to be calibrated several times during a flight. GPS is not very precise in vertical but gives a rough idea. In a pressurized plane, altimeter shows cabin pressure altitude, which is very useful as such, but it is not the aircraft altitude!

The watch was designed with sport in mind, and the D2 Bravo was a mere adaptation of the F3. Unfortunately, the Bravo wasn't designed from the ground up for pilots. Most of us know that the D2 Bravo will never have a basemap (a critical feature!) because the HW capabilities do not allow it. Fine, we understand it's not feasible on this watch. But simply passing the GPS elevation to the CIQ interface seems very simple and it is necessary.

Conclusion
Example: Aircraft real altitude = 35,000ft, Cabin pressure = 7,000ft

ConnectIQ data points:
Position.altitude = 7,000ft
Position.gpsElevation = 35,000ft doesn't exist!. You have no way to know what your real altitude is. What is the point of buying a pilot watch? This needs to be added to CIQ.

I really wonder why the ConnectIQ team won't take the effort for this critical part that makes or breaks any CIQ fly app. I would like to understand the motivation of Garmin to not support such a basic and critical feature that also seems to be a low-hanging fruit.

Thank you in advance.
Julien

I am also surprised that Garmin, a leader in the field of GPS with heaps of great GPS products, seems to have taken their eye off the ball when integrating GPS into their smart watch.
Providing Elevation is of course not a safety issue.
One related issue I have relates to time. As you know, position has four dimensions, lat/lon/alt/time. You are complaining about the missing alt dimension. I have raised a bug report that claims the time dimension runs 5-10% slow.
I may be great to know your horizontal position to a high degree of accuracy, but if you don't know precisely when you were there ....?

Oh, yes, I almost forgot. At least on the VA-HR, the timestamp is 20 years minus one day slow. Seems it's based on a Garmin data of 1990, not the Unix epoch of 1970. Also logged as a bug.

And finally, I have done some playing with my VA-HR, which doesn't have a barometric altimeter, but it still reports loaction.elevation correctly. Must be coming from the GPS. I wonder if you have any way to disable the barometric altimeter in your app to force it to retrieve the altitude from the GPS?

And finally, I have done some playing with my VA-HR, which doesn't have a barometric altimeter, but it still reports loaction.elevation correctly.

The Vivoactive HR DOES have a barometric altimeter.

Not according to the UX guide, or am I missing something?

Not according to the UX guide, or am I missing something?

See https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/538374#specs

It has a baro altimeter. If you haven't do so, calibrate it (settings>sensors>altimeter) if you're seeing bad data

Not according to the UX guide, or am I missing something?

Probably an omission on the side of the Connect IQ documentation team. The specs say barometric altimeter is present. Besides this watch has stair climbing and ski lift functionality, both of which require barometric altimeter to function properly.

Yes, seems like I do have a barometric altimeter after all. Must be a documentation omission. I stand corrected.

Hi RaceQ,

Thanks for your answers.

I have not noticed any time discrepancy with the D2 Bravo. I think time works well on this watch. I'm sorry to hear you are experiencing this issue on your watch.

I noted a lot of additional issues (sensor.pressure doesn't provide anything useful such as actual pressure measured, but a weird estimate of pressure at sea level which is plain wrong, just to name one issue). But these are not critical issues.

Being able to access GPS altitude is a critical issue, and a low hanging fruit.

Garmin, please let us know if/when this will be solved. Can you log it to the bug/improvement list?

Thanks so much.
Julien

Not according to the UX guide, or am I missing something?

Your link isn't to the UX guide (the UX guide doesn't have this kind of detail), but a blog page with basic device info, and it is wrong. You may want to enter a bug report about it though.