GPSAltitude vs BP altitude - can you get both through CIQ

There have been a few posts on this subject, and the answer is no.
The altitude provided is pressure altitude from the barometer. The GPS sub-system does not report altitude.
A major oversight IMHO.
Also the GPS time isn't GPS time, it's the watch's time. You can prove that by disabling auto update and mess with the clock on the watch and you'll get messed up times from the GPS!

Thanks. I assumed this must have been asked before but querying on "GPS Altitude" brought up so many threads and doing a quick scan, none seemed relevant.

It is a shame that Position Info doesn't provide all info from the GPS sensor. One more thing that limits CIQ apps from functioning at the same level as built in activities.

I'd really prefer to generally look at GPS altitude to know my current elevation and use the barometric pressure altitude to compute ascent.

One more thing that limits CIQ apps from functioning at the same level as built in activities.

As a relative newbie, could I ask you expand on that thought, maybe with some examples of where the Activities get a better deal than the CIQ apps? My observation is that, certainly as far as the GPS time is concerned, the Activities suffer the same indignity as the CIQ apps.

As a relative newbie, could I ask you expand on that thought, maybe with some examples of where the Activities get a better deal than the CIQ apps? My observation is that, certainly as far as the GPS time is concerned, the Activities suffer the same indignity as the CIQ apps.

In this case, you can select "GPS elevation" or "elevation" for fields. So if you set two fields next to each other, one to each of these, you can quickly see they aren't necessarily the same. Go into sensor/altimeter/calibrate and manually set the elevation to 1000' higher than it currently is. Then go to the activity page and you'll see the "elevation" field is 1000' above the "GPS elevation" field.

In this case, you can select "GPS elevation" or "elevation" for fields.

Must be a device difference, when I reset the data fields on my VA-HR, in Walk and Run activities, in "Elevation Fields" I only get "Elevation", "Total Ascent" and "Total Descent", no "GPS elevation" . Or am I looking in the wrong place?

I'm sure it is device specific. In my case, I'm using a FR935 but it was also available on my Epix. I'm sure the Fenix 5 is the same. They probably could with the VA-HR as I'm sure they have GPS elevation from the hardware but probably didn't want to compete with the higher end watches.

The altitude provided is pressure altitude from the barometer. The GPS sub-system does not report altitude.

This isn't entirely accurate. While it's not possible to distinguish the source of the source of the altitude available in Connect IQ, there are cases where a GPS altitude may be provided. Connect IQ essentially queries the underlying sensor system for something like altitude, and then returns whatever is given. Garmin's philosophy has traditionally been to provide the best available source so the average customer doesn't have to be concerned about whether they're seeing a GPS altitude, a barometric altitude, etc. Plus, it avoids a situation where a customer unwittingly sets their device to use a less accurate source and then gets the impression that our device performs poorly, when in fact it's doing exactly what they set it to do. :) In most cases, a barometric altitude is going to be more accurate (you can read up on GPS altitude error elsewhere), so if a device has a barometer, that's likely what's providing the altitude data. If a device doesn't have a barometer, you'll get GPS altitude.

We know that there are cases, however, where it's desirable to use GPS altitude instead of barometric. These cases were presented internally to see whether we can allow CIQ to specify a source when asking for certain sensor data, and my impression is that there's general agreement this is probably a good idea. It's just not something that's available right now.

We know that there are cases, however, where it's desirable to use GPS altitude instead of barometric. These cases were presented internally to see whether we can allow CIQ to specify a source when asking for certain sensor data, and my impression is that there's general agreement this is probably a good idea. It's just not something that's available right now.

Glad to hear that access to both in CIQ is being considered and Garmin clearly understands there are advantages to each since on the high end devices it allows both to be displayed.