Hi Bill,
I have 2 Voyagers (same as the Odyssey in every way, except smaller screen at 8.4 inches). They are smooth and not jerky at all. What you may have heard was someone's account of the simulator software that MGL provides. I know that it's refresh rate is much slower than the actual product.
Regarding support of the product, it is definitely top notch.
Yes, this is true and it seems many think that the simulators screen update rate equals that of the real product. This is not the case (not even close).
I am aware that one of our esteemed competitors likes to tell their prospective costomers about our "low resolution screens and slow frame rates and a few other horror stories" - this kind of thing tends to get back to us as some will want to verify this - we are not concerned, by now there are so many of our instruments flying the word will get out eventually.
The simulators main function is to act as screen designer for those that want to modify existing screens or design their own. For this it is usefull to be able to simulate what the real instrument would look like if it has real data.
It uses standard Windows GDI drawing with some Direct-X drawing just to keep things sane. Unless you have a super fast system it is quite slow (perhaps two updates per second).
The real instrument does not use a standard operating system and so can do something not generally possible in the "normal" frame buffer kind of way.
In effect, each screen item has its own update rate - exactly tailored to the rate that data for this item is updated. In a way each item has its own dedicated frame buffer (we have to fake this in Windows adding to the slow drawing on that platform).
We try and keep numeric readouts from updating too fast - most are limited to 4 times per second, some we allow 10 times per second. The reason for this is to avoid "blur" and is an ergonomic consideration to preserve readability (your brain needs time to recognize the number).
The maximum rate that an item can update varies a bit with the instruments and ranges from about 25 times per second to 60 times per second which is the actual frame rate that images are drawn on the LCD display itself.
With the new graphics processor it is 59.9 times per second (to be exact) which is simply dictated by the VGA standard as we make a normal, completely standard VGA connector available at the back of the unit so you can plug in any PC compatible monitor (consider a smaller 12V based flat screen for a second seat - tandem seater for example).
If the screen refresh where slower than 59.9 Hz, the monitor would refuse to show a picture.
Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
