Some excellent points have been made, and I
wouldn't disagree seriously with any of them,
although not everyone posting has declared their
interest. For instance most people reading this will be
aware that Max is a leading member of the XCSoar
development team, and some of us will have seen
Marco's posts on the LK8000 forum. And actually
some of the features Max mentioned are on LK (even
if they might not work the same way), and there are
also things in LK that aren't in XCSoar.

What you probably won't find here is anything from
anyone with real world experience with the latest
versions of both programs in the cockpit- if you're
satisfied with what you've got why take the trouble to
learn a new interface just to get additional features
you won't use anyway?

My own take on this (currently LK user, switched from
XCSoar at the time of the fork, as Paolo was working
with the hardware I was running at the time):

1. Hardware is key, particlularly readability in
sunlight. Availability on Android isn't an issue at least
for now if the best hardware runs Windows.


2. Whatever you run, you won't want all the features.
Just see if the features you do want are available. Or
if you are buying the hardware now, get hardware
that fits with the rest of your setup. There are
pressure sensors and devices for interfacing external
IGC sources available that work with LK software,
they just aren't all the same ones.

3. If you can read the screen, and it's telling you
what you want to know, everything else is trumped
by usability; how quickly can you see (or get to)
relevant information, and how quickly can you
recognise and assimilate it?

Of course the beauty of free software is it costs
nothing to try out either in sim mode on a PC, or
even on the actual device using Condor. And read
the manuals.

Richard Brisbourne
LK8000
Vertica V1 with Red Box Flarm as data source.

At 09:35 11 March 2013, Max Kellermann wrote:
On Monday, March 11, 2013 3:06:07 AM UTC+1,
waremark wrote:
My impression is that LK8000 is even more
feature rich than XCSoar, since
the LK team went on developing new functionality
while the XCS team were
porting it to Android.

No, your subjective impression is not quite correct.
The Android port has
nothing to do with adding features (or not).

Both LK8000 and XCSoar have gained new features
since Paolo decided to part
the XCSoar team (he quit because he rejected the
Android port, not because
he wanted new features). Many new XCSoar
features are not present in
LK8000, for example:

- SkyLines live tracking (http://www.skylines-
project.org/tracking/)
- show friends locations via SkyLines
- METAR/TAF
- improved reach display (shows reachability behind
obstacle when there is
a route around the obstacle)
- terrain avoidance suggestions (terrain route
planner)
- airspace avoidance suggestions (airspace route
planner)
- valid IGC file download from FLARM, Colibri,
LX5000/LX7000, Nano, CAI302,
ERIXX
- configuration interface for FLARM, Nano, V7,
CAI302
- many more device drivers, for example K6Bt and
custom pressure sensors
(MSM, BMP)
- up to 6 devices can be connected, all input is
merged with auto-fallback
- Bluetooth server for wireless NMEA forwarding
- FAI triangle areas obeying the 750km rule
- high-resolution terrain renderer
- kinetic panning
- live scores for more contests (Netcoupe and
others)
- audio vario
- gestures
- runs on Android, Mac OS X, Linux, Raspberry Pi
(plus all Windows
platforms that LK8000 supports)

(That list is far from complete)

There are only few LK8000 features that have not
made it into XCSoar.
Mostly features that have not been considered
important/useful enough by
XCSoar developers/users.