The full Voyager Flight Software System is a modular system that offers the #1 rated flight planner (Aviation Consume), full IFR approach plate management and comprehensive in-flight information including a moving map and in-cockpit weather. The full Voyager system can be purchased either by individual modules or in complete packages. Prices start at just $99.

Note: If you already own some or all Voyager modules, just download using the link above and after installation, choose the modules you own the first time you run Voyager after installation. Be sure to use your existing email address to register and activate Voyager.

NOTE to existing 3.6 users: New Voyager 4.0 is now available

Voyager 4 is a huge step forward in the development of Voyager. It is faster (much faster!), which results in better performance and also the ability to quickly "play" with different features, accelerating the learning process. Because version 4.0 has a completely new "charting engine" compared to previous versions, 3.6 will not automatically upgrade to 4.0. It requires a separate download and installation. Version 4 will install without removing Version 3.6 from your PC. We suggest you download and read the following "What's New in 4.0" PDF, perhaps while downloading the 4.0 software. It will save you some time and confusion when making the switch!

Voyager FreeFlight is an absolutely free, easy to use, basic flight planning system. It's based on the full Voyager system and includes many of the features of the full system but leaves out other features such as on-screen fuel prices, export to GPS devices, high performance and high altitude planning, etc. Once you have Voyager FreeFlight installed, you can add functionality by buying and turning on various modules.

How does FreeFlight compare to the full product?

Voyager FreeFlight can be downloaded free of charge. Once downloaded and installed, Voyager FreeFlight may be upgraded to the full Voyager by the purchase of any module.

Note: Due to the size of the terrain, airspace and general land databases, the download is approximately 180MB.

Any modern computer with at least 1 GB of RAM (2 GB if running Vista) should work. Voyager 4.0 will not run on a computer with 512 MB or less of RAM or any computer made prior to 2004. In addition, performance is greatly affected your video card so machines with modern, high-performance video cards will run noticeably faster. Voyager 4 also takes full advantage of dual or quad core machines with Intel Core 2 Duo or similar AMD processors.

Windows XP or Vista is required.

Voyager can be run on an Intel-based Mac using Apple's Boot Camp but will not run under Parallel's Desktop for Mac or VMWare.

What's New, Voyager 4.0

Current version 4.0.0.30408. The following refers to Voyager 4.0 in general. Click the Complete Version History button on the left side of the page for specific changes in the most recent release.

Version 4.0 is the most significant Voyager upgrade ever!

We very strongly suggest reading the detailed What's New Guide that explains all the new features and how to use them. Click the URL below to read it.

http://www.seattleavionics.com/documents/WhatsNewVoyager4.pdf

Summary

50x faster charting engine. Super-fast pans, zooms, jump to, etc.
2D and 3D (HITS)
Scanned Sectional and IFR charts on the main map. Overlay flight plan line, weather, print, etc.
Completely redesigned GlassView module.
Better looking, more modern user interface.
Faster overall response time.

Speed

Charting Engine 50x faster and draws much more realistic looking charts including terrain with shadows for a more pronounced 3D effect.
2D and 3D charts (HITS).
Generally responds to clicks faster.
GlassView is faster to use because of many refinements.

Ease of Use

Choice of digital charts or scanned Sectionals, IFR Low or IFR High anywhere. Mix “digital” and scanned data so you can overlay fuel prices, TFRs, radar/satellite, flight plan line etc. over a scanned Sectional.
Simplified selection of Layout and Themes.
New Chart button shows common (not all) themes and makes it easy to customize the chart.
Chart settings system reduced from two dialogs to one to make it easier to use and more discoverable.
Larger text and buttons everywhere.
A new Animated Weather feature on the Wx button quickly shows how the weather has changed in the last two hours.

Power

3D views (HITS) in both preflight and GlassView.
New Personal Layouts feature lets you better customize what you see on the screen.
Many, many new features and refinements, especially in GlassView. These include a Runway Picker, a way to intercept a radial or airway with Direct To, much easier modification of a flight plan while in flight and much more.

GlassView

Much, much faster! Update speed is once per second rather than once every five seconds.
Can pan and zoom chart while the plane’s position continues to update.
Track Up works well no matter how many layers are turned on.
Super-fast, high resolution TAWS stays below other items on the screen.
Obstacle warnings. Obstacles turn red when nearby and within 500 ft. A warning message blinks at top of screen when obstacles are within two minutes at current speed.
New Gaugebar across the top is large and easy to read.
New Chartbar just below top makes it quick to turn layers on/off without clicking Cmd.
New Gauges widget shows all gauges, very large, on a tab in most layouts.
New Timer gauge (both count-up and count-down). Click to toggle on/off or double-click to change count-down time or reset.
New Current Time (both Home and Zulu) gauge.
New Lat/Lon gauge. Click to add a Personal Waypoint at that spot.
Simplified buttons mean no need to click Cmd for common tasks or use the Themes menu. Theme selection now under new Chart button not under the Wx button.
New CDI/Glideslope gauge.
New inflight QuickInfo boxes use large fonts to show just the information you need when you click on the Chart. Options include Direct To, Add to FP, Jump To, and more. Can automatically hide after five seconds or stay “sticky” like Post It Notes. Distance/bearing updates every five seconds so you can leave several on screen at the same time to intercept two VORs, etc.
New Add to FP (+FP) feature makes it easy to modify the flight plan enroute.
Option to show extended courseline.
New Personal Layouts let you pre-select the range, theme, 2D vs. 3D, etc. for every chart on a Layout. Can set your Personal Layout as the default GV layout
New Runway Selector lets you pick a landing runway. Adds either a standard VFR pattern (both left and right-handed) or a synthetic (virtual) ILS approach including glideslope. Suggests best runway based on winds. For an ILS, shows standard ILS “feathers” to the runway
Direct To can intercept a radial or an airway.
Airport Info widget graphically displays the surface winds relative to the runways. If the airport has no METARs/TAFs, wind info is pulled from nearest airport with winds.
Can change the planned altitude of a leg enroute.
Clicking an airport on the Chart does not force the Airport Widget back to the General or Weather tab but keeps it selected on whatever tab was previously selected. Thus, you can quickly check the weather at several airports by clicking each on the chart.
The XM module now downloads and processes XM Winds Aloft data.
Voyager now monitors the status of the XM data connection and automatically restarts it if it detects a problem.

Other Changes and Fixes

Voyager 4.0 includes a new, more modern color scheme.
When showing general airspace, you can hide TFRs to show the underlying airspace.
All METARs/TAFs now downloaded all the time, rather than just those along a flight plan line, so there are no more issues with starting a chart at one location, panning far away, and not seeing TAFs/METARs at the new location.
Fixed: Download AOPA FBO Info.
Fixed: Problem with downloading some METARs.
Fixed: Wx color dots on the Nearest widget did not update correctly as time changes and new data is downloaded.
Fixed: Problem with the TAFs date being decoded incorrectly in very rare instances.
Default Chart tool is now the Hand not the Pointer.
For very short displays like the original Samsung Q1 in Landscape mode, the NavLog now hides the Plan area so there is plenty of space for the Waypoints. In this case, a button on the NavLog toolbar (the Up and Down arrows) toggles the display of the Plan area on and off.
Printing a Chart (the print button above the chart) shows exactly what’s on the screen, including the flight plan line.
New way to delete old and unused flight plans, planes, pilots, etc. from Web Synch. From within the Web Synch dialog box, click Delete old items from Web Synch.
The Chart’s Distance and Bearing tool now shows a circle at the selected range as well as the line so it’s easy to see all the points of interest, regardless of direction, a specific distance from a given point.
Fixed: Export to WingX sometimes included an incorrect airport identifier.

Version 4.0.0.30408. Released 5/21/08
Version 4.0.0.30406. Released 3/28/08

Version 4.0.0.30408. Released 5/21/08

All scanned Sectional chart bits are now uploaded to the server with no significant seams or black lines with the US boundaries (this includes AK and HI).
All scanned Low Altitude chart bits are now uploaded to the server with no significant seams or black lines.
The Chart Viewer Download Manager automatically downloads both the full scanned charts and chart bits. Thus, when you download, for example, the Seattle North Sectional, you get the full scanned Sectional now used in the Chart Viewer but also all the little chart 'bits' that the main charting engine uses when rendering a map with Sectionals. In '406, downloading a full scanned Chart had no impact on the status of the matching chart bits. Consequently, using the Chart Viewer to download a scanned Chart does take longer to download than before because the .zip file it downloads is about 2x the size of the old file.
Voyager now warns about printer drivers when it gets a printer error and has a link to a Web page that describes how to update your printer driver.
We fixed a bug/made a change to the Airway autorouter that fixes a problem with it not locking onto the nearest navaid and, in some cases, plowing far into terrain during landing.
XM Support. Should be rock-solid now. We fixed a problem that would only happen if the user had installed WxWorx. We also made the connection between XMLink and the XM receiver more solid. Now, if Voyager detects that XMLink has quit for any reason, it restarts it within one minute. And, if XMLink is running but is not processing new data (this happens with a brief power glitch in the plane cycles the XM receiver on/off), Voyager will close and restart XMLink within seven minutes of not getting new data.
XM's Winds Aloft data is now processed by Voyager.
Wx display. There was a case when no flight plan was open (like Show US Weather) where moving the time slider might not refresh the screen w/ new weather. Fixed.
Altitude slider. The Altitude slider was often clipped at the bottom so you couldn't see 3000ft or sometimes 6000 ft levels. Fixed.
Wx info display. Sometimes weather would be on the screen but the text that told you how old it was wasn't shown. There were two bugs that contributed to this one. Fixed.
Added a quick way to show a weather animation. From the Wx button, click the new "Animate weather" menu item and Voyager will cycle weather from two hours ago to current in 15 minute increments. Very handy for inflight and gets rid of any need for the Timeline in Cmd mode in GV.
Chart Viewer. A problem which could cause a scanned chart to be rendered as a simple grey screen was addressed. We re-wrote a part of the Chart Viewer to use 75% less memory, which seems to have solved the problem.
On startup, Voyager now compares the age of the default airspace and land databases to the one in the user's directory. If the default ones are newer, Voyager copies them over and uses them. This was done so someone who tried v3 or v2 a long time ago and might have ancient data in his \documents directory, now would not have a problem and would not have to immediately download new data if he tried V4.
Cloud Layers are now correctly displayed for the altitude selected in the Alt slider. That is, we previously had the scale wrong so you still saw clouds at FL500, which wasn't very likely. Also made the clouds darker.
Radar colors changed a little to match the NOAA colors exactly. Also re-calibrated the radar decibel levels so they should better match NOAA. That is, V406 will tend to overstate radar echoes by about one level so things might appear red when they really should have been yellow.
Printing of scanned charts is much easier. Now, when you print a flight plan, Voyager will (by default), pick up the chart settings currently used on the screen and use those. That is, set things up on the screen the way you want them printed and they'll magically print that way. Previously, the on-screen view and the printed view were entirely different and it was confusing and hard to change. Also, when scanned charts are being printed, Voyager overrides some printing settings to print the charts zoomed-in enough (10 NM) to be very clearly read. Again, all automatic.
You should be able to use hibernate and sleep without the charting engine stopping but it will take a few seconds to "wake-up". In some cases, rotating the screen will work but not in all cases. We're still working on that one.
Warns LS800 users to get new video drivers and has a link to get it. In fact, warns all users that a newer video driver might be a good idea and has a Web page link that gives easy instructions on how to check and do a manual update.
Detects when XM and the GPS are both used and you need to set a hard COM port for the GPS. User will be told what to do (this was a really common cause of problems)
The Great Lakes have re-appear on our charts.
The DC TFR looks right again.
As of this writing, the High Altitude chart bits are being processed so they are not on the server. We expect them to be ready by Monday evening. For now, clicking on a HI Chart from within the Chart Viewer will cause Voyager to say that it needs to re-downloaded every time. This will correct itself automatically when the HI chart bits are processed and on the server. For now, we suggest simply not using the HI charts.
Because the Chart Viewer now downloads both the full scanned chart and the associated chart bits, if you use the Chart Viewer to view a Sectional or Lo chart that you previously downloaded, Voyager will tell you that it needs to download it again. This is not a bug so much as a one-time issue. It needs to download the chart again in order to download the version w/ both the full chart and the Chart bits. After the 'combined' file is downloaded, it will work as expected in the future.
V3.6x and V4.0 should co-exist on the same machine a little better. You may have to re-activate when you install this new version but all data from previous versions will remain intact.
Fixed: Export to WingX sometimes included an incorrect airport identifier.

Version 4.0.0.30406. Released 3/28/08

Initial Voyager 4.0 release.

Updated 10/25/07

Changes to ChartData Due to Removal of DAFIF from the Public Domain

History

For years, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has collected aviation data from countries all around the world and put it into a massive aviation database that is updated every 28 days. This database, called DAFIF, is primarily for military use but the DoD also produced a non-classified public version. Over the years, most aviation software has come to rely on the public DAFIF data to give pilots the official data we need to fly safely.

In November 2004, the DoD announced that, starting October 1, 2005, DAFIF would be completely withdrawn from the public due to intellectual property concerns voiced by a few foreign aviation authorities . This caused a tremendous outcry from pilots, the aviation industry and AOPA because some of this data, especially airspace information, is not available from any other public source. In response, the DoD postponed the cutoff date until October 1, 2006 and created a special US-only version of DAFIF, called USFIF, which would be available until October 2007.

Using FAA Data as of October 25, 2007

The FAA is clearly the original source for most US aviation data so it only makes sense, ultimately, that the FAA provide the data directly rather than via the DoD. They have been working to fill the US digital data gap that the withdrawal of DAFIF produced. As of this writing, the FAA provides virtually all of the data required for aviation but not quite all of it. In particular, Seattle Avionics relied on the very detailed airspace data from the DoD to draw airspace. This data contained a wealth of information beyond simple shapes and altitudes. For example, it included communication names and frequencies, comments about unusual situations (like some Class D airspace reverting to Class E when the tower is closed) and so forth. The FAA has chosen to produce most airspace data in a format that many commercial drawing programs can digest called Shapefile. As the name implies, a shapefile is a file that describes a shape such as an airspace. Oddly, especially given the name, shapefiles describe all shapes as simple point-to-point line segments. The DAFIF data, by contrast, was richer in that it described complete shapes as series of line-line segments but also as circles and arcs (think about most Class B, C and D airspace). While the FAA system of using a large number of points to approximate a circle, rather than just saying something like "5 NM circle at -119.5w / 49n" works, it uses more data space so our data files are larger. More importantly, the FAA data is lacking a number of crucial bits of inflight information such as contact names and frequencies. Finally, and most troubling, the FAA shapefile data mentions upper and lower altitudes without reference to whether the altitudes are MSL or AGL. In most cases, the altitudes are clearly one or the other so our data processing attempts to interpret the altitude correctly but there will be many cases where we won't "guess" correctly.

We mentioned that the FAA is using shapefiles for most airspace. They have stated that they will eventually use shapefiles for all airspace, but they currently produce shapefiles for just Class B, C, D and E airspace. They do not produce shapefiles for Class A or any SUA. This means that we have no current source of Class A airspace but we do have SUA data because they publish the SUA data in an entirely different format elsewhere. We process the SUA data from this second source and merge it with the shapefiles for the primary airspace to produce a seamless data set. This SUA data is much more complete than what we get with the shapefiles; it mentions altitudes as AGL or MSL (usually!), includes contact information, etc.

We have been in contact with the FAA about these problems and they recognize the issues and are working on solutions but have no timeframe. In the meantime, please be aware that we are doing the best we possibly can with incomplete data.

Canadian and Mexican Data

Prior to the DAFIF cutoff on October 1, 2006, the Department of Defense provided us with current Canadian and Mexican data. Since that time, we don't have current data but have provided Canadian and Mexican data that was valid as of that date. As time continues, this data becomes less and less reliable. Therefore, we plan to drop the old Canadian and Mexican data entirely from the standard Voyager data set sometime in 2008.

We clearly recognize the value of this non-US data, not only for Canadian and Mexican pilots, but also for US pilots who fly north or south of the border. In keeping, we opened communications with Nav Canada. In 2006, we visited Nav Canada in Ottawa to try to obtain information comparable to what was available from the FAA. At the time, we learned that, unlike the FAA, which is a government agency with a primary mission to promote aviation safety, Nav Canada is now a privately held company with profit as a main motivation (conceptually similar to the US Post Office). During the meeting, Nav Canada told us that some data would be available at some point and that we should contact them again in a few months. Indeed, since that time, they have sent us sample data and we are soon to look at what processing the data entails. We do not know how much Nav Canada will charge for the data but we have reason to believe it will be in the hundreds of dollars per pilot per year. When we have reached an agreement with Nav Canada and have worked out the technical details, we'll make an announcement.

We have not made any provisions to get current Mexican data.

What This Means To You

If you are a US pilot who flies only within the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. you should not notice any major difference, in the long run, but should not be surprised to see some data difference and/or errors for a few data cycles until the FAA fixes the new format.

If you are a Canadian pilot or a US pilot who visits Canada, neither Seattle Avionics nor most other aviation companies can provide you with current data until Nav Canada provides it to us.