Specifically how realistic are the features on the chart app to a real airline EFB? Does a real EFB have a moving map and all the other goodies like chart overlay with the colorful eye candy? Just curious.

I am not a real pilot, but I had the pleasure flying in a small airplane recently, and the pilot used a moving map. It was a cheaper system, so not at the same level as Navigraph, but it shared many features.

I also know that https://foreflight.com/ is used by real world pilots, and that looks pretty similar to Navigraph. Some flight simmers use Foreflight as well, but it is more expensive than Navigraph.

Peter

Not a RW pilot, but I had the money to sign up for ForeFlight.  Foreflight has the real weather conditions, overlays, traffic, synthetic vision and much more.  The basic subscription doesn't have as many options.  In terms of weather, icing, turbulence, and certain other features (D-ATIS), they won't have much to offer a flight simulation.  Sometimes the radar matches FS, but not always.  It allows you to really be realistic however.  You have satellite overlays, obstacles, terrain warnings, transition altitude alerts, and a lot to keep you occupied.  It's almost distracting to be honest.  It looks and sounds like Navigraph will be fine for 95% of simulators once they include weather, profile view, traffic, and other items they are planning to add.  It'll be much cheaper, especially when ForeFlight charges a lot if you want other countries.  I only have the U.S.

It honestly all depends on what package of software the airline purchases. My old carrier uses the same chart software as my current airline. However, the features available at my current airline are a lot more fancier.

I own a Piper Cherookee and I have moving maps on board for years. A simple ipad with Foreflight and a 100$ external gps has done the job to provide situation awareness even if its not legal for IFR flights. With a USA and Canada subscription, your good to go for most flight. I upgraded this year with a G3X that also offer moving maps and share aircraft position with its internal VFR GPS. 

In the end, it all depends of how commercial carrier want to spend but moving maps solutions are affordable for most of them. But some small cargo company desserving the north of Canada still only have ADF equipment for their IFR approaches and VFR GPS for situation awareness.

To be honest, I feel the area between the more advanced avionics and stand alone EFB's is getting more blurred for each year?  Especially in smaller segment GA/bizjets.

I mean in one of the planes I fly. It has brand new Garmin G3X-suite. So from the touch screen menus you have access to

• Airplane Flight manual
• Weight and balance /Performance
• Checklists (incl Emergency checklists)
• Jeppesen charts VFR+IFR+Aerodrome ground
• Flightplan uplink from external device/wifi 
• And obviously a moving map with terrain/obstacle monitoring + weather.

My take: Avilasoft EFB more then fills my IFR needs and Little Navmap for VFR. Not as pretty and colorful but all the information a simmer would ever need. If you like to read the obstacle clearance, airport construction and NOTAMS that are present real world you can see that in the Simbrief packet. I have the Navigraph Charts now but for me I don’t see much reason to keep paying for it other then more real world data that’s not in the sim. More realistic maybe hence my question. Is it really? Enough so to justify the expense . Personal preference of course. That’s just mine. There are other sim addons I’d rather spend the cabbage on.