At AOPA last week it was announced that the IFD540 will allow multitouch touchscreen operations. The initial software that was running in the booth had pinch zoom, 1-finger map info, 1-finger rubber banding, 2-finger panning, 1-finger information selections and 2-finger scrolling on the tabs and dropdowns. The operation was easy and booth visitors understood it very quickly.
The pinch zoom worked by using two fingers to adjust the range to one of the preset ranges of the 540. If you pinch and are not exactly on a preset range then you may see a little adjustment after you are done pinching. More ranges will most likely be added to improve this.
The 1-finger map info allows you to touch a waypoint and then move your finger to view other waypoint info. You don't need to lift your finger. You can also drag your finger to the edge to pan off the display. If you touch the flight plan then it changes to flight plan rubber banding mode and you can move that leg and drop it to another location (e.g. around wx or airspace).
2-finger operations were kept to map panning and list scrolling. This was a test to see how well it worked. You needed 2-fingers to pan the map or scroll a flight plan or other list. A single finger would select the waypoint information or fields in the lists. We are collecting feedback from the show right now to verify this 'rule'.
Overall the multitouch feedback was very positive and we are frequently meeting in working group sessions discussing the operation of all the user interface.
The next announcement for the IFD540 will be at NBAA during the week of 10 October.
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