Yes: Horizon can be downloaded for free and an account (which is required for receiving data, getting support, ...) can be created for free for the first two months.
After that time you will be asked to set up a payment method for annual subscriptions if you want to continue using Horizon. For information about the pricing, please see here.

High quality chart data is provided for Europe, USA, Canada and New Zealand. Nevertheless there's also basic data available for the whole world.
Detailed distribution charts of the worldwide data can be viewed at: Current data distribution
Terrain data is available worldwide but without Greenland and Antarctica.

Horizon is designed as a backup system for VFR as well as IFR. It enhances your situational awareness in both use cases but might be particularly helpful in difficult (weather) conditions.
Depending on your needs you can enable or disable typical VFR or IFR ChartElements.
Currently the following ChartElements come with the current data for Horizon: Airports (with Runways, Frequencies, ...), Airways, Obstacles / Obstructions, Navaids (NDBs, VORs, TACANs), GNSS/GPS fixes (IFR and VFR fixes) and Airspaces. Furthermore worldwide terrain data except (Greenland and Antarctica) is available.
If you want to fly VFR you might want to disable IFR fixes and Airways; if you want to fly IFR you might want to disable Airspaces.

Yes: Horizon provides a good estimation of your aircrafts attitude given that you are using good sensors (gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, GNSS/GPS).
Many modern tablets do have good sensors which can be used to estimate the attitude. On start of Horizon you can test if your internal sensors are likely to be good enough.
In case your tablet does not have the required internal sensors you can still use Horizon on this tablet by using our external SensorBox (more information here), by using the sensors of a connected tablet (via UDP Forwarding) or by disabling AHRS (results in a straight and level attitude indication).

Please note: Your sensors must not move or rotate inside the cockpit while estimating attitude. A change of sensor position or orientation inside the cockpit affects the attitude determination.
This also means: Don't mount your tablet or smartphone on the yoke in case you are using internal sensors.

You can use our external SensorBox within the Horizon application. For more information please see here. This SensorBox can be connected via Wifi and provides an independent attitude estimation as well as reception of ADS-B and ILS signals.
Also, you can use 3rd party sensor boxes, such as for instance Stratux, PilotAware Rosetta, Talos Avionis, Levil Aviation, or any other compatible GDL 90 device.

Horizon runs on Android, iOS and Linux.

Visual Reporting Points are available for most parts of Europe including Germany. Traffic Pattern informations are available for most airports in Germany as well as most airports in the USA.

Due to the free availability of all Instrument Approach Plates as pdf at EAD Basic for whole Europe we did not include any Approach Plates. (Including them would have increased the price dramatically.) If you want to use Approach Plates on your tablet you can simply download the pdfs from EAD Basic for free and view it with any pdf viewer app.
Approach Procedures can be created in Horizon using any runway threshold. In many cases, where you get vectors for the Approach, you just need to set up the final of the Approach Procedure by specifying the distance and altitude of the FAF from the threshold (any reasonable number as well as the values from an Approach Plate can be put in).
In case you want to create a full Approach Procedure you can specify an Initial Approach Fix. For multiple IAFs you can add a sequence of Direct Procedures which are located before the Approach Procedure in the Flight Plan. More detailed informations are available in the manual.
Using our external SensorBox you can receive Localizer and Glideslope and thus fly an actual ILS, or also LOC-DME approach, etc.

Please see this chapter in the manual where many mounting options are explained.
Please make sure that your mounting solution can be used legally with applicable law.

Since there is a huge amount of data which needs to be calculated, this takes some time. We recommend doing it overnight. The data is also compressed which means the uncompressed data (piecewise required for calculation) is even larger. For example, the uncompressed high quality terrain data needs approximately 1 terabyte while compressed it's only approximately 30 gigabytes.

1. Adhere the adhesive velcro tape on the bottom of the SensorBox as well as on the dashboard (or wherever you want to place the SensorBox).
2. Connect the two velcro tapes by setting the SensorBox on that place, where you previously adhered the velcro tape on.
3. Connect the SensorBox with the PowerBank via a micro USB cable.
4. (Optional) connect the PowerBank with the cigarette lighter in order to keep it charged.
5. (Optional) connect your device (tablet / smartphone) with the cigarette lighter in order to keep it charged.
6. Connect your device (tablet / smartphone) with the SensorBox via Wifi.
7. Calibrate for the installation error (in the “Horizon” application).

We provide chart data as well as terrain data and OSM data (lakes, seas, highways, etc.) for most countries. A closer look at the data distribution will answer this question in detail.

Horizon is a fully functional portable glass cockpit and thus provides a 3D Synthetic Vision and a moving map + many more features (e.g. AHRS, flying of procedures, tunnel in the sky, weather information, etc.). Check them out here.

Via Horizon you can obtain Metars and TAFs which are displayed as pictorgramms within the synthetic vision. Check it out here. In the upcoming weeks, we will implement additional weather features such as radar weather, etc.

Yes, Horizon can be used in portrait and landscape mode. This can be set in Setup --> General Setup within the application.

Yes, if you are using our external SensorBox or a 3rd party box being equipped with ADS-B then you will receive other traffic as long as it is equipped with ADS-B (e.g. all aircraft in the US are equipped with ADS-B). The airplanes will be displayed in the synthetic vision as well as in the moving map.

You connect the SensorBox to Horizon via WiFi. Once the SensorBox is supplied with energy (e.g. via a power bank), it emits a wifi access point which you need to connect with on your tablet/smartphone. Once connected you just need to select "Helios Avionics SensorBox" at startup when choosing the sensor source.
SSID: SensorBox
Password: HorizonGlassCockpit

You can use Horizon with the internal sensors of your tablet/smartphone provided that it is equipped with GNSS/GPS, Accelerometer, Gyroscope and Magnetometer. Apart from that, if you for instance only have a GNSS/GPS sensor you can still use the moving map or just use an external sensor source, such as our external SensorBox.

Yes, you can do pre-planning of your flight and then save the flight plan after you finished setting all the procedure sequences to be used when you actually fly.

Yes, you can use Horizon along with an other app in split screen mode.

Technically this is not possible. However, you can just write us a quick E-Mail to support@helios-avionics.com and we can reset your Account-ID# to be deactivated on your old device and activated on your new one.

Make sure that your device is mounted under the windshield or in its proximity. If mounted somewhere else the reception could be worse. If you wish to mount your tablet on a specific location where there is a bad GPS reception it would make sense to purchase our external SensorBox. This would allow you to freely mount you tablet wherever you want, the SensorBox then should be mounted under the windshield.