Feature Requests

[Viking Sailor]

George and All,

Just a thought - how would page-up/page-dn work for you? Looking at my keyboard these keys would work really well as zoom-out/zoom-in.

Paul

[TTPaws]

Great program, thatnks. I have been a Linux (Opensuse) for a very long time and I really hated when I had to use a windows box on the trip to the keys in '99/00

One feature that would really help is the incorporation of the Automated Wreck and Obstruction Information System (AWOIS) database. Since I'm stuck being a sorta land lubber, I have been doing a lot scuba diving and adding this would make it easier to set a course to the next interesting point.

Just a idea...

[GDD]

Originally Posted by Viking Sailor

George and All,

Just a thought - how would page-up/page-dn work for you? Looking at my keyboard these keys would work really well as zoom-out/zoom-in.

Paul

Hi Paul,

On my Asus eepc I have to press function with the up/down arrow to get the page up and page down commands, so that would mean it still takes two keys and thus i'd be doing no better than the Ctrl+Z or the shift+= already available. Thanks though.

[cvdhwoe]

Hi Dave,

First of all I love your program and I hope you will stay to the KISS principle. Since I found it while looking for a Linux Nav Prog I use it exclusively on WIN and Linux. Now my suggestions:

- we should have a list of all requests by topic for easier searching,
- running the route feature I would appreciate if you use the VMG in the calculations,
- adding to the My Ship discussion, I would like to have the ship in red without GPS data because red is the International warning color and green if GPS data are available,
- I would like to adjust the predictor line length in minutes at the actual speed,
- and I would like to set the font size also for the information at the bottom line.

Thank you again for such a nice program.

Claus

[idpnd]

- we should have a list of all requests by topic for easier searching,

Available at sourceforge, register your requests there

- running the route feature I would appreciate if you use the VMG in the calculations,

This requires input of wind data. Try capcode for this feature

- adding to the My Ship discussion, I would like to have the ship in red without GPS data because red is the International warning color and green if GPS data are available,

This has been discussed.. Not sure what happened

[jonasaberg]

I got some feedback from a tester that I agree to:
It is very valuable to be able to dim BSB charts for use at night.

Is this hard to implement?

/Jonas

[cvdhwoe]

Thank you for your helpful links.

But with the VMG you are wrong. It depends only on the rel. bearing to the waypoint and the the boats GPS speed as cos function.

Take care
Claus

[idpnd]

Originally Posted by cvdhwoe

Thank you for your helpful links.

But with the VMG you are wrong. It depends only on the rel. bearing to the waypoint and the the boats GPS speed as cos function

Correct you are Sir! I've just seen it implemented as a feature on wind instruments without gps input, I am fairly certain it calculates speed versus wind direction in those cases, and I thought it was super useful for trim too!

[jonasaberg]

I think the confusion is that sailors seem to use VMG (Velocity Made Good) to describe the speed the sailing boat is gaining towards the wind while GPS terminology defines VMG as the boats speed towards the next waypoint. These are not necessarily the same and some caution is needed.

The sailors definition is sometimes called “VMG to windward” which is a better description.

Our nav system manufacturer Nexus Marine use the term VMG for the speed against the wind and WCV (waypoint closure velocity) for the speed to the next waypoint and although I like that terminology I do not think it is universally adopted.

Edit: Should have checked before I posted; WCV is indeed a part of the NMEA 0183 specification:
http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter/nmeatype.txt

The picture below is a slightly changed picture from a Nexus Marine manual.
http://www.nexusmarine.se/upload/mar...ts/22133-1.pdf

The abbreviations used in the picture are:
TWS True Wind Speed
AWS Apparent Wind Speed
BSP Boat Speed
WP Waypoint
WCV Waypoint Closure Velocity

/J

[idpnd]

Nice work Jonas, thanks! The long and short of it being, we could have VMG as WCV but no to windward

[Viking Sailor]

Claus,

The VMG/WCV is already implemented in OpenCPN within the TTG value. This value is the "Time To Go" to the next waypoint on the active route. TTG combines information about the distance to the waypoint and WCV into a value that is more useful to the navigator then WCV alone. Such that a course that maximizes WCV will minimize TTG and provide a count down to when the next course change is required.

Paul

[jonasaberg]

Paul,
I (humbly) disagree on that.
Although you are right...

From a sailing efficiency perspective it is better to observe the VMG and trim for it. It is much harder to observe the TTG and trim for it since TTG is (hopefully) decreasing.

It would be nice to have the possibility to view VMG in OpenCPN. It would also be nice with a wind arrow showing the TWD (True wind direction) in the plot, it would make it possible to judge whether it is possible to pass an island, a ground or a navigation mark by observing the boat and the wind arrow on the chart.

My feature request would be:

1. To have TTG as the time to the next waypoint - as it is.
2. To have a new variable: TTTG - TotalTimeToGo- for the time to the end of the route.
I can not test this right now - I dont have any way of feeding NMEA to OpenCPN. If you create a route and Activate it. When you click the Route/Leg icon, will the TTG shift from showing the time left to the the next waypoint and time to the last waypoint in the route or not?

If it does change it would be more clear if the name changed to "TTTG".

In my case I have the VMG through my instrument system and the response will probably always be faster than through the computer/OpenCPN. (This depends mainly on the update frequency for information from the log/Wind transducer, it will always be a tad slow using NMEA 0183)

Regardless of this it would still be nice to be able to observe VMG and WCV in OpenCPN, if possible.

/Jonas

[idpnd]

Originally Posted by jonasaberg

It would be nice to have the possibility to view VMG in OpenCPN. It would also be nice with a wind arrow showing the TWD (True wind direction) in the plot, it would make it possible to judge whether it is possible to pass an island, a ground or a navigation mark by observing the boat and the wind arrow on the chart.

+1 regarding the VMG as in WCV. Since our lead developer is a mobo captain, this may be asking a bit much I have already pointed out that you can get wind instruments in Capcode though..

[sredna]

Even power boats sometimes takes other routes than the direct. So a WCV display makes sense even to those

Personally, I would love a VMGtW display, and even an option to manually indicate the wind direction.

So I have to suggest a configurable dashboard. The requirements are very different for cruising sailors, racing sailors and powerboat sailors, and is also a matter of taste. I would like to be able to place the dashboard on the side of my widescreen display for example.

I do not think instruments or a dashboard would require a lot of code. Instruments could be plugins, even.

[idpnd]

NMEA instrumentation could be a separate app or module, I think the best improvement to OpenCPN development as it stands today would be an infrastructure for modules and a standardised universal overlay such as KML/KMZ.

Instrumentation has been implemented in the closed-source windows-only (but nonetheless widely praised) navmonpc.

Openpilot also implements freely configurable NMEA instrumentation, and it's free software, same as Capcode, which even supports Polars etc.