OpenCPN

[Wrenna]

"The two charts you show exhibit the expected behavior. Notice in the chart title bar, upper right on the toolbar. The left chart is CM93 Chart scale E(1/50,000). The right chart is CM93 scale F (1/20,000). As expected, smaller scale charts have more detail, just as in paper charts."

Shouldn't it be the other way round ? There should be more detail on the 1/20,000 chart.
Anyway, with the same chart scale and the same chart letter, some features (especially port quays) sometimes appear, and sometimes they don't, whatever the part of the world. Zooming in or out doesn't change anything.
You have to change the Display Category for them to re-appear - that's at least what I do, and it works on my system, though I don't understand why.

[idpnd]

obrigado Sinbad, just the ticket


thanks for your attention Dave, I still don't really understand why zooming in on a vector chart makes details disappear.


Regarding tides, Xtide is a free software tide prediction programme.


Regarding GRIB files, a rival free software navigation project, Openpilot, which is apparently abandoned, includes an implementation of GRIB file support and some NMEA gauges. As this is the standard format for (free) weather faxes / reports, this would be a fantastic feature.

"I have implemented basic support for grib files (currently wind only). This uses the latest version of the GDAL libraries. The newer libraries have also made loading charts considerably faster.
The projection and plotting routines have been updated, to give fast native manipulation on-screen."

Apparently he also makes use of the global shoreline vector database

[idpnd]

I had to get a pre-compiled version of raster2bsb for linux from barcosoft as I couldn't get it to compile on ubuntu..

raster2bsb is a gui built on top of libbsb; it also supports png2bsb and ppm2bsb.

[bdbcat]

For Wrenna...

Logically, you are correct. More details should appear on a 1/20,000 chart than on a 1/50,000 chart.

Why don't the jetties appear on 1/20,000? Features are encoded into the CM93 database at the discretion of the cartographer. They may have chosen to include a feature, and may have coded the display category as desired, on whichever scale(letter) chart they were working with. Opencpn simply shows the features as encoded, without filtering except for display category, user selectable.

In the case of interest here, on my latest version of CM93, roughly 2002, I cannot see the jetties on the F scale chart no matter what the category. The jetties are simply not in the F scale database. I see them on E scale chart, as do you.

We have bumped into the main objection to the old CM93 dataset. It is not always accurate, and we must use of own judgment when navigating with it.

Could you direct me to a lat/lon where features like port quays depend on display category? I'd like to check the dataset at that point, just so we all understand the root cause of this behavior.

Thanks
Dave

[Wrenna]

Here is a view of Cannes on the French Riviera, for example. The first screen appears when I launch OpenCPN - no jettties. When I change from MarinersStandard to Standard (or vice versa), this is my screen (second picture.) Same map, same scale. When I change to MarinersStandard again, the jetties and shoreline are still visible, until the next time. But it seems pretty unpredictible.
I also join a screen print of my options settings. This is possibly where I am wrong.

[blubaju]

nigel from gps-navigator-forum on yahoo had a link to opencpn.

hello dave,

very nice progra, just downloaded and installed, no problem recognising new ENCs and no problem CM93. still a few questions, maybe most have an anser somewhere, but I did not find it yet.

a help file would be nice, can`t find any
zoom in/out works, though I'd prefer it with the mouse wheel too, it is just faster.
scale up/down, I have no idea what this is good for >>> missing helpfile
I use wintide since more than a decade, you installed only a subset of tide stations, no one in far east where I am, is there any way to access wintide within opencpn to upgrade the missing stations (far east) and the neater shore line?

I'd like gridlines, gives a quick reference and easier to paste printouts

not related to, but a nice program is gpsgate, lets one share one or multiple gps-inputs (eg. gps-mouse and navigational data) to as many com-ports as you like. might help solving some installation problems.

while cm93 access is fast, converting the enc on-the -fly takes some time, not really slow, but maybe I am just not used to wait.

Sea test will take a few months, we are on the hard at present :-((

Nice work! Congratulations and thanks!

Henry

[edsailing]

A help file would be very useful!

In the meantime if anyone could help, I have downloaded a lot of NOAA charts - how do I get to use these. They come zipped and I am not sure what to do when unzipping them, i.e. what file structure as there seem to be a lot of common files within them.

If anyone can give me an idiot's run through, I would be most grateful!

[sinbad7]

Hi Ed... Just unzip the files into a directory you could call CHARTS.
Then use the OpenCPN 'spanner' and charts to go to your CHARTS directory to
select the BSB chart you want. Click on the blue marked file. Then click on 'Add selection' and then OK. You can also select entire directories if you have many BSB files.
Good luck!!

[EOB]

To Wrenna...
You are using old charts (1997). In 2006 ed. it does not happen.
Dave is right, the problem is with your charts.
Best regards
Eloi

[Viking Sailor]

Dave,

I'm sure that others have figured out how to use GoogleEarth and OpenCPN together for electronic navigation. However, this screen shot of Cabo San Lucas is just to cool not to share. It really shows how the port has changed since the chart was drawn and the photo was taken. I checked the position of a nearby rock and it was off by about 90 feet in longitude between the chart and the photo. Since GoogleEarth 5.0 on Windows XP will display the vessels GPS position in realtime this combination of GE and OpenCPN has the potential to be a world wide electronic charting solutation for cruisers. BTW, I was able to build and save a GoogleEarth cache for a trip from San Francisco to Darwin that included lots of ports of call and was less then 200 MBs.

Thank you very very much for all your work on OpenCPN.

Best regards,

Paul

[Amgine]

Google Earth's satellite images are made up of small tiled images which are digitally distorted to match up. In other words, although it is extremely useful, at small scale it is potentially dangerously inaccurate, the more so the closer it is to an 'edge'.

[fulup]

I'm trying to run OpenCPN on Ubuntu, but as today without sucess .

I tried both 8.10 and 9.04(last one) this with pre-compiled and self compile version. I get the same comportment with any of those possible combination, even changing computer to get different graphic boards provides equivalent failure.

I get the impression that something is completely wrong with my colours.

• Maps background are completely blacks. Wather is dark blue or pdark pink .
• lower text is impossible to read (even if by playing with colour scheme, we can guest text presence).

In order to minimize dependencies, I started from a clean config (with no .opencpn directory) and only add samples chart (from sourceforce windows distrib, as Linux does not include them).

• chart look like being upload correctly (no error in opencpn.log) and .opencpn/SENC directoty is created and US2EC02M.BMP|S57, ...
• something is display, but colours just does not make any sence. Note that depending on graphic board (intel or nvidia) the water move from dark blue or black to pink.

As I have no idea how to post images on this forum, also I provide external link to my screen capture. First one is what I get when starting Opencpn with no GPS connected and only sample chart.

• 1st screen http://www.fridu.org/images/opencpn/...enCPN-init.jpg
• scale on sample chart with nvidia card) http://www.fridu.org/images/opencpn/Capture-OpenCPN-zoom.jpg
• same thing but with intel graphic card http://www.fridu.org/images/opencpn/Capture-OpenCPN-pink.jpg

Note:

• using my own CM93 or KAP files, I get similar result. Opencpn looks like accepting my chart, it correctly display the name, but nothing useful is display on the screen.
• GPS and cursor information are also almost impossible to read, but they are present and by changing colour scheme you can guest them.

Any idea

[cagney]

Originally Posted by Amgine

Google Earth's satellite images are made up of small tiled images which are digitally distorted to match up. In other words, although it is extremely useful, at small scale it is potentially dangerously inaccurate, the more so the closer it is to an 'edge'.

Just as an illustration, have a look at this pic of the marina in Horta, Faial, The Azores.

[cagney]

fulup
I have been through a similar thing with an eeepc 901.
Very similar problem. Started with Ubuntu 8.10 upgraded to 9.04, didn't solve the problem. Then upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 to see if the latest kernel/ intel graphical driver made any difference, but that didn't solve it either. After that I did a new installation of Ubuntu 9.04 (Netbook Remix, very nice) and....voila, the problem was gone.
I was working with Dave on this one. He thought it probably was a X-server problem, but we never pinpointed the cause of the problem.

blubaju

zoom in/out works, though I'd prefer it with the mouse wheel too, it is just faster.
scale up/down, I have no idea what this is good for >>> missing helpfile

Dave seems to be busy right now coding ....
In the latest development version scroll wheel zoming is already implemented. Scale up/down is for changing charts when you have more than one chart, of different scales, covering a position.

I use wintide since more than a decade

The tidal info i OpenCPN comes from xtide (http://www.flaterco.com/xtide/).
You can find a discussion about the coverage at this site.

Thomas

[DeepFrz]

In Google Earth, take a look at the roads overlay for just about any place in Alaska. I imagine they were plotted on the satellite image using GPS coordinates. They don't quite match up.