Own ship and AIS target size

[Gatorbait]

v4.8.4 Build 2018-04-21


The icons for own ship and AIS targets used to display in a size that was readable. One day the icons became microdots, okay, very small. Am running OpenCPN on 2 PCs and one is working fine in terms of icon size. Have tried changing options such as "Ship icon type" and can get the ship icon back to readable size by changing the option from default to Real Scale Bitmap and setting the mm size to 30 but this does not change the AIS target size.



What happened. Is there some setting in Opencpn.ini that got changed somehow? Been using monkey method trying to get both of the icons back to normal size without success.


Anyone got an idea of what to try?


Thanks for any suggestions!
Roger
sv Wings & Strings
Dutch Harbor, AK


p.s. I love OpenCPN

[Hakan]

Gatorbalt..
Next step is to check setting for "Physical screen width". Tools->Display->Advanced->Physical screen width. If not already Auto select that and "Apply".
Now read the mm value and compare to your screen width. If it not conform change to "manual" and enter your actual size.

[Gatorbait]

Thanks for the quick answer. Tried as you suggested but I needed to set the screen size to 31500mm before the icon was visible and then it was impossible to zoom in on the chart. No change to the AIS target sizes as they are still small, not even showing the triangle target but only the target status icon such as fishing.

[rgleason]

Added to FAQ Will update when fully resolved.

[Gatorbait]

The issue appears to be a combination of an external monitor and OpenGL. When OpenGL is disabled, ownship and AIS target icons are the correct size. Using just the laptop display, the icons are the correct size as well even with OpenGL enabled. The laptop running Win 7 Pro does have an issue with determining the correct screen size of the external monitor.


The external monitor can be forced to display the correct sized icons by first enabling both the laptop display and the external monitor and then disabling the laptop display. Methinks this is an OS issue rather than an OpenCPN issue.


Thanks again for your help.

[rgleason]

Added to FAQ that is weird. Can't you set it in your monitor screen settings?

[Paul_Carroll]

[Solved] It is not just a combination of external display and laptop screen. I can run just my laptop and have the exact same problem. Nor does telling the computer to show AIS targets as real size help. No apparent change in size even if I am zoomed way in to just the harbor so that ship sizes should really matter.
It really seems like the "default" size of the AIS targets got changed. I would happily have a setting that was "fixed" and you specified the size in mm (or some such approximation)
I found a solution though. I set the AIS targets to be shown scaled, then went into Settings>User Interface and near the bottom are sliders for scaling items. Use ship scale at 2 or 3 gets a nice sized AIS target.

[bcn]

Originally Posted by Hakan

Gatorbalt..
Next step is to check setting for "Physical screen width". Tools->Display->Advanced->Physical screen width. If not already Auto select that and "Apply".
Now read the mm value and compare to your screen width. If it not conform change to "manual" and enter your actual size.

What does your screen width say compared with the real value? Horizontal in mm.

[rgleason]

Revised FAQ, use scale sliders added for greater user control.


Why_are_own_ship_icon_and_ais_targets_very_small_a fter_v4.8.4_upgrade?




Thanks for your reports.

[Moo]

Just an observation:

Perhaps the default AIS target size is too small? In the latest stable version of O I have to move the "ship" scale slider up a bit on all my systems.

[bdbcat]

Paul_Carroll...

We really need the answer to this question:

"What does your screen width say compared with the real value? Horizontal in mm. "

This controls all icon size rendering. Windows is well known to report this value incorrectly, so that is why we have the user option to override the value.

Is yours correct?

Thanks
Dave