Problem with ENC display

[murofsresiurc]

I am a relatively new user to OpenCPN. I have 4.8.6 installed on a Windows 10 laptop. I have downloaded the ENC charts for Washington and Alaska.

My display looks like this:



How can I get a continuous display of appropriate chart detail for the zoom level across the screen.

Chart quilting is turned on. I've redownloaded all the charts and tried all the option in the charts tools; rebuilding the database, preparing ENC charts, etc. I assume I have a setting wrong somewhere but can't seem to find it.

Thanks.

[bcn]

Play with Option|Display|Advanced and the slider for "Chart zoom/scale weighting" for vector charts

[murofsresiurc]

Thank you. That helped a lot.

Should I have raster charts downloaded too? And then find a good balance on the display? All I have now is ENC.

[bcn]

Sure you can experiment with raster as well.

The main challenge when quilting charts of different scales is how to decide, which objects shall be presented in the case of vector charts.
And as the chart editors or produces have their particular ideas of visibility at a given scale, there is no magic recipe. Expect always some point where this is not 100% perfect.

With Raster charts the issue are big scale differences for charts shown together.
The small scale charts will look blurry when quilted with a large scale chart.

[fgd3]

The big advantage to raster charts is they were put together by cartographers relying on hundreds of years of figuring out what information you need to see when looking at any particular spot on the chart. Vector charts are still quite experimental and don't always display the relevant information. They're getting better all the time, but don't always know, for example, that when you approach a bridge you are concerned with overhead clearance, while the thing you want to know about a rock is how deep it is. The second advantage to raster charts is they display much faster.


Vector charts take less space and contain more information, but it is sometimes harder to access. For example, a chart plotter loaded with vector charts can warn you if you've plotted a route that's too shoal for your vessel. The chart plotter can't get any information about depth from a raster chart.


Someday vector charts will be the way to go. OpenCPN has done a lot to advance the display of vector charts but I think raster charts still have the edge when they are available.


Fabbian