Weather Routing Questions

[wholybee]

I am playing with/learning weather routing and have run into a few questions.

1. What is the Crossover chart screen? It doesn't seem to do anything useful.

2. I have created and routed with a boat.xml file with 3 polars. One with a 130%, one with a #2 spinnaker, and one with the 130% poled out. When I route with this, how do I know what polar was used? Presumably it will select the best polar for the conditions. I see on some routes, a square in the route. Is that a sail change, and again, how do I know from what to what?

3. Is there a way to "play" a route while the grib is playing? So I can see where my boat should be at a certain time with predicted conditions at that time?

[rgleason]

1. On windows, crossover graph betwern two sails does not show.
2.

[rgleason]

Needs fixing.
2.I think place cursor and right click, or pick from menu, view /status or ?.
3.Yes! Step through the grib!

Might help to read the pi wiki.
If you have improvements to the wiki please note here.

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Needs fixing.
2.I think place cursor and right click, or pick from menu, view /status or ?.
3.Yes! Step through the grib!

Might help to read the pi wiki.
If you have improvements to the wiki please note here.

1. Is it useful? Should I try it on my mac? I'm not planning on having a mac on board.

2. I'm not getting anything. Object query just gives me a depth area, and I don't see any other new menu items.

3. I see it now. I was making that harder than I thought, trying to export to a route first. Is there a way to see boat speed and heading? I tried right clicking and like above, didn't see anything new related to routing.

I've been reading the wiki, and it has helped a lot, certainly enough to get it working. Overall a good primer to get started. One note, regarding the "polar failed" errors. I have gribs with a wind speed of zero. Zero Wind speed and zero boat speed is valid data. But I had to manually edit the .pol file to add it. Even though it showed in the edit polor screen, the zeros didn't save to the file. It would not be unreasonable for the plug-in to assume those values if not in the .pol file. If the plug-in interprets data between the lowest windspeed given and zero, this would prevent many failures.

Some editorial updates:
There are 2 # 10s
10. Messages in Configuration Window
10. Configuration - Edit

Use with route manager is described twice:
11. Use with Route Manager
13. Use with Route Manager

[rgleason]

Delighted you are learning this plugin.... the weather_routing is completely updated and has lots of good information. Read it! Let me know what we've missed.

1. What is the Crossover chart screen? It doesn't seem to do anything useful.
Yes it is useful. I have never seen it, but it calculates when to use which sail. You can set the percentage of crossover too. I'd very much like to see this function fixed.

2. I have created and routed with a boat.xml file with 3 polars. One with a 130%, one with a #2 spinnaker, and one with the 130% poled out. When I route with this, how do I know what polar was used? Presumably it will select the best polar for the conditions. I see on some routes, a square in the route. Is that a sail change, and again, how do I know from what to what?

For weather information along the route Locate position of cursor where you want weather table, then Right-click, pick Weather Table.

In Configuration Menu pick View > Settings --Look!
also View > Statistics
also View > Report
also View > Weather Route Plot - you can set various parameters. It is a summary of conditions and performance, sort of.
also View > Cursor Position

I agree there does not seem to be a good way to understand the sail changes!
I wish there was a yellow hover window that informed us. Also there are other ways to represent the entire trip that could even be better. What would you like to see? What is the best way to view the necessary information? What in your judgement is the necessary information?

3. Is there a way to "play" a route while the grib is playing? So I can see where my boat should be at a certain time with predicted conditions at that time?
Good you found this out. Isn't it explained in the PI Wiki?

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by wholybee

I am playing with/learning weather routing and have run into a few questions.

1. What is the Crossover chart screen? It doesn't seem to do anything useful.

Not sure why the paint routine is broken in windows. Normally it shows which polars are used at what windspeeds/directions

2. I have created and routed with a boat.xml file with 3 polars. One with a 130%, one with a #2 spinnaker, and one with the 130% poled out. When I route with this, how do I know what polar was used? Presumably it will select the best polar for the conditions. I see on some routes, a square in the route. Is that a sail change, and again, how do I know from what to what?

It uses the fastest polar for the current conditions (subject to overlap as well)

The squares are sail changes, and you can open from the menu "View->Cursor Position" and move the mouse on the route, just before and at the square.

3. Is there a way to "play" a route while the grib is playing? So I can see where my boat should be at a certain time with predicted conditions at that time?

Yes. This works with normal grib playback. The boat position is the O at the current grib time.

[rgleason]

Sean:

Not sure why the paint routine is broken in windows. Normally it shows which polars are used at what windspeeds/directions

Sean, does this use opengl? or is it just showing an image? Perhaps it is using the wrong wxWidgets call for windows?

Re: The manual. I think we need to add some more about the "VIEW" features.

Are you still in P'town?

[rgleason]

Line 1795 of WeatherRoutingUI.cpp
m_CrossOverChart->Connect( wxEVT_PAINT, wxPaintEventHandler( BoatDialogBase::OnPaintCrossOverChart ), NULL, this );


Line 371 under "Protected" WeatherRoutingUI.h
wxScrolledWindow* m_CrossOverChart;

Line 402 // Virtual event handlers, overide them in your derived class
Line 406 virtual void OnPaintCrossOverChart( wxPaintEvent& event ) { event.Skip(); }

Line 422
public:
wxGauge* m_gCrossOverChart;

BoatDialogBase( wxWindow* parent, wxWindowID id = wxID_ANY, const wxString& title = _("Boat"), const wxPoint& pos = wxDefaultPosition, const wxSize& size = wxSize( -1,-1 ), long style = wxDEFAULT_DIALOG_STYLE|wxRESIZE_BORDER );
~BoatDialogBase();

void m_splitter2OnIdle( wxIdleEvent& )
{
m_splitter2->SetSashPosition( 0 );
m_splitter2->Disconnect( wxEVT_IDLE, wxIdleEventHandler( BoatDialogBase::m_splitter2OnIdle ), NULL, this );
}

Polar.cpp

Line 668
// Determine if our current state is satisfied by the current cross over contour
bool Polar::InsideCrossOverContour(float H, float VW)
{
return CrossOverRegion.Contains(fabs(H), VW);
}

BoatDialog.cpp

Line 481 (this is jst the beginning of that... probably where the error is.

void BoatDialog::OnPaintCrossOverChart(wxPaintEvent& event)
{
wxWindow *window = dynamic_cast<wxWindow*>(event.GetEventObject());
if(!window)
return;
#if wxUSE_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT
wxGCDC dc(window);
#else
wxClientDC dc(window);
#endif
dc.SetBackgroundMode(wxTRANSPARENT);

long index = SelectedPolar();
bool polar = !m_cPlotType->GetSelection();

int w, h;
m_CrossOverChart->GetSize( &w, &h);

dc.SetPen(wxPen(wxColor(0, 0, 0)));
dc.SetBrush(*wxTRANSPARENT_BRUSH);
dc.SetTextForeground(wxColour(0, 55, 75));