Why not a background made from tile servers?

[Vladis]

Hello,

First of all I apologize if what I am referring to has already been discussed or if there is a plugin for it. Only recently I looked carefully to OpenCPN and it is, without doubt, an exceptional programme. As my boat came with a complete Raymarine system I had not the necessity to use OpenCPN until very recently.

In the past I developed a tool to create photo sceneries for the now "dead" MS Flight Simulator. It was a "windows form" type of project, where the user could draw lines, polygons, objects, see the aircraft moving, etc, all in the main working window. That window or canvas could have a map "coming in real time" from the internet or could have a raster map obtained as a screenshot from that background, so that one could work offline. The tiles were cached automatically so that they were available when the internet was OFF. I have a small web page (not totally working at this moment) that was the motivation for my first post in Cruisersforum in 2010! It could be used to get screenshots from tile servers (Exploring Google Maps). I enclose 3 screenshhots of my old program to ilustrate what I said above. I also leave this link that (SBuilderX Forum • View topic - Tile Server Plug-Ins for SBuilderX) explains my approach.

As far as I understand, OpenCPN has not a facility like this which would be useful addition. I am terrible sorry if it has, but, as I said, I am not very familiar with OpenCPN.

Kind Regards, Vladis

[rgleason]

Dear Vladis,
I do recall your posts, as I was intrigued with them, in fact they will probably be useful in the future...Those are good images. You obviously have skills the OpenCPN community would appreciate. Perhaps you can bring those skills to bear on some of these developments:
1. GE2KAP See the Manual
2. VentureFarther website Jon Turgeon, and VFkaps by Mike R.
3. Sean's mtile scripts Forum Post and Github Repos
4. The groups general interest in getting mtiles working with OpenCPN because it would be useful for a number of things such as Weatherfaxes, Satellite overlays, etc.
5. Personally I like your idea of a better and more detailed tiled chart background as a starter. Then perhaps have more detail available as needed, similar, but more convenient than GE2KAP, which is a very powerful program, and perhaps in the direction of VentureFarther. Perhaps extending both of these fine efforts.

There are various pros and cons to each of the approaches above.

[Vladis]

Dear rgleason,

Thank you very much for pointing me out relevant information regarding the addition of charts into OpenCPN. I am available to collaborate but I need to learn a lot about OpenCPN before I am ready to start.

As far as I could understand, for raster maps, OpenCPN uses the KAP format to add them into its display window. I think that a solution where the display window is formed by reading tiles from cached folders and, if a tile is missing, getting it on the fly from the net, would be a great addition.

Anyway, I am learning git and github as I plan to release the source files of my old programme for FS. During that process, if I find something that would be useful to OpenCPN, I will add it in this thread.

Kind Regards, Vladis

[rgleason]

Dear Vladis,
Git is good to learn. I'm still learning.

There are some good resources for Charts and other tools in the manual, if you are interested.
Charts
Advanced Chart Work - Chart Conversion Manual
Chart Conversion

You will find good company here, as many dev/users are quite familiar with Charting and know all the formats, details and techniques.