Sat2Chart

[phiggins]

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. This is for the Eastern Hemisphere. The previous one was for the Western Hemisphere.

Topic:
"Creating Overlay Charts From Google Earth Pro"
When:
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 08:00 AST
Davao, Philippines Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 13:00 PHST
Melbourne, Australia Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 16:00 AEDT
Auckland, New Zealand Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 18:00 NZDT
Fiji Time, FJT Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 17:00 FJT

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...hWuLv7HsbKPptH

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

[WindyIles]

Hi Paul
Many thanks for all your efforts in bringing this capability up to date! I have been away from all this for a while and found the old GE and GE2KAP had all ceased to work...so I have been busy cleaning out the old and installing the new stack including V11.0.8.0 and the latest GE Pro.
I have succeeded in creating a single tile KAP OK, however the Tile option always gets greyed out just before the Main text window guidance loads for Google Earth as selected source. I can select Tile if the source is SasPlanet, but the tick greys out again if I switch back to GE as source. If I then try to create a chart, it throws an error: PGMNAME Fatal error! ERROR: NOMETHOD occured at line:22662 Content of line: ICameraInfoGE = comm._geobj~GetCamera(0)
Have I got something wrong or have I hit a bug please? Any advice most welcome please? Many thanks.
Regards, Richard, Plymouth UK

[phiggins]

WindyIles,

The Tile option and Polygon and Paths are not supported when the "Create charts From is Google earth.

Please watch the tutorials "Creating a Chart from Google earth" and "Creating Overlay Charts From Google Earth Pro" or register for the Zoom meeting.

[phiggins]

Reminder of the Zoom meeting tomorrow. This is for the Western Hemisphere ie: North America, South America and Europe.
Topic: "Creating Overlay Charts From Google Earth Pro"
This will cover the new feature that puts depth soundings on SasPlanet satellite maps.

When:
Vancouver, Canada Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 11:00 PST
New York, USA Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 14:00 EST
London, United Kingdom Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 19:00 GMT
Davao, Philippines Wed, 3 Feb 2021 at 03:00 (AM) PHST

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...WGPYaoxILaSD1Y

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by WindyIles

Hi Paul
Many thanks for all your efforts in bringing this capability up to date! I have been away from all this for a while and found the old GE and GE2KAP had all ceased to work...so I have been busy cleaning out the old and installing the new stack including V11.0.8.0 and the latest GE Pro.
I have succeeded in creating a single tile KAP OK...
Regards, Richard, Plymouth UK

Hi Richard. Good to see another Wauquiez out there! If you've been out of this for a while, you may not know about mbTiles. They've got several advantages over KAPs.

KAPs can only have 128 different colors. And if you create a large (merged) KAP, the colors can get badly shifted. From 2014 to 2018, we were using them to find anchoring spots, looking for minute differences in the shade of blue, so we found we couldn't merge them or the colors would degrade too much. Instead we had to create vast arrays of tiny KAPs if we wanted good colors. But that created a performance issue when trying to pan around with OpenCPN, as the display engine got a bit overwhelmed with having to choose which pixels to display & which to throw out, when we were zoomed out even just a bit.

MbTiles have essentially no limits on color depth, so they're much better for seeing shallow waters. Even large (merged) mbTiles have excellent color depth. We create our mbTiles from SAS Planet (which includes Google Earth imagery). SAS allows multiple zoom-levels in a single mbTile, which means all OpenCPN has to do is find the correct zoom-level for the current display & slam that out to the display system, so performance is much improved. We generally create our mbTiles to include zooms 10-18, which lets us see even isolated coral heads. Paul provides excellent instructions (& even videos) in his Help files to show users how to setup SAS.

Many folks like to research where they're going & then get imagery for just that area, & perhaps some of the critical areas along the way. Here in SE Asia, the internet often isn't good enough for downloading a lot of satellite imagery, so we tend to make our mbTiles when we're visiting family in the US. Since we not only don't know exactly where we're going, but we also publish our charts for other cruisers to use, we have to use a shotgun approach, downloading imagery for entire coastlines. This can create large mbTiles, but recent performance improvements in OpenCPN have helped.

We also tend to download ArcGIS, Bing, & GE satellite imagery, as well as Navionics & CMap nautical charts, so we have as much info on the places we might go as possible. By putting each map-type into its own Chart-Group in OpenCPN, we can switch between maps with just a single key-stroke.

OK, a lot to absorb, but if you have more questions, don't hesitate to ask! We're here to help.

[phiggins]

The Zoom meeting will start in one hour

[Navacino]

Hi Paul
I read the topic Sat2chart and I noticed that every things is going well with your software.
I'm back with a very small new computer Asus PN62 series intel I7. Now I will try to update all the software SAT2chart , GE, SAS and so on. and I hope to succeed.
Have a good time.
Michele
.

[phiggins]

Sat2Chart.V12.0.0 is now available.
It adds support for XYZ depth soundings files. These files are provided by many hydrographic agencies around the world and in many cases provide depth soundings for uncharted or poorly charted places.

Sat2chart can now read these files and put the the depth soundings on charts created from SasPlanet Satellite maps.

The screenshot below is chart created from a Bing satellite map of Burnaby Narrows in northern British Columbia Canada with the XZY depths soundings added.

Here is the download link: http://gdayii.ca/Downloads/Sat2Chart.V12.0.0.0.exe

The Help is updated and a new tutorial "Adding XYZ Depth Soundings to a Chart"

[Jon Hacking]

Very cool, Paul. And the coloring is cool as well!

-- Where can we get XYZ soundings files?
-- Are they always in meters?

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

Very cool, Paul. And the coloring is cool as well!

-- Where can we get XYZ soundings files?
-- Are they always in meters?

They are available, for example, from CHS (Canada):
https://data.chs-shc.ca/login
(officially, "not for navigation")


Yes, they are normally with depth in metres (even USA).


Current format requires LAT/LONG in Degrees.Minutes.Seconds:





Using this format, one could also make/import their own depth files.

[phiggins]

Jon,

I have found only two free sources: the Canadian Hydro Graphic Services and NOAA Both links are in the Help. I did find one link for the Philippines but can't find it anymore but they wanted pesos to download it.

All the ones I have seen are in meters.

Actually I saw one from USA Army Corp of Engineers and the lat/lon were in feet based on a certain datum. I don't support that.

[NEVERMIND]

Hi, with version 12.0.0.0 of sat2chart which version of Google Earth works?
I have this versions
GE 7.3.3.7786
ooRexx 5.0.0-12179 64bits
opencpn 5.2.0 + 4d956e1

It does not work.
Thanks for your help.
Jean Paul

[NEVERMIND]

A correction is to be made to the previous email.
An error for the opencpn version:
this is V 5.2.4 + 6b314e6

[phiggins]

Nevermind.
That version of GE should work. The error says Sat2Chart can't load one of the dlls. Check if that Sat2ChartFuncs.dll exists in directory Sat2Chart is installed in or try the next version see my next post.

[phiggins]

Sat2Chart.V12.0.10 is now available.

Fixes: Single chart with multiple zooms fails.
Enhanced: XYZ depths sounding for the Australian Great Barrier Reef.

The attachment is an example of chart created from SasPlanet Bing map of the an uncharted reef in the Great barrier reef with depths added.


Here is the download link: http://gdayii.ca/Downloads/Sat2Chart.V12.0.1.0.exe