Sat2Chart

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

In fact, you don't really need ANY zoom levels except Z18. OpenCPN will (eventually) decide which pixels to display & which to throw out, just like it does with KAPs. And that will save you about 33% in file size, if that's important to you.

I quickly decided I needed the lower zoom level. While OpenCPN will "adjust", as you zoom out the chart will both be overly cluttered with extras, and those extras will be so distorted from the scaling that none of the text or depth is readable.
Dropping only 17 I don't think makes much difference in quality. But I don't care about the HD space. A 1TB SSD is $60. That is plenty big for lots of charts. I would drop 17 only to save the downloading time in SASPlanet, not for HD space.

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by yachtvalhalla

Think about what you wrote. For a single chart you wouldn't get much coverage.

Not sure what you mean, Terry. Before switching to mbTiles when OpenCPN v5 came out, we used fields of KAPs at some high resolution, & I could & did cover as much area as I wanted. This is pretty much the same as an mbTile that only contains Z18. Again, I can make it cover as much area as I want. And I'm pretty sure OpenCPN would display both pretty similarly.

My point is that, if your primary goal is to save file-size (& therefore disk space) while still preserving high resolution, you really only need Z18 in your mbTiles. OpenCPN would (eventually) sort out which pixels to display & which to throw out.

It would take us back to the days of KAPs, though, & their long delays when panning while OpenCPN figured out what to display.

You & I have different priorities when making our mbTiles. And that's fine. I'm not putting you down for trying to save disk-space in yours. Go for it!

I just have different priorities when I make my mbTiles, especially since I'm not making them just for myself. I'm trying to make the highest quality charts I can (within certain limits--I don't see a need to go beyond Z18) & I don't really care much about disk space.

Like most things in life, there are tradeoffs here, & I don't expect everyone to have the same values or priorities as I do.

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by wholybee

I quickly decided I needed the lower zoom level. While OpenCPN will "adjust", as you zoom out the chart will both be overly cluttered with extras, and those extras will be so distorted from the scaling that none of the text or depth is readable.
Dropping only 17 I don't think makes much difference in quality. But I don't care about the HD space. A 1TB SSD is $60. That is plenty big for lots of charts. I would drop 17 only to save the downloading time in SASPlanet, not for HD space.

You're right, & I wasn't really advocating for just Z18, Warren. As I mentioned above, everyone has their own priorities when making their charts.

But I'm making mine for others to use as well, so I feel a need towards higher quality. And yes, it takes longer for me to make them, & for folks to download them. If that bothers them, they can go get their charts from one of the other sources that our download page links to. The customer is always right.

As for removing Z17, you might want to check what happens to soundings when you zoom out slowly (you can use the Alt+/- for this). Are they still legible? I find most soundings to be pretty small even at their correct display level, but my eyes are getting pretty old. OpenCPN won't grow those soundings, the way it does with vector charts like CM93. It'll just remove pixels.

[DebPerfitt]

Sat2Chart says Plugin not installed. Plugin not in OpenCPN's list.

I installed Sat2Chart 17.0.0.2 today (Windows 10 Home 22H2) following Paul's tutorial. When I tried to create a chart with OpenCPN selected, Sat2Chart asked to install the plugin. I said OK, then I closed OpenCPN, and away it went. I restarted OpenCPN and navigated to the Plugins tab to enable the plugin. Sat2Chart does not appear in the plugins list, nor does ge2kap.

When I run Sat2Chart with OpenCPN selected, an error occurs to the effect that the plugin is not installed, not enabled or the wrong version.

While I don't need to use OpenCPN as the chart location source, it does come in handy at times! What can I do to fix this failure to install?



I have the Sat2Chart log and screen shots:

1. OpenCPN plugin folder showing ge2kap_V17.dll, and
2. OpenCPN Plugins page not showing the plugin.

BUT, Cloudflare blocked me uploading the attachments!


Phil Perfitt

near Ottawa
yacht in Fiji


If it's not one thing, it's one of the other ten things!

[Jon Hacking]

Hi Phil. Yeah, I've mentioned this to Paul. The plugin isn't necessary & the warning can safely be ignored. If you want, you can copy the C:\SAT2CHART\SAT2CHART.V17.0.0.2\ge2kap_V17_pi.dll
into the
C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenCPN\plugins folder,
But it isn't really necessary.

Almost everyone makes their charts from SAS Planet, making mbTiles, so you should probably set your Sat2Chart to those settings (2 buttons towards the bottom of the screen). And yes, these should really be the defaults. FWIW, Sat2Chart will remember your settings for future runs, even if/when you upgrade.

I see your boat is in Fiji. SAS Planet has a problem with Fiji, since it crosses the 180, & SAS can't really handle that.

However, I've now made charts of Fiji that go right up to the 180 on both sides, & OpenCPN seems to be able to display them (mostly) correctly. There's a slight loss of detail right at the 180, but it quickly goes away (& most folks don't want to stop there anyway). If you'd like to download them, they're on our Chart Downloads page.

My charts are from ArcGIS, Bing, & Google Earth satellite imagery, as well as CMap & Navionics nautical charts. If you read the whole page, it shows you how to switch between charts with only a single keystroke, making it very easy to cycle between all your charts quickly, to see which is best for your current situation.

Fair winds!

[DebPerfitt]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

Hi Phil. Yeah, I've mentioned this to Paul. The plugin isn't necessary ...
<...>
Almost everyone makes their charts from SAS Planet, making mbTiles ...
<...>
I see your boat is in Fiji. SAS Planet has a problem with Fiji, since it crosses the 180, & SAS can't really handle that.
However, I've now made charts of Fiji ...
<...>
If you'd like to download them, they're on our Chart Downloads page.

Thanks for that quick response Jon! I think you're spot on about SAS Planet instead of OpenCPN driving the process. I followed one of David Alton's videos (Out Chasing Stars) using SAS Planet with Sat2Chart, and I can see there is no need to use OpenCPN to set the location. That trick with polygons is awesome.


I will check out the link to your Fiji charts. Being so close to 180° is a snag for many apps!


Cheers!


Phil

[barryglewis]

Tried to download Sat2chart, fails with page not found error.
Tried from A dtoid tablet and Windows pc.

Any ideas?

[barryglewis]

Sorry, posted this in 2 different threads. A link to a download from mediafire was provided by yachtvalhalla

[yachtvalhalla]

I believe Paul has fixed the problem with links.


And my guide to installing Sat2Chart and Sasplanet should be OK as well.


https://www.mediafire.com/file_premi...uter.docx/file

[barcoMeCasa]

as above original download link should be working again > https://www.gdayii.ca/Downloads/

Sasplanet should be much smaller download now as well, 50Mb instead of 300.

[opensw]

Hello there, I am new here I am testing SasPlanet and sat2chart under my Macbook Air M1 (no intel version)

- SasPlanet is working properly, I did not notice anything wrong.
- About sat2chart I have this error when it is used with SasPlanet + MBTiles
Error: unable to complete SasPlanet request.
If SasPlanet is in Full Screen Mode, turn it off
Try increasing the Typing Delay in the the Options panel
SasPlanet may need to be restarted.

From the wine CrossOverFOSS 23.7.1 log there is not any error during the processing. I have attached also a screenshot. Did I miss something in the sat2chart settings?

For reference about the installation on Mac:
- Install wine with the command brew install gcenx/wine/wine-crossover
- Install under wine in sequence Open Object Rexx.exe, gdal.msi
- Extract the archive Sat2Chart_install.exe and you will get the Sat2Chart.msi, install the msi

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by opensw

Hello there, I am new here I am testing SasPlanet and sat2chart under my Macbook Air M1 (no intel version)

- SasPlanet is working properly, I did not notice anything wrong.
- About sat2chart I have this error when it is used with SasPlanet + MBTiles
Error: unable to complete SasPlanet request.
If SasPlanet is in Full Screen Mode, turn it off
Try increasing the Typing Delay in the the Options panel
SasPlanet may need to be restarted.

From the wine CrossOverFOSS 23.7.1 log there is not any error during the processing. I have attached also a screenshot. Did I miss something in the sat2chart settings?

For reference about the installation on Mac:
- Install wine with the command brew install gcenx/wine/wine-crossover
- Install under wine in sequence Open Object Rexx.exe, gdal.msi
- Extract the archive Sat2Chart_install.exe and you will get the Sat2Chart.msi, install the msi

I don't have any way to know for sure, but I expect that wine is emulating each program in its own space, and thus they can't interact with each other. If I understand it correctly, wine doesn't emulate the OS, but only provides the libraries that software would need to run. I would suggest trying either Parallels or Fusion. Both of those would provide the full Windows OS and the ability for both programs to run next to each other on the same VM, if that makes sense.

[opensw]

Originally Posted by wholybee

I don't have any way to know for sure, but I expect that wine is emulating each program in its own space, and thus they can't interact with each other. If I understand it correctly, wine doesn't emulate the OS, but only provides the libraries that software would need to run. I would suggest trying either Parallels or Fusion. Both of those would provide the full Windows OS and the ability for both programs to run next to each other on the same VM, if that makes sense.

Hi, on Mac M1 there is an ARM CPU then the only way to use Windows x86_64 is to emulate the x86_64 like with UTM software but it is so slow that Windows is not usable. Under wine evrything is fast like native application

Do we have the access to sat2chart source code? I can try to figure out if under wine is possible to fix this

[barcoMeCasa]

Originally Posted by opensw

Do we have the access to sat2chart source code? I can try to figure out if under wine is possible to fix this

Or just download the mbtiles straight from sasplanet?

[opensw]

Originally Posted by barcoMeCasa

Or just download the mbtiles straight from sasplanet?

Will be great but I do not know how to do this manually. sat2chart automate this process. Can you give me an insight about the manual procedure from SasPlanet?

Thank you