Navionics et. al. Disapearing reefs and Islands

[aberglas]

As everyone (should) know Navionics and other software makes critical features disappear unless you are using the "correct" zoom. They show average depths instead of minimum depths when zoomed out.



Terrible design. Inexcusable. But that is the way it has always been. Dangerous.


Does anybody know of any software that does NOT do that?



(Navionics hid overhead power lines except for the strongest zoom, awful.)

[wholybee]

At lower zoom levels, if all the detail was shown the screen would be too cluttered. The same is true with paper charts. The small scale charts don't show all the detail you need. So you would need to carry many charts to cover the same area with different amounts of detail. Part of responsible navigating to paying attention to that.

OpenCPN had provisions for adjusting what is displayed at different "zoom" levels, but it depends on the specific charts used and is one of the more complicated things to learn. For instance, you can change the chart scale (and thus what is displayed) independent of the zoom level. Some chart types (CM93) have a simple "detail level" setting that you can adjust up/down until you see what you need, and others (ENC) you can select from dozens of chart symbols to display or not. But even if you select to display a symbol type, if the chart scale you are viewing doesn't include that detail, you won't see it.

Navionics sucks. The apparent inability to adjust detail level is only one of many shortcomings. I know there are many popular alternatives in addition to OpenCPN, and I am sure others will chime in.

[aberglas]

Detail needs to be suppressed intelligently on lower zooms. Specifically, it needs to show minimum depth in an area, not average depth.


This is a really terrible flaw that we have been conditioned to accept as "cannot show too much detail". Nonsense, should always show hazards. Merge them together if necessary. Do not hide them!