Feature Requests

[LeaseOnLife]

The QuikSCAT satellite failed on Nov 23rd 2009. All qscat grib data downloaded from saildocs are data from 11/23 or older, pretty useless.

QuikSCAT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is an European ASCAT but I haven't found any grib data for it, yet.

Featue request for opencpn: show the "valid" date of the data from a scatterometer, show a warning if data are older than xxx

[cagney]

Thanks LeaseOnLife for the link. I was not aware of the recent problems, even though I knew of the general circumstances surrounding QScat.
Unfortunately this probably means that the "normal" grib files are less reliable as well, as qscat is an important input to the automated analysis that creates these.

Whatever the future the "legacy" of QScat will be with us for years.
The most important use of Qscat that I know of is this project :Climatology of Global Ocean Winds - COGOW.

To be a bit drastic I would say: Forget about Pilot & Routing Charts for passage planning use COGOW instead.

I have converted one of the COGOW maps for use with OpenCPN,
but unfortunately the resolution is to low to be of real use.

Thomas

[idpnd]

Originally Posted by cagney

To be a bit drastic I would say: Forget about Pilot & Routing Charts for passage planning use COGOW instead.

Indeed!

[Viking Sailor]

Dave,

Please consider building a portable version of OpenCPN for at least Windows XP. It would be very nice to have OpenCPN installed on a flash drive with a complete set of charts. This version would have all of its files in a single folder, be completely self-contained, and can be run directly from the flash drive. No install required.

Thank you for OpenCPN and have a very Happy New Year!

Paul

[skipmac]

I cannot imagine that this question has not come up but I searched the OpenCPN forum, help files, etc and could find nothing on the issue.

Unless it is well hidden there does not seem to be a way to rotate the charts on the screen. Several of the NOAA Intracoastal charts display quite randomly with north up, down or sideways. Very confusing, especially when switching from one chart to the next with a different orientation.

Is it possible to set the charts north up or even course up? Is this feature already in the program and I am just missing it? If not can it be added?

Possibly the display automatically switchers to course up when a GPS is connected. Right now I'm just using OpenCPN to display charts for manual nav.

Thanks
Skip

[idpnd]

Originally Posted by Viking Sailor

Dave,

Please consider building a portable version of OpenCPN for at least Windows XP. It would be very nice to have OpenCPN installed on a flash drive with a complete set of charts. This version would have all of its files in a single folder, be completely self-contained, and can be run directly from the flash drive. No install required.

Thank you for OpenCPN and have a very Happy New Year!

Paul

Couple of tutorials around on how to do that:

YouTube - How to make any app portable

InstallFree - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Viking Sailor]

Originally Posted by skipmac

I cannot imagine that this question has not come up but I searched the OpenCPN forum, help files, etc and could find nothing on the issue.

Unless it is well hidden there does not seem to be a way to rotate the charts on the screen. Several of the NOAA Intracoastal charts display quite randomly with north up, down or sideways. Very confusing, especially when switching from one chart to the next with a different orientation.

Is it possible to set the charts north up or even course up? Is this feature already in the program and I am just missing it? If not can it be added?

Possibly the display automatically switchers to course up when a GPS is connected. Right now I'm just using OpenCPN to display charts for manual nav.

Thanks
Skip

Skip,

Blongsea has offered a suggestion that I think is most excellent! It is for a manual map orientation control. I have copied his suggestion below. Altho the suggested compass rose would be cool, a couple of simple rotate right/left buttons would be fine by me.

Paul

Originally Posted by Blongsea

I use OpenCPN (c) 2000-2009 The OpenCPN Authors Version 1.3.4 and I am very happy and extremely impressed with this software. I can't thank the people behind this enough. Can I contribute in any way?

My suggestions are many never the less because I suppose even in the perfect world many things can be done differently and maybe better.

2) another suggestion regarding a map course up orientation. I have used this option with other software and it is very good at times. But it has drawbacks like causing the map to wiggle back and forth nervously. My wish is for a "compass rose" that can be turned around (much like in Google earth) and thus allowing for a fixed manual "course up" without the wiggly action of a locked course up function in other software.

Cheers and many thanks from Blongsea

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by Viking Sailor

Skip,

Blongsea has offered a suggestion that I think is most excellent! It is for a manual map orientation control. I have copied his suggestion below. Altho the suggested compass rose would be cool, a couple of simple rotate right/left buttons would be fine by me.

Paul

I agree that "course up" is not my favorite, for the very reason pointed out by Blongsea but at this point, the easiest solution for the developers based on programming restrictions would be great.

Just brought the boat down the ICW from RI to FL so used mostly ICW charts. Switching from one to the next the orientation could jump from N pointing east to north pointing SW. Totally random based it seems on fitting the most chart on a horizontal screen. A couple of times this almost got me aground trying to figure out the new chart and spot a distant marker in a wide open area.

Skip

[Ptizef]

Hi
When closing OpenCPN , the current position is memorized . But when re-starting , OpenCPN open in the bigger map scale available at this place .
Could it be possible to have Opencpn starting at the same place , in the same map scale and at the same zoom level than when exiting ?
Of course , may be that means memorizing all these informations (map's name and zoom level) in the init file ...
Note : The problem exist only when BBS only or BBS+CM93 are available . With CM93 only , it works fine . I don't know the behavior with S57

Regards
Jean Pierre

[sredna]

Originally Posted by manimaul

idpnd,

I think you posted a feature request for full screen mode in opencpn. Since you are a Linux+Gnome user, you can do this now.

System-->Preferences-->Keyboard Shortcuts

Add an entry in Window Management-->Toggle Fullscreen Mode

I use Shift+F11 as my shortcut

I just found this yesterday... works perfect.

You mean in linux, using your windowsmanager (do you use gnome and metacity?)

In KDE 4 you can find the function in the window (titlebar) context menu under "Advanced", and you have to press ALT + F3 (standard) to activate the menu again to get back to normal windowed mode. Embarrasingly no GUI for setting shortcuts for window actions

But it is doable, so thanks for the hint anyways :-)

[raisin56]

OK guys....
Google has announced it. The Nexus One Nexus One Phone - Feature overview & Technical specifications

GPS
Compass
Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz processor
512 MB ram
Micro SD slot upto 32GB

Oh ...almost forgot, it has an international GSM phone ability too.

Which one of you super programmers will port OpenCPN to it first?

[Extemporaneous]

Have OpenCPN read depth from your depth sounder at preset intervals and drop them on your chart (as a waypoint of sorts??) with the depth showing as text?
Maybe this has been discussed before but I didn't notice it if it was.
Perhaps these soundings could then be shared.
Would certainly be cool for places that have few, changing or very old soundings. I do understand that if this sharing was not implemented right it could have a lot of misinformation and perhaps even dire consequences. Not unlike some of the electronic chart sharing that goes on.

Just a thought/question more than a request.
Extemp.

P.S. I can't think of a good way to validate the contributed soundings but perhaps it could be based loosely the same way as sellers on ebay?

[idpnd]

This sort of feature is being discussed, yes

[GDD]

Hi,

I brought this issue up in the 'OpenCpn on a netbook string' but this like perhaps a better place. I would like to suggest to add '=' to list of key commands that do the zoom-in function.

The reason is that on my asus netbook (and probably other netbooks also) '+' and '=' share a key , and you need to press 'shift' and '=' to access the '+' command.

This means that when I reach down my companionway (with one hand on the tiller) to change to pan or zoom the map being displayed I need to use two hands to zoom in. It seems like an easy issue to fix.

thanks for all the great work on 1.3.6

george

[manimaul]

Gdd, there already are alternative zoom hot keys.
Hot Keys |