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[Jon Hacking]

Wingsail, you generally want quilting turned ON, or OpenCPN only shows charts at one resolution (& if that resolution isn't available for neighboring areas, it does NOT use an available chart with a different resolution, but it will if quilting is ON). The shortcut for turning chart quilting on/off is F9. You should note the piano keys getting rounded corners when it's on.

[fgd3]

Originally Posted by wingssail

The chart piano bars had sharp corners.

That tells me chart quilting was disabled.


Fabbian

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

Wingsail, you generally want quilting turned ON, or OpenCPN only shows charts at one resolution (& if that resolution isn't available for neighboring areas, it does NOT use an available chart with a different resolution, but it will if quilting is ON). The shortcut for turning chart quilting on/off is F9. You should note the piano keys getting rounded corners when it's on.

Thanks Jon, but the issue here is that quilting is getting turned off when I click the blue piano bar for the new .kap chart. I can watch the process: Quilting on, click the chart, quilting off, and the display has the default world chart. This is represented by the log.

12:06:43 PM: OpenChartUsingCache: type 3 G:\CHARTS\Mexico\Mexico Raster Scan Charts IMGKAP\cleofas.kap
12:06:43 PM: Creating new chart
12:06:43 PM: Initializing Chart G:\CHARTS\Mexico\Mexico Raster Scan Charts IMGKAP\cleofas.kap
12:06:43 PM: Metrics: m_display_size_mm: 344 wxDisplaySize: 1920:1080
12:06:44 PM: Loading World Chart Q=0 in 0 ms.
12:06:44 PM: Background world map loaded from GSHHS datafiles found in: C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenCPN\gshhs\

Originally Posted by fgd3

That tells me chart quilting was disabled.
Fabbian

Yes you're right, I misspoke. The tiles are rounded.

[Jon Hacking]

Loading a KAP turns off quilting!?! Unfortunately, that's above my pay-grade. Hopefully one of the Devs can look into this more.

However, I am wondering why you're still using KAPs? I started with KAPs in 2014, & I've published a LOT of very high resolution KAPs for SE Asia for other cruisers to download. But now we've moved on to mbTiles.

KAPs are limited to only 128 colors, & we're using them to try to find anchorages in remote locations, so we're looking for minute changes in the color of the water. Which is why we don't merge our KAPs into larger KAPs, as that produces much more color degradation.

MbTiles don't have that restriction, & have virtually unlimited color depth, even when they're merged into quite large mbTiles. And since a single mbTile can have multiple zoom levels, OpenCPN only has to extract the relevant zoom level & display it, so panning around & zooming is usually faster with mbTiles than KAPs. We make ours with a pair of free tools, Sat2Chart & SAS Planet.

Basically, we make routes in OpenCPN along the edges of land, or around archipelagos, then we export those routes as .GPX files. Feed those GPX routes to Sat2Chart & it will drive SAS (or GE) to download all the necessary imagery, & then it will make mbTiles from that imagery. There's a switch to merge mbTiles into a single large mbTile. The Sat2Chart developer is usually quite responsive to questions or problems, & he's made several videos showing how to use it, and the Help section is pretty good as well.

Perhaps best of all, SAS allows access to LOTS of satellite imagery: ArcGIS (which is excellent), Bing (Microsoft), GE, Nokia, & also CMap & Navionics navigational charts (as well as MANY others). And Sat2Chart will create mbTiles from as many maps as you want.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

However, I am wondering why you're still using KAPs? I started with KAPs in 2014, & I've published a LOT of very high resolution KAPs for SE Asia for other cruisers to download. But now we've moved on to mbTiles.

Thanks for the tip Jon, I've been using the old imgkap program for years and for me it's sort of a zen activity.

But I know I should switch over to Sat2Chart or Sasplanet, or even Ge2kap but I've put it off due to the learning curve.

Guess I'll do it this summer while I'm in self imposed quarantine in some remote Mexican anchorage.

Have your concerns about the piano tile aspect of MBTiles been resolved?

Fred

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by wingssail

... I know I should switch over to Sat2Chart or Sasplanet, or even Ge2kap but I've put it off due to the learning curve.

Have your concerns about the piano tile aspect of MBTiles been resolved?

Fred

Hi Fred. GE2KAP has now become Sat2Chart. Yeah, there's a learning curve with everything, but this one's not steep, especially if you've made charts before. If you PM me I'm happy to help. There's also a GE2KAP FB group (not sure why he doesn't change the name) for help. And SAS Planet is an excellent nav-aid all by itself.

OpenCPN has not released a new rev since V5 first came out 13 months ago, so it's handling of mbTiles is still ... sub-optimal. It was a first swing, after all. But the bugs I've submitted have been accepted, so I'm hopeful that the next version will treat mbTiles like any other chart type. In the meantime, Sat2Chart now has a Merge switch to merge a bunch of small mbTiles into a big one, even if they're non-contiguous, & this has helped the piano-keys problems somewhat.

[bdbcat]

Jon...


"But the bugs I've submitted have been accepted,"


And which are these, please?


Thanks
Dave

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Jon...

"But the bugs I've submitted have been accepted,"

And which are these, please?

Thanks, Dave

Hi Dave - Good to see you on here. Perhaps I was a bit presumptuous. They've been "Vetted", which I hoped meant that they'd been accepted. They're:

2601: Switch for mbTiles piano keys, & mbTiles wake up OFF (currently unassigned)
and
2267: UI Position & Remember Dialog box, Column (size & position, sort order) etc. (nominally assigned to you)

I'm a bit distressed that 2601 is currently unassigned, as I (& several others) view that as fairly important. It's the bug I was referring to in this recent thread. The performance hit when OpenCPN is panned over an area with (loaded) mbTiles can be huge as it suddenly tries to display them, & there's no reason for it to try to display those charts when I've already told it which (other) chart I want displayed. I'm not sure why OpenCPN always wants to open & display every mbTile it knows about. Opening multiple opaque mbTiles at the same time makes no sense, can be a huge performance hit, is significantly different from how OpenCPN used to work, is significantly different from how it handles other chart types (like KAPs), & is a bug IMHO.

IMO, OpenCPN should wake up with either the easiest charts for it to display (usually CM93) or with whatever chart was displayed when it was last shut down (which would be more professional). It should NOT wake up with all mbTiles turned on, which what it currently does. I understand that mbTiles can have transparent areas, so some folks may want to have multiple mbTiles displayed at the same time, but I've never met any of those folks. Many (most?) mbTiles are now made with SAS Planet & Sat2Chart. ALL of those mbTiles are opaque AFAIK, so we really don't want them all opened at the same time.

I make (& will soon be publishing for cruisers to download) mbTiles for almost all the coastlines of countries from the Solomon Islands & Micronesia to the Maldives & Chagos. For all of those, I make mbTiles in ArcGIS, Bing, GE, CMap, & Navionics. Obviously, those can't overlay each other, & it's a bother to have to go turning each of them off all the time when OpenCPN suddenly decides to display them. It's also an unnecessary bother to turn one off & another on when I want to switch between mbTiles. And since some of those mbTiles are quite big (5GB) the performance hit when OpenCPN suddenly decides to display them can be huge.

If there are enough transparent mbTiles out there to warrant allowing multiple mbTiles to be displayed simultaneously, fine. But please provide a switch for the rest of us so that only 1 mbTile is displayed at a time, & mbTiles are treated like other chart types, where clicking on a piano-key displays THAT chart, no matter what chart was displayed previously. This would be in keeping with the previous paradigm. And PLEASE have OpenCPN only open ANY chart type when specifically told to by the user.

Thanks!

[Seizan]

Hi!

Thought i should post since maybe someone else have or will have the same issue.
I downloaded Ocpn a few days ago, worked a little then later on when i tryed to open windows is saying: "Not responding". Uninstalled and intalled again, and i'm now on third time doing that... i have not added or done anything to the program since last time i run it, it just stoped to launch
Anyone have a hunch what this can be?

The PC i'm using is a good one and using windows 10.

[Jon Hacking]

Seizan, First, Welcome to Cruisers Forum!

What kinds of charts are you opening? Asking because some types can take a long time to load up, like detailed KAPs or mbTiles. While it's digesting those, it appears to be unresponsive, & Win10 will report it as such, even though it's just thinking.

[Seizan]

TY for welcoming me on board

Atm i got all the norwegian charts downloaded, oeSENC.

I just did a full uninstall and installed it again now, and download all the charts again too.
So far it works it works.
Next thing i will do is to reinstall the gps plugin, then it all will be same as i had earlyer.

Edit: oh just remembered i was working on some weather things too, so i'll also get that download, then see how that works out.

[bcn]

The Norwegian charts set is quite large (>1.200 single cells) and in some regions very detailed.
Installing the chart data base has to be created. This takes time.


Next be careful defining the objects you want to be displayed, optimize the zoom detail setting, and observe the differences.



Which "GPS-plug-in"?

[Seizan]

Okay all seems to work now, will give it a few days and see.

[Seizan]

Originally Posted by bcn

Which "GPS-plug-in"?

Haha sorry, i thought it was a plugin, but it was not

[Traction]

Have purchased AusENC costal pack for Australia, have cell permit, fingerprint file and install permit with files unzipped to advised directory. Have S63 and oeSENC plug in. When trying to load charts it is requesting xml file which mine are not. What am I doing wrong here. This issue is on windows 10 pc. Been reading the forum looking.
Also having similar issue with Android looking for url address for charts. Appreciate some direction here please. Regards Mark