Nighttime colorset hard to read

[Tabaqui]

Hi
First of all thanks for a very nice program!


I do quite a lot of sailing in the dark, and I have trouble gettting the openCPN charts easily readable in dusk or night colors. It has to be said my screen is a normal screen and do not dim down as far as I would have liked. charts i use is an old cm93 and new and updated oesenc



In both Dusk and Night colorschemes I find the colors too close to each other and quite hard to read at an eyeglance. Really have to concentrate to see the depthshading, small rocks and so on. The result is that i use O as my primary nav during daytime, but not so much at night. Last week I did a trial of the Costal Explorer. So far I prefer openCPN, but at night CE colorpalette is a LOT easier to read.


Is there a way to tweak the colorpalette, or is it my screen that wont play ball with the built in? Have tried all the settings on the screen itself, boosting contrast to max helps a bit, but not anywhere near as much as i would like.

[a64pilot]

You can cut a piece of car window tint and put it over your screen, just leave the plastic backing on cause you don’t want it there permanently. Use day mode but dimmed, the tint dims further of course
We did that on very high dollar military aircraft until there was a fix fielded to dim the MPD’s enough.

[hellosailor]

In fact there are also car (and buiding) window tints made of a vinyl material like the "Colorforms" childrens toy, that will self-stick to a screen without adhesives.

There are also theatrical supply houses, in the US the big name in colored/tinted lighting films is Roscoe, brand named "RoscoeLine". Thta gives you a very wide range of tints and colors to select from, inexpensively.

There is also "Amberlith" and "RubyLith" lithographers film. Any commercial printer should be willing to sell you a big piece for the price of a beer. Those are orange and red, respectively.

[a64pilot]

My Father had something I saw in the 60’s when doing his instrument flight training that I have never seen since, it was a red tinted plastic film that adhered to the inside of the aircraft windshield by static, and then you wore a pair of sunglasses, you could not see out of the windows, I’m pretty sure they were both polarized and 90 degrees to each other.
None of these window tints are polarized are they? Cause that may make things interesting on a display if they are.

[bdbcat]

tabaqui...

Could you post a few screen shots of the various configurations, for comparison? This will help us to understand the situation better.

Thanks
Dave

[hellosailor]

Some will be polarized. Not the cheaper ones.

And for some reason, I hear aircraft instruments still haven't learned that if you use a circularly polarized display, sunglasses won't "make" it go black. Maybe they just don't want to pay FCC recertification fees.(G)

[skipperearly]

I use f.lux (justgetflux.com)
Would also prefer to set some color parameters in the .ini file to adjust the dusk/night settings - in fact if you are on night more and want to reset next day at daylight I hardly can find the icons - fortunately I remembered the f5 key

Problem with the dusk/night mode is also that some dialogues (e.g Konnilog_pi) still keep the bright frames.

My2cents

[Tabaqui]

Thanks for the replies. Didnt think on screen film


Tried to attach some screenshots. Sailed this approach last morning just before dusk, and had to switch to daymode and navionics to see the rocks on the map. Very easily readable in daymode, hard in dusk, impossible in nightmode on my screen at least. I also attached a screenshot of CE as a comparison. Not entirely fair as it is only a trial and I dont have full maps, so the area is not the same, but the colorcontrast is easily seen anyway.

[Baikal]

I propose to continue in the subject where they were discussed and the main measures were taken to improve the night regime! http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...-156580-2.html