OpenCPN Version 5.1.428 Beta Test

[bdbcat]

Baikal...


re:
"I propose making an open vote for users to display mbtiles as a chart!"


The OpenCPN project is not a voting democracy, any more than other open source projects are.

You (or anyone else) are free to fork the project and set off in any direction you like.


The essential issue with MBTiles is clearly shown by the different user needs. For an extreme example:
1. Jon Hacking wants huge MBTiles, covering large areas with dense scale values available. These things can take many minutes to load. They need to be managed closely, or the UI will suffer. He wants them to start "disabled".

2. Terry (Valhalla) wants smaller, tightly focused MBTiles. These load fast, but since they are sparse, one needs to know where they are. So he wants them always on.


Hard to meet those requirements in a common way.


Now, I know you, and John, and Terry know what you are doing, and your tile sets are clean and suitable for your own use.
But average users discovering MBTiles for the first time have a lot of learning to do. I cannot tell you how many times I have debugged a bad MBTiles display, during which I ask the user: "Where did you get this tileset?" Answer: "I'm not sure, I downloaded it off the internet." We do not want to encourage navigation like that...




Dave

[LeaseOnLife]

Originally Posted by Baikal

Dave, users have problems with sources of relevant charts for OpenCPN. Using the old CM93/2 is unsafe, oeSenc is limited in coverage and does not display charts correctly. You give users the opportunity to easily and quickly make mbtiles from various sources (Sat, Marine chart) of the wonderful SasPlanet program, but limit their potential. Anyone who prepares mbtiles, geotiff, jpg, from SasPlanet sees and takes into account the projection metadata, Zoom, we ourselves are responsible for the use of such sources. Let me remind you that earlier mbtiles worked in CPN as a KAP chart, it was convenient and there were no problems with performance on large coverage. There was a proposal to make a hybrid mbtiles display with ENC FS#2529.
I propose making an open vote for users to display mbtiles as a chart!

Baikal: +1 one from me. I am cruising with mbtiles almost exclusively since > 1 year.

[LeaseOnLife]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Baikal...


re:
"I propose making an open vote for users to display mbtiles as a chart!"


The OpenCPN project is not a voting democracy, any more than other open source projects are.

You (or anyone else) are free to fork the project and set off in any direction you like.


The essential issue with MBTiles is clearly shown by the different user needs. For an extreme example:
1. Jon Hacking wants huge MBTiles, covering large areas with dense scale values available. These things can take many minutes to load. They need to be managed closely, or the UI will suffer. He wants them to start "disabled".

2. Terry (Valhalla) wants smaller, tightly focused MBTiles. These load fast, but since they are sparse, one needs to know where they are. So he wants them always on.


Hard to meet those requirements in a common way.


Now, I know you, and John, and Terry know what you are doing, and your tile sets are clean and suitable for your own use.
But average users discovering MBTiles for the first time have a lot of learning to do. I cannot tell you how many times I have debugged a bad MBTiles display, during which I ask the user: "Where did you get this tileset?" Answer: "I'm not sure, I downloaded it off the internet." We do not want to encourage navigation like that...




Dave

I don't get it... At least the geo-referencing for mbtiles should be much better than home-calibrated KAP charts? In the not-so-good old days, putting cal-points on a chart manually, I made many errors myself. That hasn't happened to me with mbtiles made by SASPlanet.

There may be other methods of creating mbtiles, but I haven't seen anything widely used ?!?!

[Baikal]

Dave, maybe add a ChartZoom / Scale Weighting setting for Mbtiles that can satisfy many? For example, I need mbtiles to start displaying on a low scale threshold i.e. I can underestimate the (-) ChartZoom. Someone will raise (+) to constantly display on a large scale.

We see that many people use mbtiles for navigation in OpenCPN (+1), among other things, like many land users who use the web map cache for navigation in mobile applications, no one has problems. I note that Navionics, C-MAP, Wärtsilä (Transas) now offer an API for using such sources of web maps in applications.

I would like to believe that in the future CPN will learn how to directly download and display web map tiles as in SasPlanet

[BlackSea]

Originally Posted by Baikal

Dave, maybe add a ChartZoom / Scale Weighting setting for Mbtiles that can satisfy many? For example, I need mbtiles to start displaying on a low scale threshold i.e. I can underestimate the (-) ChartZoom. Someone will raise (+) to constantly display on a large scale.

something like this?
https://opencpn.org/flyspray/index.p...rom=&closedto=

[bcn]

Originally Posted by Baikal

, oeSenc is limited in coverage and does not display charts correctly.

What issue(s) do you observe? Precisely...

[bcn]

Originally Posted by Baikal

I would like to believe that in the future CPN will learn how to directly download and display web map tiles as in SasPlanet

This will happen for sure in the moment reliable mbTiles are issued by chart editors. Hydrographic Offices will do that. In vector format.

[yachtvalhalla]

If any of the Mbtiles that are hidden on launch are subsequently displayed, they stay displayed until the program is restarted.

Does this fit with whatever logic is used to have them hidden on launch?

Terry

[CarCode]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

The OpenCPN project is not a voting democracy, any more than other open source projects are.

So there are three OpenCPN projects now?
- This one here without voting
- Another one at Flyspray with voting
- and finally the Android version


Interesting.

[Jon Hacking]

Please, lets not get into a pissing contest here. This is Dave's baby. It's a well loved baby, & we all depend on it for our very lives. Dave is good enough to take input from his many, many users on what to add & what to change. Let's not abuse that, please, but instead move ahead thoughtfully.

Right now, I'm seeing 2 possible bugs, both found by Terry:

1. The outlines for mbTiles disappear above a certain elevation (zoom)
   
2. Once mbTiles are displayed, they don't go away until OpenCPN is restarted

For #1, KAP outlines are (or were) visible at all zooms. I think this was very useful, & Terry's sparse coverage would really benefit from this. Can we please have mbTiles outlines visible at all zooms as well? Like KAPs, the piano keys don't need to be displayed until OpenCPN is zoomed in enough to display the chart.

Number 2 is clearly a bug. Display of mbTiles should be controlled by the piano keys, just like any other chart type. As this bug (#2601) was written, whatever piano key is pressed should display that chart immediately rather than the V5.0 click on/click off paradigm (or a switch should allow the user to choose which paradigm they want to use), but I don't know if this has been implemented yet.

Terry, can you please give repro steps so Dave can deal with this? I need to try it as well.

And Dave, a special Thank You from me for modifying the way mbTiles are displayed, as I think you took this bug pretty late in the development cycle.

[P_Dub]

I agree, Dave is doing a wonderful job and not many chart programs are allowing the use of mbtiles or such a feature. So, if you make any for yourself and you are happy with it, its OK. But no need to be fussy about it. Excellent job Dave and others, all we need is to adjust a bid of ourself at each version coming out. It might be not so easy at times but doable. Once again, thanks a lot Dave, I have been using electronic charts for almost 3 decades now and I am most happy with Opencpn.
Best Regards.
P_Dub

[svspirited]

I'm still seeing the bug that was presented in tracker ID 2650. This only seems to happen when I run with a screen resolution of 3840x2160 with a 200% scale factor, I am running this on a 13" screen at that resolution so the scaling helps make things more visible. If I turn scaling back to the normal 100% it works fine but I thin have to scale up all of the OpenCPN objects to 4 or 5 for them to be usable. Aside from that everything else I have tried appears to work well and I'm liking the new plugin dialog.

[bdbcat]

Valhalla...
re:
"If any of the Mbtiles that are hidden on launch are subsequently displayed, they stay displayed until the program is restarted."


Terry, is this an observation, or a suggestion?


Thanks
Dave

[Ivanm]

Herewith a Vdr recording of the delayed COG indicator. It does not happen all the time and not on O5.0

Originally Posted by Hakan

This I can confirm. I've been using this O version the last weeks. I thought it was some GPS trouble. I can't reproduce it in a good way using old VDR files so I've to record some new VDR to show Dave. You don't happen to have have some already recorded to upload here, do you?
Håkan

444.pdf

[Hakan]

Ivanm...
I also made some VDRs today and earlier.
The "delay" effect is obvious and probably related to the Windows serial port handler. It may be Dave has a track on this. We are testing some tweaks. Stay tuned and thanks for the input.