Preview of the main new features of opencpn 5
For many if not all of us OpenCpn has been our main
navigation tool for the last few years. Its look and operation has not been very different throughout the almost 10 years that it has been evolving. The 5th version of this great tool is approaching and along with it will come a new interface with additional functions and hopefully more intuitive and functional, as well as more modern and clear.
THE ICON BAR
The former icon bar that consisted of a jumble of different functions has now been split into two independent bars.
To the left indicated by the red arrow, you can see the new configuration bar. This panel, whose design has been modified to be more visible, includes the main configuration functions of the tool. General configuration, plugins, color palette, print,
MOB manager marks and routes and so on. The "hamburger" menu -the three horizontal stripes- allows you to fold and unfold this panel to your liking.
The green arrow however points to the chart panel which encompasses more specific mapping functions. You can see the scale adjustment with a clear indication of the scale, the auto centering and the "hamburger" menu that opens the detailed options of the chart panel.
These options that were previously buried in the depths of the general configuration menu are now more accessible for a better adjustment of what we want our vector mapping to show ... or not.
CANVAS LAYOUT
Another important new feature of this new version is the possibility to show two different charts at the same time on the same
screen or to show the same chart but on two different scales on the split screen in two separate zones. This can be activated in the general configuration menu where it shows
canvas layout.
As an example here we can see two different maps and two different scales. On the left a
satellite view of Tabarca Island obtained through the SASPlanet tool and converted to MBTiles format -another novelty of this version-. And on the right side the same area at a different scale in vector chart format.
As you can see, the amount of information available is greater and therefore we have more options when deciding how and where to sail and / or
anchor. You can see that although the main panel is unique for the whole tool the chart panel is separate for each of them and therefore we can choose what to show or not to our liking separately. This is a powerful tool that well used can improve our
safety in
navigation.
TEMPLATES
This new feature allows us to create templates of how the screen and its
environment will be presented, save them separately so that we can activate them exactly as we liked them and alternate between the different saved modes if we wish.
The red arrow shows the new tab for the templates. The green one shows the button to save our template once it is configured and the blue one shows the recovery template that will allow us to have our screen as it comes by default when installing our OpenCpn from scratch.
MARKS AND ROUTES
Another point to highlight is the improvement in the management of marks and routes implemented. We can see that a new tab has been added in the "boats" section of the general configuration.
This tab called "routes marks" allows us to access a new configuration menu for these:
Where we can choose:
Red arrow, icon for
route points marks. Brown arrow, default icon for isolated marks. And the magenta arrow points to a new option added to the marks in this version. It is the possibility to choose from which scale of the chart our marks become visible or not. This option allows you to ignore the particular options of each mark and force them to be shown -as they have been until now- or allow each one to be shown as it has been configured.
That is to say:
When we create a new mark we can choose from which scale should be made visible or not. This will allow us to show a cleaner and clearer cartography in large scales and at the same time increase the detail and add our favorite marks as the scale changes.
It is a great advance that if used well will improve the visibility of our maps at different scales.
But... What about our old marks? No problem. By default they will be in "always show", as usual.
But we can edit it as always with the routes and marks manager and add the scale to which we want them to appear.
There are also many "under the hood" extras. Improved
route calculations. Support for MBTiles charts. Improvements in certain icons to adjust to the standard of
safety in navigation. Better sound management etc. The truth is that the amount of changes is enormous and has taken more than a year of
work to achieve this major leap in OpenCpn.
THE CONNECTIONS BOX
The connections box has also been re-designed to display information more simply and clearly.
And we can add a personalized comment that will allow us to identify to our taste each connection, where it comes from and what data it transmits or receives. It has also improved internally the way to manage the connections, especially the
network and is expected to be more reliable and faster.
Good Luck.
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