Weather Routing

[Gilletarom]

Hello Sean,

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

If the sailplan changes along the route, a square is rendered on the chart. Perhaps this is confusing in any language and the sentence should be modified.

Thank you.

Ok, If I understand well, it is possible to replace "Squares at Sail Changes" by "Add a mark on chart, at each change of sail".

So, I update the French file language on Crowdin, now. But, If I am wrond, please, alert me.

Best regards, Gilletarom.

[Gilletarom]

Hello Sean of Epagnier,

Unable to use Weather-Routing on my little Asus whose screen is too small, I could install O 4.0, Climatology and Weather routing on another PC souw W XP.

But I was not able to decompress the data file "tar.xz." This is not what is important.

I launched O and weather-routing.
Creating point routing, no problem.
Creating a road weather, no problem. But I made the mistake of forgetting to choose not to use Climatology.

This is the time of complilation I had a crash.

I send you the crash-report. May be you he will.

Note that the image is out of zip because if I place the image in the zip, it is too big.

Best regards, Gilletarom.

[bewitched]

I would just like to thank everyone who is contributing to this project.

I played around with the plugin for the first time this morning and I am super impressed. If I can replace my dependence on Expedition for routing I will be a very happy bunny indeed.

One of the best, if not the best, OpenCPN plugins available.

thanks again.

[rgleason]

Bewitched, glad you like it.

I just found a very interesting thread from 2011 with the development of an earlier polar routing plugin for Opencpn 2.5. Many thanks to PjotrC, Sindbad 7, Jonas, Cagney and others for this pioneering effort.
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ess-68475.html
I found the thread to be very interesting reading, and wondered if any of you have been using weather_routing_pi? And if so, what do you like? Where could it be improved?

I know that PjotrC has suggested a spreadsheet format as being very useful for cruise planning, and I've forgotten the details of that after getting focused on Sean's development, but it might be useful to see how PjotrC uses his plugin now, and what suggestions he would have for this plugin.

I could not find the code anywhere, but at one point Pavel had it in his github. Perhaps parts of the code were used by Sean?

[touchngo]

How do I convert my .pol and/or .xls polar to an xml file that the Plugin will recognize? I tried simply saving the xls file as an xml file but Opencpn simply crashes. If I try to use either the .pol or .xls files, I get the following;
"Failed to load file: /home/paul/Boat/sunodyssey40.xls"

Appreciate your feedback.

Cheers, PT

[rgleason]

Here are three links to Polars
CONSULTATION DES TABLES HN H108 et H109
Federation Francaise de Voile
Boats & Polars - BLUR
About Polars
Oppedijk - Create Polar Diagram

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by touchngo

How do I convert my .pol and/or .xls polar to an xml file that the Plugin will recognize? I tried simply saving the xls file as an xml file but Opencpn simply crashes. If I try to use either the .pol or .xls files, I get the following;
"Failed to load file: /home/paul/Boat/sunodyssey40.xls"

Appreciate your feedback.

Cheers, PT

Opencpn crashes? This sounds like a bug. Can you please post the file that causes it to crash?

It should be possible to export the xls file to a csv file somehow.

The plugin uses an xml file for the boat, but each polar is in the .pol format. Take a look at the example polar files

[rgleason]

Gille... Look at the end of the wiki Weather Routing Plugin | Official OpenCPN Homepage where I've shown the formats for various types of polar files, including weather_routing_pi (you will probably find unsuitable). Please note that the ending character of each line is important, however Sean has built in resiliency and checking for that to enable greater compatibility. Look at your file in a text editor and compare with the ones shown.

[touchngo]

The XML file was created with Open Office on a Windows 7 machine, and the CSV file was created with Open Office on Ubuntu 14.04. The XLS and POL files were provided by Phille from Virtual Winds to use with qtVlm (I was trying out Navigatrix at the time).

I tried to attach the xml file, but the pop up window is saying that it is invalid. It's also saying this about the pol and csv as well.

I can send them by email if necessary, but if I can get a working copy of the xls file I'd be happy.

Cheers PT
sunodyssey40.xls

[bcn]

Just zip files and and rename them to .doc "something.zip.doc"
Then the forum will accept those

Hubert

[touchngo]

Ok, here's the xml, csv, pol and xls again

sunodyssey40.xml.doc

sunodyssey40.xls.doc

sunodyssey40.csv.doc

sunodyssey40.pol.doc.

Just remove the .doc

Cheers, PT

[seandepagnier]

I had to edit the first line:

twa/tws0;4;6;8;10;12;14;16;20;25;30;35;40;45;50;55;60

to

twa/tws;0;4;6;8;10;12;14;16;20;25;30;35;40;45;50;55;60

[Gilletarom]

Hello Sean of Epagnier,

The contents of the file in French language has evolved in recent days in the Crowdin.
There are still some items that are not translated correctly but it will come.

On the other hand, there are some items in the crowdin, and therefore are translated, but that does not appear translated on screen .

I also recall that the absence of a slider in the boat definition window prevents using WR on PCs with small screens.

An improved version, official, would be welcome.

B.R. Gilletarom.

[bewitched]

Originally Posted by rgleason

.... wondered if any of you have been using weather_routing_pi? And if so, what do you like? Where could it be improved?

I know that PjotrC has suggested a spreadsheet format as being very useful for cruise planning, ..........

My 2c..

I understand that I can read conditions along the route from the grib plugin, but I find that wind barbs along the route very useful for quickly understanding where I might get sleep, sail changes etc. See attached pic as example...(also, this shows a window open showing spreadsheet data for each position on route).

Route Sensitivity - the ability to test the sensitivity of the route. i.e. what if the wind is only 90% that forecast, etc.

A comprehensive 'Help" document. There are terms in the Route Configuration that are a mystery to me. Options: "inverted regions", Constraints: "wind vs current" are examples. If the user is required to make a choice, he should understand what that choice is.

In the Plot window the descriptions are misleading. Please use the standard terminology:
Course Over Ground (COG) not Boat Course Ground
True Wind Direction (TWD) not Wind Course
True Wind Angle (TWA) not Wind Direction
Set & Drift not Current Direction and Current Velocity
etc.

All the above is a winge and a whine I know, so I'll end with a complement: The choices and constraints available to the user in the route configuration is great. In future revisions, please never loose this 'tinkerability'. It's the core of a good route planner.

[bewitched]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Gille... Look at the end of the wiki Weather Routing Plugin | Official OpenCPN Homepage where I've shown the formats for various types of polar files, including weather_routing_pi (you will probably find unsuitable). Please note that the ending character of each line is important, however Sean has built in resiliency and checking for that to enable greater compatibility. Look at your file in a text editor and compare with the ones shown.

I must admit I have quite a bit of trouble getting the polars into the correct format. I have them in a .txt file in the format that Expedition likes. Is there a quick and easy way to convert them to the OCPN Plugin format?

Also, what exactly is the OCPN plugin format? Is there a .txt file anywhere that shows this? (links to the Shannon38 files don't seen to be there in the user manual)