Charts

[bdbcat]

Sinbad7/Cagney....

Cagney's observation about the new algorithm for small scale charts in opencpn is accurate.

Trouble is, this new algorithm is not present in Version 1.3.4. It is only available in a private version compiled by Cagney for test and experimentation.

So, 1.3.4 will do a poor job of latitude georeferencing for 1:10MM charts such as these. I recommend that you concentrate your efforts on scales greater than 1:1MM or so for the present. You may want to look at some NOAA BSB charts to get a feel for the number of REF points needed for small scale charts. NOAA 411 (1:3.5MM) uses over 100 REF points.

We are planning a 1.3.5 Beta in a week or so. We'll do better then.

Meanwhile, congratulations on the great work being done by this sub-group!

Second point:
I like the idea of a "wallpaper" BSB chart to replace the current blue-on-black WVS chart. If someone could send me a sample of a world chart that looks nice, I'll try to get it working for the next beta. Mercator projection, please.

I liked the NASA Bathymetry example shown previously. I have a copy of this, but the scale in the chart header is wrong, so opencpn cannot display it without a private hack.Could this BSB chart be rebuilt with correct scale?
Or any other chart that looks good can be used for testing....

I plan to make this wallpaper chart somewhat configurable, at least as a manual config file edit option.

Good Job...
Dave

[sinbad7]

Couldn't resist this giant sized chart of New York harbor from the 60's..
Navigation marks may have changed but the land contours remain largely the same.

I know there are ample US maps in BSB format but not such good detail as this.

NOT FOR NAVIGATION PURPOSES!

[jcjglt]

I installed OpenCPN 1.3.4 yesterday and loaded my CM93 world chart. Everything is working well and the program looks nice.
However I did not find a way to select a chart in the GUI, I have now to work with this CM93 and the sample chart which was inside the downloaded file cannot be anymore used. My question may look basic but is it possible to select a chart which appears in Toolbox - Charts - Active charts directories ?
Best regards to all, JC

[sinbad7]

A good way to check the accuracy of the map calibration is to compare the AIS target position in the query box with the mouse over position of the target shown in the status bar. I have converted several good charts of the Solent as a test bed.

[cagney]

Originally Posted by jcjglt

I installed OpenCPN 1.3.4 yesterday and loaded my CM93 world chart. Everything is working well and the program looks nice.
However I did not find a way to select a chart in the GUI, I have now to work with this CM93 and the sample chart which was inside the downloaded file cannot be anymore used. My question may look basic but is it possible to select a chart which appears in Toolbox - Charts - Active charts directories ?
Best regards to all, JC

Thank you and welcome to the OpenCPN (sub) forum.
The best way ahead is to download some charts, see post #3 in the help thread. Put your charts in a directory.
Then go to Toolbox and find your chart directory in "Available Chart Directories". Once you have marked it click the "Add Selection" button and your chart directory will appear in the "Active Chart Directories" box. Then click the "OK" button and OpenCPN will register all charts in the listed directories. These charts should now be available. If you have problems with this procedure, it would help if you could attach your opencpn log file.
Look for the logfile in these locations
On Linux : /home/{user}/opencp.log
On Windows
Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data\opencpn\opencpn.log

Thomas

[jcjglt]

Originally Posted by cagney

Thank you and welcome to the OpenCPN (sub) forum.
The best way ahead is to download some charts, see post #3 in the help thread. Put your charts in a directory.
Then go to Toolbox and find your chart directory in "Available Chart Directories". Once you have marked it click the "Add Selection" button and your chart directory will appear in the "Active Chart Directories" box. Then click the "OK" button and OpenCPN will register all charts in the listed directories. These charts should now be available. If you have problems with this procedure, it would help if you could attach your opencpn log file.
Look for the logfile in these locations
On Linux : /home/{user}/opencp.log
On Windows
Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data\opencpn\opencpn.log

Thomas

Thank you for your answer.
I had already done what you say : ToolBox - Charts - selection of my CM93 directory - which appeared in the "Active chart directories" box then OK.
Then I moved in the "Sample US chart" loaded when installing 1.3.4, working normally. When I moved beyond the outer limits of this US chart I fell in my CM93 charts which work perfectly but I cannot come back.
My question is about the fact that I cannot return to the "sample US chart" and I wonder how I can select a chart shown in the "Active chart directories", is there a way to do it or will OpenCPN only open ONE chart ?
Last answer, I searched my computer (Windows XP - Edition Tablet PC2005 - Edition 2002 - Service Pack 3) and I did not find neither \Application Data directory nor \opencpn.log file.
JC

[dacust]

jcjglt,

At the bottom of the screen there will be a bar with one or more colored rectangles. These represent the charts available for that location. Hover your mouse over these rectangles and a preview should show at the upper left of the screen. Click on a rectangle to switch to that chart.

-dan

[cagney]

OK, sorry if I misunderstood you. All the charts available where you last clicked on the screen shows up as colored rectangles in the bar just below the chart, and above the status bar, if activated in the toolbox. Blue for raster, yellow for CM93 and green for S57 vector charts. Clicking on any of these will bring up the chart. If you only see a yellow bar, you only have cm93 available in that location
To see the outlines of the available charts in cm93, activate Toolbox==> Settings==> "Show Chart Outlines". This will give an easy overview of the loaded charts.

The correct window path to the log-file on XP is
Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data\opencpn\opencpn
but it is a hidden file, so you may have to adjust your settings to find it.
I hope this will help!!

Thomas

[jcjglt]

Thanks all for your answers. My question was quite silly : I could only find a yellow bar on my location as I have only CM93 charts there ; I moved to the Eastern US coasts and found back brown, dark blue, green and sky blue bars down below.
I start to feel this is a very nice program, which is well fit to a quite slow computer (Q1 Tablet PC by Samsung - microprocessor speed 700Mhz). It compares very favourably with MaxSea and does not provide all these useless buttons which would more slow down my slow PC.
To end this comments I should say that since one day I spent a lot of time reading this group threads and they are of the highest value : thanks to all for your nice contributions.
JC

[jcjglt]

JC again, about the hidden files, I found them. I am working with a Windows XP system. I am quite at ease with Linux and not so well with Windows, which I deeply dislike but I have no choice with my Q1 Samsung.
Best regards to all, JC

[kerrydeare]

Originally Posted by dacust

... At the bottom of the screen there will be a bar with one or more colored rectangles. These represent the charts available for that location ...

I mentioned this earlier in the "mega thread" but perhaps another mention is useful. It would be "nice" to be able to select any registered chart in addition to those covering the current position. This is useful for both browsing and detailed route planning. Many software packages have some sort of "Select A Chart" window that lists all registered charts. I have found this quite helpful for planning. I do recall that Dave's initial idea was aimed at actual use underway, and of course the current OpenCPN version addresses this case very well.

[cagney]

Next step on our way.......

Thanks to Dan, Marco and lots of others in the mc2bsbh - thread I was able to convert one of many WCI files I have ( mainly thanks to Terry on yacht "Valhalla") to a bsb3 file that works with OpenCPN. See picture below.
1. Copy the text in a WCI file to a text file. Look towards the end of the WCI file.
2. Run mc2bsbh on this file to get a template file for libbsb. In my case

mc2bsbh PA-header templatePoluAna.txt

3. Open the WCI file i MapCal and save as BMP picture.
4. The normal trick

convert Pulo_Ana.bmp -colors 127 Pulo_Ana.tif

or converting via an temporary gif did not work on this particular, simple, chart. I just got this error message

No support for TIFF files with PHOTOMETRIC=1 (only images containing color maps supported)

But Gimp did the trick. I just opened the bmp and saved it as a .tif choosing the LZW compression, and this satisfied libbsb.

$ tiffinfo PA.tif
.........
Resolution: 72, 72 pixels/inch
Bits/Sample: 8
..........

5. Using libbsb as usual to produce a chart.

 tif2bsb -c 127 templatePoluAna.txt  PA.tif Pulo-Anna.kap

See the result below.

Thanks Dan, you just gave me a lot of work!

Thomas

[sinbad7]

As a point of interest,our .kap conversion is ALSO readable by the shipplotter.com AIS browser. Wonder why it is not readable by Sea Clear?

[cagney]

SeaClear checks for a string similar to

VER/3.0

at the beginning of the text header of the .kap.
If it is missing SeaClear reports an error.
If the line is there SeaClear displays the chart.
If it is anything else than this line missing......well then it is interesting!
Seafarer don't seems to care about this particular line.

Thomas

[GPS-Marco]

Originally Posted by cagney

SeaClear checks for a string similar to
at the beginning of the text header of the .kap.
If it is missing SeaClear reports an error.
If the line is there SeaClear displays the chart.
If it is anything else than this line missing......well then it is interesting!
Seafarer don't seems to care about this particular line.

Thomas

Also VER/2.0 is accepted by seaclear.

Marco.