ENC Chart Quilting (3.1 beta and earlier)

[nkiesel]

Hi,
decided to start a new thread because this is a problem I have with multiple versions, and I don't think we'll do anything about it before the 3.2 release (which will be great!!!)

Background: I'm using opencpn running on Linux64bit (Ubuntu/Debian) and with US NOAA ENC charts, mostly in the San Francisco area. The charts there have lots of stuff and there are lots of different charts that have to be quilted for a smooth display. This generally works nicely, but not always. Concrete examples include:

1) when panning using the cursor keys, quilted charts often don't appear automatically or only after I panned them more than 20% into the window. The bottom chart indicator shows dark green instead of bright green chart indicators. Clicking on them fixes the quilting (i.e. charts load, get quilted correctly, and indocator toggles to bright green). This is repeatable and also dependable on concrete charts and cursor movement: panning from "Central Bay" to "South Bay" makes South Bay chart appear after about
20%, but panning in the opposite direction will never show the correct "Central Bay" chart (until I explicitly select it by clicking in the dark green chart indicator).

2) I tried hard to get rid of the chart boundaries, but they always show (e.g. unselecting "Show Chart Outlines" changes them from reddish striped lines to blue lines instead of not showing them at all)

3) For some charts (e.g. detailed chart for Redwood City Channel entrance in South Bay) the quilting is not perfect: the charts are offset both horizontally and vertically.

The first problem is clearly the most annoying because it forces me to switch from keyboard to mouse (which I often have disabled).

[cagney]

For your #1.
Have you tried the Toolbar->options->Display->Disable Full Screen Quilting ?

The switch works like this, taken from the wiki

Disable Full Screen Quilting: By default all visible charts of an appropriate scale are used in the quilt. With this box checked only charts that overlap the center of the screen are used in the quilt. Checking this box is easier on the system and may give a performance boost in certain circumstances.

Thomas

[nkiesel]

Originally Posted by cagney

For your #1.
Have you tried the Toolbar->options->Display->Disable Full Screen Quilting ?

The switch works like this, taken from the wiki

Thomas

Just tried but that made it actually worse when in full screen mode and made no difference otherwise.

I still don't understand the logic of not showing a specific chart again when I already had it loaded and just panned out of it and then panned back in (using just cursor keys).

</nk>

[cagney]

nkiesel

#1. I think you are right, and will raise this in the tracker for the 3.3 beta.
#2. I think this is a misunderstanding on your side. The ENC charts are outlined in green, but on quite a few chart in the SF area this line coincides with a dashed reddish line that marks an area. This reddish line seems to a hide most of the green line.
#3. Nothing that I notice with a preliminary look, having no local knowledge. I suppose that you have compared with gps positions?

Thomas

[nkiesel]

Originally Posted by cagney

nkiesel

#1. I think you are right, and will raise this in the tracker for the 3.3 beta.
#2. I think this is a misunderstanding on your side. The ENC charts are outlined in green, but on quite a few chart in the SF area this line coincides with a dashed reddish line that marks an area. This reddish line seems to a hide most of the green line.
#3. Nothing that I notice with a preliminary look, having no local knowledge. I suppose that you have compared with gps positions?

Thomas

Thanks for #1.

Will double-check for #2. However - taking the inset for Redwood City as an example - there is really nothing I can see along these lines besides the chart boundaries for the inset. Seeing them clearly makes sense for paper charts and thus also for raster charts. However, for quilted vector charts I don't see really the value (given the seamless quilting) but I might be wrong.

Regarding #3: I did not check with GPS. Simply zoom in to the level just above "Overzoom" and you can clearly see a 5mm jump in e.g. Depth lines at the border between the 2 charts.

</nk>

[bdbcat]

nk...

Can you post a screenshot of the spot with poor quilt registration? Or a specific lat/lon and chart scale indication?

Thanks
Dave

[nkiesel]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

nk...

Can you post a screenshot of the spot with poor quilt registration? Or a specific lat/lon and chart scale indication?

Thanks
Dave

Attached screenshot with an "active WP" marker showing the offset. Underlying NOAA ENC charts are from this month and I forced a DB rebuild after updating the charts.

[nkiesel]

Here is a sequence of screenshots showing problem #1: they were produced by starting with the first image, then simply panning north and then south again using the cursor up/down. As you can see, the upper quilted chart never appeared, and when panning down again to the staring point, that chart disappeared as well.

</nk>

[bdbcat]

Regarding the apparent chart offset near Redwood City Channel:

The offset is embedded within in the underlying NOAA chart. You may verify this by looking at the cell US5CA16M in single-chart (i.e. non-quilted) mode. Hint: use F9 to get s-c mode.

In single-chart mode, the OpenCPN quilting compositor is disabled. We simply display the chart cell as downloaded.

So, we can consider this apparent offset as not an artifact of OpenCPN quilting.

Thanks
Dave

[nkiesel]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Regarding the apparent chart offset near Redwood City Channel:

The offset is embedded within in the underlying NOAA chart. You may verify this by looking at the cell US5CA16M in single-chart (i.e. non-quilted) mode. Hint: use F9 to get s-c mode.

In single-chart mode, the OpenCPN quilting compositor is disabled. We simply display the chart cell as downloaded.

So, we can consider this apparent offset as not an artifact of OpenCPN quilting.

Thanks
Dave

Thanks for checking this out. Any chance to get rid of the (IMHO useless) outline around the chart in quilted mode?

Best,
Norbert

[bdbcat]

Norbert....
Well, how about Toolbox->ShowChartOutlines toggle button?

btw, there is a pretty good users manual embedded within the standard OpenCPN installation. See the Help icon on the toolbar.

Thanks
Dave