How to display a visible boat icon at lower zoom levels?

[fxykty]

I’ve got the default boat icon showing at higher zoom levels, but at lower zoom levels it is replaced by a yellow target icon that is virtually invisible. I’ve tried the settings for boat icon but can’t get the icon to show at lower zooms. What am I missing?

[Karanga]

I think it has always been thus.
Nothing you are missing or doing wrong. Whether, or not, this is the best display icon, is another question.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Karanga

I think it has always been thus.
Nothing you are missing or doing wrong. Whether, or not, this is the best display icon, is another question.

Is there any way at least to change the colour? Yellow is invisible on a white chart.

Or is the (stupid) solution to always use night mode?

[Karanga]

You can change the default icon to a custom icon. I did manage to use one of the provided examples. Or you can apparently design your own. Nobody seems to have come up with a cat icon yet (I tried and failed).
But you still get the yellow crosshairs at higher (or is that lower?) zoom levels, and no ability to change the colour. I suspect yellow has been selected as conflicting least with other chart iconography.

But this is minor compared to my little gripe, that so many of the indicator lines are RED. And not changeable.
From memory, these include:
Heading line
COG line
AIS conflict line
Route line
Past track line

[bcn]

The crosshair will kick in at 1:300.000 independent from the type of the boat icon. OwnShip or default one. With reason.



Years ago there has been a whole collection of ownship icons, including for catamarans. Just search the forum.

[P_Dub]

I did a cat a long time ago. Here it is.

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by bcn

The crosshair will kick in at 1:300.000 independent from the type of the boat icon. OwnShip or default one. With reason.



Years ago there has been a whole collection of ownship icons, including for catamarans. Just search the forum.

What is the reason? Quite often i zoom out enough to see land, then can't visually see the direction my ship is going. Having to zoom in so that my ship is the only visible thing on the screen makes the display a bit useless.

[Karanga]

Originally Posted by P_Dub

I did a cat a long time ago. Here it is.

Thank you for this.
While OpenCPN is a navigation tool, I am not sure I would be using it to find each of the heads on my boat...!!
A bit too much detail...
And the red up front plus green at back?

[bcn]

Originally Posted by wholybee

What is the reason? Quite often i zoom out enough to see land, then can't visually see the direction my ship is going. Having to zoom in so that my ship is the only visible thing on the screen makes the display a bit useless.

Ideas...

- 1:300.000 - one cm on screen corresponds 3km/1.62nm - your 10mm/1cm boat would have that size. Would that make sense? Yeah, at 250.000 it is still the ownship icon. Where to place the cut-off?


- Navigating one will know the actual COG (track activated gives the visual aid) - then the cursor does show the direction one wants to analyze.


- Or using the split screen - double canvas. With one zoomed in and the second half for searching/exploring far away. Or the other way around.


Precise navigation and adjusting course one will not make on a 1:300.000 scale, or? At least the "overzoom" alert will be prominent on the screen, I would suppose.

[PippaB]

According to the manual (and my experience) the target and crosshairs should be red when O thinks it has a GPS and fix, and yellow only when it doesn't have a fix.

If zoomed out to a scale that is smaller than 1:300.000 the icon changes to , when receiving gps signals and otherwise.
https://www.opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpnpencpn_user_manual:toolbar_bu ttons:auto_follow&s[]=300&s[]=000#auto_follow

Since it appears your boat is moving with you, that would suggest that you have a GNSS fix, but it is not marked as valid in the NMEA stream. I'd start taking a look at what sentences are providing the fix, and the evaluating what they have to say about the quality of the fix. As an example, in the RMC sentence the second field is "A" for active or "V" for void. Other sentences that provide position have even more possible values that break down validity to a greater degree. I have also seen this kind of behavior when getting multiple fix sentences, in that case you may have to either ignore some or set the priority on the input connections.

[fgd3]

I'm still running 4.8.8 and don't have this problem at all, so in some subsequent version the code was changed to make the ownship icon go away when the chart is zoomed out far enough. I've seen a couple statements in this thread that the behavior wasn't changed but that is flat wrong. Knowing that should make it easier to identify where the change was made.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by PippaB

According to the manual (and my experience) the target and crosshairs should be red when O thinks it has a GPS and fix, and yellow only when it doesn't have a fix.



Since it appears your boat is moving with you, that would suggest that you have a GNSS fix, but it is not marked as valid in the NMEA stream. I'd start taking a look at what sentences are providing the fix, and the evaluating what they have to say about the quality of the fix. As an example, in the RMC sentence the second field is "A" for active or "V" for void. Other sentences that provide position have even more possible values that break down validity to a greater degree. I have also seen this kind of behavior when getting multiple fix sentences, in that case you may have to either ignore some or set the priority on the input connections.

OK, that makes sense for the colour scheme. I’m using a UDP connection for all of my NMEA data, so it looks like I’ll need to filter out all the invalid fix ones or at least set the priority on the valid sentences.

Looking at this workaround and still not able to display the ownship icon, who still says that OpenCPN is fit for use for a non-IT person?

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by fgd3

I'm still running 4.8.8 and don't have this problem at all, so in some subsequent version the code was changed to make the ownship icon go away when the chart is zoomed out far enough. I've seen a couple statements in this thread that the behavior wasn't changed but that is flat wrong. Knowing that should make it easier to identify where the change was made.

If this was a code change, that was bone headed and should have been made a parameter. Why on earth would you want your own ship to disappear?

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by bcn

Ideas...

- 1:300.000 - one cm on screen corresponds 3km/1.62nm - your 10mm/1cm boat would have that size. Would that make sense? Yeah, at 250.000 it is still the ownship icon. Where to place the cut-off?


- Navigating one will know the actual COG (track activated gives the visual aid) - then the cursor does show the direction one wants to analyze.


- Or using the split screen - double canvas. With one zoomed in and the second half for searching/exploring far away. Or the other way around.


Precise navigation and adjusting course one will not make on a 1:300.000 scale, or? At least the "overzoom" alert will be prominent on the screen, I would suppose.

The size of the ship icon apparently doesn't matter for AIS though? Those Icons do not scale at all with zoom level, and I hope that never happens. If I am at 1:300,000 scale, I am obviously not looking at anything very near my ship. Regardless of scale, if my ship icon is on top of some other object, I am going to zoom in, or visually look around for it. But it is very helpful to know the orientation of my ship, relative to a coastline, or other far away ships. Also, the crosshair really isn't any smaller than a ship icon, so what is the point?

I do usually have my track on. If I make an adjustment to my windvane or autopilot, it could take 10 or 15 minutes before the track is long enough to see where I am going on my new course.

My screen is already small enough. While the split screen is nice, I find I never use it in practice, because I end up having to scroll all the time or turn it on and off constantly.

Either being able to toggle the crosshair and a ship icon, or if the crosshair provided a pointer from the bow of the ship would be useful.

[bdbcat]

If this was a code change, that was bone headed


Thanks for your support.
Dave