OpenCPN Version 5.1.428 Beta Test

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by SoggyPaws

I haven't done any multizooms in one tileset. I have a number of mbtiles made with Sas.Planet and Sat2Chart, using z14 and OpenCPN routes to follow a shoreline or delineate an area. I tend to keep the area a reasonable size, so I don't have to load up a 1GB mbtile. My biggest one is 22MB.

Then I have made a number of chartlets at z15, z16, and z17 (one zoom level per chartlet) to zoom in on specific areas or anchorages. I have about 300 mb of satellite charts (about 180 different mbtiles) in one folder.

<snip>

The big problem I have with the way the pink piano keys work is that if I'm zoomed in somewhere, and want to see what the CM93 chart shows, I can't just click on the CM93 piano key and have it show up on top. Click on the yellow piano key no longer brings up CM93. I have to uncheck every mbtile in order to see the whole CM93 chart. And then to see the satellite charts again, I have to click them back on.

Also, you used to be able to hover over a piano key and have it highlight which chart that was. That no longer works. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how mbtiles work. I am using them EXACTLY as I did KAP files (which, all my KAP files are homemade satellite charts using GE2KAP/SAT2CHART, because the "real chart" KAP charts out here are even more worthless than CM93)

Sherry

Sherry, The problem I had with creating multiple small mbTiles was the proliferation of piano keys. Sometimes I'd have 25 of them, & searching out the one I wanted was a pain in the patootie. This is why I've taken to making fairly large mbTiles. BTW, I've found that OpenCPN takes a minute or so to initially digest 5x5GB mbTiles (my disk channel saturates), but that only happens when it first encounters them. After that, it's fast & smooth. There's a few seconds delay when initially displaying or switching between such big mbTiles, but that's to be expected.

But also, single-zoom mbTiles make OpenCPN do all of the bit-fiddling to display that area at different zooms. This is very much akin to trying to zoom or pan in a field of KAPs. It's MUCH faster for OpenCPN to simply grab the zoom info out of the mbTile & display that. Yes, it uses more of your precious disk space, but it makes zooming in & out much faster (& with better quality) at run-time.

Map descriptions should work on mouse-over, but If you're wanting the actual map area to highlight when you mouse over a piano key, then I agree with you, that would be useful & isn't currently implemented for mbTiles. All other charts (that I know of) do this, so it's arguably a bug, but you may have to submit it through FlySpray if Dave's developers can't implement it now.

I also agree that I prefer the "click the piano key & that chart displays immediately" paradigm that we all got used to in versions prior to V5. Apparently, some mbTiles can be made partly transparent, so some users may want to have multiple mbTiles displayed simultaneously, which is apparently why the click-on/click-off paradigm was introduced in V5.0.

Those of us who make our mbTiles from SAS can ONLY make opaque mbTiles, so we don't like this new paradigm. As my bug report is written, it asks for a user selectable switch so those of us with only opaque mbTiles can use the paradigm we've come to know & love. I think Dave only took this bug pretty late in the dev-cycle, & his OP on this thread said that #2601 is only partially implemented, so I suspect this switch has been left out for now, as I can't find it.

But it's interesting to note that there's considerable vocal support for the old paradigm. I'm sure that's not lost on Dave (even if most of it's coming from the Philippines).

[martinworswick]

slightly off-topic but not sure where else to post and have it be seen,to everyone who is cruising extensively with mbtiles/kaps created with sat2chart (ie terry,jon,sherry),how do you find the accuracy of the charts with regards to geo-referencing?are there any discrepancies between the sources?do you alter the geo-referencing in anyway or accept what sas2chart gives you?

[SoggyPaws]

Originally Posted by martinworswick

How do you find the accuracy of the charts with regards to geo-referencing?are there any discrepancies between the sources?do you alter the geo-referencing in anyway or accept what sas2chart gives you?

Using SasPlanet and Sat2Chart, at detailed zooms, where the satellite photo is a good resolution and good color, for someone who is experienced at color-based reef navigation, it is very accurate and very detailed. We've been using them as KAP charts since about 2012, and have a number of times pulled ourselves out of difficult situations (late arrival in a poorly charted port, or arriving in our selected anchorage near sunset in the middle of a pouring rain with 30 ft visibility) using the detailed satellite charts.

In the latter case, I was in the nav station on a computer talking to husband on the bow with a handheld.. "You should see a coral head coming up on the port side 45 degrees about 1 boatlength." Etc. Creeping along very slowly in almost no vis, confirming that the sat pic was showing us the true story with eyes on the bow. It's the only way we would have been able to do anything but heave to for the night. Yes, we could have heaved-to, but at the speed we were going, it wasn't very risky, and everything we could see with our eyes was predicted by the sat pic. The pouring rain cleared just in time for sundowners. The "real chart" we had showed the entire area as one blob of one color pretty much un-anchorable--no soundings, no details.

With the satellite pic, you can see every coral head, you can see "sand fans" in reefs that indicate the depth might be less than 100 ft deep (important in SE Asia where the depths go from 100+ ft to 2 ft in a boatlength, and it can be difficult sometimes to find anchorable depths).

We have spent most of the last 8 years cruising in "out there" reef-bound areas, almost completely using GE2Kap/Sat2Chart satellite charts, and waypoints and tracks shared by other OpenCPN users. Sat2Chart is well written and well-documented, and there are about 10 video tutorials showing how to make sat charts in various ways. If you are cruising in out of the way places, it's an amazing tool (coupled with OpenCPN).

Sherry

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by martinworswick

slightly off-topic but not sure where else to post and have it be seen,to everyone who is cruising extensively with mbtiles/kaps created with sat2chart (ie terry,jon,sherry),how do you find the accuracy of the charts with regards to geo-referencing?are there any discrepancies between the sources?do you alter the geo-referencing in anyway or accept what sas2chart gives you?

Martin, the short answer is that the accuracy is amazing. We've been using KAPs since 2014, & mbTiles since OpenCPN V5 came out. Max errors are on the order of 10' or 3m. We go down to Zoom-18 on SAS, which lets us see individual coral heads, & as we motor past them, they're EXACTLY where they're supposed to be. I don't know how they do it.

Having said that, sometimes features show up on one map-type but not others. In the Solomon Islands we had a too close encounter with a coral head that didn't show up on GE or Bing, but did on ArcGIS. And we were in too much of a hurry, always a bad idea in coral areas.

Also, GE started by covering the world in a purple fog. Then they poke a hole in the fog where they think there's land, & buy a satellite photo. But just because all you see is fog doesn't mean there's nothing there. We've seen several instances of GE leaving out reefs, & sometimes even whole islands. But where they show something, that's exactly where it is.

For instance, the Solomons have Morovo Lagoon, which is absolutely shot through with coral, yet we felt completely confident of where we were in relation to the coral at all times. If I had to, I could have navigated through there on a moonless night.



There are some discrepancies between the different sources. Usually they're because the satellite isn't directly above, but is taking the shot at an angle. Also, ArcGIS (which is often the same as Bing) seems to enhance their imagery somehow, & it's often at low tide, so shallows show up really well.

With KAPs I could see into the water maybe 30'/9m, but with mbTiles I've been able to see a color difference in the bottom at well over 50'/15m, & sometimes as much as 75'/23m.

There's a GE2KAP (now Sat2Chart) FB group for help or info. Or you can email the developer, Paul Higgins, directly. But the Help is pretty good, & Paul's posted several How To videos as well.

[Baikal]

the use of space images in shallow water is obvious!
to persuade is useless ...
I will edit the mbtiles source for myself and do my build

I’m disappointed that the development of a plug-in manager during the year is much more important than improving navigation tasks!

[Jon Hacking]

Dave, I've been trying to wring out V5.1 with mbTiles (my #2601). In the main, I'm very happy.

The Good:

• There's a delay when V5.1 encounters an area with mbTiles for the first time, presumably so it can digest them & work out where the borders are. It puts up piano keys, but doesn't attempt to display the mbTile, so thank you for that. This delay only seems to happen once, so presumably it's hanging onto that info, but it doesn't preserve it across subsequent OpenCPN sessions, which is a shame.
• OpenCPN Startup is now noticeably faster - thank you!
• MbTiles outlines show up well for me, no issues, but my mbTiles are big
• Panning & zooming with my monster mbTiles loaded & displayed is a tad arthritic, but very usable & no worse than V5.0.
• Panning & zooming with monster mbTiles loaded but CM93 displayed is nice & snappy.

The Bad:

• I'm not finding my requested switch so that those of us with only opaque mbTiles can use the old single-click to switch charts. Presumably this is the partial implementation you mentioned in your OP?

The Ugly:

• MbTile areas do not highlight when you mouse over the piano-keys, as happens with other chart-types. This is arguably a bug, but it happens in V5.0 as well.
• While much of the Route & Mark Manager dialog box preserves it's column sizes & sort orders, the Layers tab does not seem to preserve its sort order. Sort it by # of items, put it away, do something else, open it up again, & the list is no longer sorted (at all, AFAICT). OK, trivial. I just report 'em
• There was considerable discussion earlier about the size of depth soundings. Mine are noticeably larger than they were, & therefore larger than they need to be. While I like the highlighting in shallow areas, I do find that areas with lots of soundings get overly busy, & it seems a shame to throw some of that info away by decluttering. If I had my druthers, they'd be a bit smaller, but I can certainly live with them as they are. (5yo 1920x1280 Acer Win10 laptop)
• But speaking of which, the zoom level that OpenCPN chooses when displaying an mbTile means that the soundings on CMap & Navionics mbTiles (generated by SAS) are too small to read. Again, this is the same as V5.0, but it's still an issue. Can OpenCPN display a less detailed mbTile, so the soundings are bigger? What other affects would that have? OK, I'd have to zoom in further to get really detailed, but that's easy.

Thank you again for all your wonderful work here!

[juancho38]

Hi,

I wanted to try this new version ...
The link for windows in the first page is broken.
https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/davi...cdd2_setup.exe

Did I missed something ?

[bcn]

You go here:
https://cloudsmith.io/~david-registe...able/packages/


and select the latest opencpn-msvc version in the case of Windows.

[juancho38]

Thanks, I installed it.
Very strange ... my CM93 maps are reversed !! North is down and south is up.
The boat is going north upwards, while map is the other way round !!
As a side effect I presume, map text is not readable. Lights seems to be at the right place ... Quite a mess !!
The same maps are OK in OPCN 5.0.

I wanted to try the OPCN SignaK connection. My signalK server is up and running fine.
What is the default port for signalK server to configure in OPCN ?
I did not find where to configure outbound (if necessary) in SignalK.
Connections configuration are inbound connections, is there any plugin to install ?

Hope to be clear enough .. Cheers.

[P_Dub]

what happened to the icon of Opencpn in this version?
Gone.

[juancho38]

Originally Posted by juancho38

Thanks, I installed it.
Very strange ... my CM93 maps are reversed !! North is down and south is up.
The boat is going north upwards, while map is the other way round !!
As a side effect I presume, map text is not readable. Lights seems to be at the right place ... Quite a mess !!
The same maps are OK in OPCN 5.0.

Quick update :
I launch "No OpenGL" all seems to be fine ... and texts are readable.
I closed 'No openGL" reopen with OpenGL option :
OpenGL ticked=map is the other way round.
OpenGL un-ticked=map is the right way round

[verkerkbr]

Originally Posted by juancho38

Thanks, I installed it.
Very strange ... my CM93 maps are reversed !! North is down and south is up.
The boat is going north upwards, while map is the other way round !!
As a side effect I presume, map text is not readable. Lights seems to be at the right place ... Quite a mess !!
The same maps are OK in OPCN 5.0.

I wanted to try the OPCN SignaK connection. My signalK server is up and running fine.
What is the default port for signalK server to configure in OPCN ?
I did not find where to configure outbound (if necessary) in SignalK.
Connections configuration are inbound connections, is there any plugin to install ?

Hope to be clear enough .. Cheers.

SignalK is localhost port 3000. If you like to have route and waypoint data from OpenCPN. Add in OpenCPN a new connection outgoing UTP localhost port 2000 and make a new connection in SignalK incoming nmea183 UTP port 2000.

In OpenCPN restrict the output to RMC, RMB or other options.

Bram

[rgleason]

A Beta version of weather_routing_pi-1.13.7 is available. This plugin is available on the "master" catalog.

A Beta version of watchdog_pi-2.4.8 available. A PR to update the "master" catalog has been made, and when this is merged it will become available.

Alternatively , you can download this plugin (built for your environment) from Cloudsmith PROD repository and install using Options > Plugins > Import Plugin.

Another alternative is to set beta OpenCPN to use the "master" catalog, then close OpenCPN. Then copy the main metadata file "ocpn-plugins.xml" here and paste it over the existing "ocpn-plugins.xml" file in the data section of your OpenCPN program. IE:

• Windows= C:\ProgramData\opencpn\ocpn-plugins.xml for example
• Ubuntu = Projects/opencpn/data/ocpn-plugins.xml for example

This file contains individual records for various plugin download URL sources and build environments.

For Watchdog, please remember that it opens initially with a blank screen. You must right click and configure the alarms that you need.

We hope beta testers with report any issues with these plugins, as bdbcat has requested.

Watchdog thread

Weather_routing thread


--

[bdbcat]

All...


A Beta version of watchdog_pi-2.4.8 available. A PR to update the "master" catalog has been made, and when this is merged it will become available.


Merged now. Simply update the master catalog, and the new watchdog_pi will be available for download and install.


Thanks to RGleason...
Dave

[rgleason]

Thanks Dave,
If I have Virtualbox with Ubuntu 18.04 can I install Opencpn (Ubuntu 18.04) Bionic-gtk3 version? or would it be better to install Opencpn Bionic version, due to dependencies?


Which is more compatible/standard for testing?


--Later: gtk3 is part of the os https://askubuntu.com/questions/1013...nstall-gtk-3-0