Raster Chart User Permit?

[OZwingle]

Does anyone have experience or advice about obtaining a User Permit for British Admiralty Raster Charts (ARCS)?

Paper charts are approx. $65 US, while the digital raster charts are about $21 for 3 month license and include weekly updates. And, of course, would hopefully display on OpenCPN.

I have been able to navigate the shoals of S-63 permitting and tested a few BA S-63 vector charts. But they are rather lacking in detail for these waters. O-charts seems to provide only the S-63 vector chart User Permit

Thanks,
s/v Velic
Savusavu, Fiji

[bcn]

A little background:

The S-63 UserPermit (and S-63 in total) are standards of the IHO and as such implemented by all ECDIS systems. Vendor independent.
The individual makes of ECDIS have their internal chart format - their SENC.
This is all about vector charts.

ECDIS systems can be run in Raster mode (RCDS mode) and there are commercial implementations for (encrypted) raster charts.
The IHO delivers test sets for both HCRF and BSB/NOAA.

The Admiralty Raster charts (ARCS) are a commercial product of UKHO.
They are distributed as an encrypted HCRF.
To use those under OpenCPN we would need a dedicated plug-in. Like the BSB plug-in.
For Windows, Linux, macOS, Android......

From the read.me of the HCRF test set:

Because the test data set is encrypted, systems will need to have a suitable set of chart permits to allow the data to be used. These are contained in the eleventh directory, the 'Permit' directory.

There are two (2) files in the permits directory, 'gb.lcn' (licence) and 'gb.ncp' (chart permits). These files should be copied to a floppy disk for use during tests.

Floppy disk is not mandatory anymore

Different from S-52/S-57/S-63 standards HCRF and its encryption scheme are private standards and not available without agreements with UKHO.
To give an idea what this is about:
http://www.ukho.gov.uk/AdmiraltyPart...addnote1_4.pdf

Would it be worthwhile to implement the HCRF encryption scheme?
As long as there are Raster Charts not migrated to ENCs, perhaps.
If somebody wills to do it, we can provide the umbrella from o-charts same as we do for S-63 and oeSENC.
The relation with UKHO is fluent and constructive.

Hubert

[OZwingle]

Hubert,

Thank you for this detailed and informative reply. It is helpful, and saves many hours of research otherwise.

OZwingle

[cynikal]

Originally Posted by bcn

Would it be worthwhile to implement the HCRF encryption scheme?
As long as there are Raster Charts not migrated to ENCs, perhaps.
If somebody wills to do it, we can provide the umbrella from o-charts same as we do for S-63 and oeSENC.
The relation with UKHO is fluent and constructive.

Hubert

so what would be needed for this to be implemented? the cartography of the raster maps from ARCS maps are superb and i think a lot of people would be very happy to use this service..

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, cynikal.

[bcn]

The development of a specific plug-in for raster charts is quite advanced and shall be getting operative soon. oeRNC is under testing these days.
This is a different approach than implementing HCRF.
We have access to the UKHO raster portfolio already within the license agreements for the vector material.



The idea is to fill first coverage gaps we have with the vector charts for OpenCPN still and to give service for areas covered by Fugawi until end of last year, like the Bahamas.
Greece and the Turkish Med will be another set getting available in raster format.


Once oeRNC running we can think about additional complementary sets for example in places where raster has better coverage than vector still.


Hubert

[cynikal]

how does one obtain access to the ukho raster porfolio ? and can you elaborate please on the oeRNC testing ? i have a IT systems engineer background so feel free to be technical with me :-)

[bcn]

Same as the oeSENC portfolio. Check o-charts.org - the part of OpenCPN covering chart supply where no free charts are available.

We have a license agreement with UKHO in place and this would cover not just the vector charts already being in place but as well raster material. However raster from UKHO requires quite some editing to get this released under the terms of the license. You can't publish this chart "as is".

oeRNC is the the equivalent to the oeSENC plug-in for vector charts. For raster charts requiring licensing. Technically speaking a plug-in with its non-free blob covering the DRM part in this case for raster. Right now testing of the plug-in and the corresponding infrastructure at o-charts is underway.