Weather Routing

[seandepagnier]

rick,

Always assume master branch unless specified. The other branch in this case was used to back up longer term work and has since been merged. You can also look at where the most recent commits are going.

[rgleason]

Thanks Sean,

I had a thought about showing the history of a weather_routing.
The little history graphic showing wind direction and amplitude is quite good.
Perhaps something like that for TW & AW would help?

Hourly Weather Forecast for 41.11N 72.37W (Elev. 46 ft)

This is the tabular form similar to the tabular view that you have already.
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick...stType=digital

[Taarnskov]

Will this influence the timing of te routes that are After crossing the Pacific and passing the date line i have noticed an interesting thing.

When pres now in the grib-file menu, there is a 20 hour difference in the grib-file compared to what the dashboard in OpenCPN shows.

Where can i correct that.

Grib file said Sunday 6.00 UTC, OpenCPN said Saturday 08.00 UTC

Regards, Lars.

[rgleason]

Attached is a routing from Marblehead to Halifax, done with fresh gribs today. This is from a today's git fetch & compile which I will upload to file thingie for other Windows users.

I confirmed a couple of reoccurring troubles and workarounds.

1. There must always be two boat polars (must be named differently) in order to do a routing. The plugin requires this or there is a failure to compute a route.

2. In the Maine Islands even using the HiRes GSSH the plugin gets stuck and fails because of all the confusing islands. For that I used the handy Ocpn Draw to make a Boundary all along the coast of Maine, otherwise I never would have been able to complete a routing.

3. I understand the plugin automatically uses the best Boat Polar in the Boat.xml list. And I have found where there are high wind conditions, my boat polar does not go high enough and so even though I have two polar files loaded, one with Spinnaker and one without, the Computation fails saying "Polar" It would be helpful if it identified why, such as "Wind>polar"? Or "No wind, load a motoring polar."

4. I found that when my boat's polar's failed because of high winds (yes I need to extend the polars with Polauto or Polar_pi) that I could just add a big boat polar which covered the higher winds, and the Computation would work fine. The problem is, I could not determine which polar was being used in the routing.

5. Routing Information: It would be very nice to understand the relationship of when polars have been changed, perhaps by using colors for each polar, or since that is being used to distinguish a Grib vs Climatology, perhaps use linetypes. Or perhaps switch the Grib-Climatology to Solid/Dashed and then use colors for the Boat Polars?
There are also other kinds of visual information needed, such as wind speed along the route, port/starboard/downwind, boat speed, etc. One way to learn more about the routing after it computes is to step through the Grib file each step and see where the boat is predicted to be at that time and then hover over the location to see what the Grib data says. We are prevented from seeing that data because the cursor is attached to the alternate route, which is also useful sometimes, but when learning about the Computed route, it would be nice if the Alternate route did not get in the way of seeing the data. Perhaps that is the same time to have your View Plot come up with it's selection for "Current Route" and "Cursor Route" -When it is showing "Current Route" perhaps the Alternative Route Cursor should be off so stepping through the Grib, the appropriate data will show?

5. Virtual Polars: I am hesitant to mention this idea because it may be too complicated to implement, but if there were some rational way of estimating from existing polars reasonable boat performance (all to way to hove to) with increasing winds, this could be a checkbox for "Virtual high wind polars". Then when the routing completes, there would be a notice about using "Virtual polars used - extend your polars with Polar_pi" I know you had a clever section to create boat polars from the boat's characteristics which I still find down in a second level menu.

6. Sean, in the Boat Edit menu where we have several boat polars loaded, Plot TAB, I can vaguely see some yellow lines on the each of the polars when I highlight the polar. Are those the calculated crossover points for sail changes? If the line could show up a little better it might be good, perhaps a better color? The Crossover Chart TAB has a % Crossover at the bottom, It starts out set to 0% when I change it, I don't see any changes.. Is there supposed to be a graphic in the area above? Perhaps it is not showing?

7. I see that others are testing and using it more, such as Dominig and others. This is great, and the feedback will help to improve the plugin.

8. I would like to say, that this plugin remains a favorite, and while it is dependent on lots of different data, it does accomplish what needs to be done with both Climatology and Gribs (both wind & current!) It is a huge help in planning two to 3 days out, and even longer trips. So I would like to thank you for all your improvements and your consideration of suggestions.

[rgleason]

Here is a better graphic.

Later I will try to get some RTOFS current files as Paul has suggested earlier, and do a routing using those. I'll upload the current Weather_routing to file thingie

[AedanC]

Originally Posted by rgleason

1. There must always be two boat polars (must be named differently) in order to do a routing. The plugin requires this or there is a failure to compute a route.

Is this a new requirement? I have used it successfully in the past few months with only one polar. I did meet some of the other problems you mentioned but it worked most of the time. I've never used two polars.

Aedan

[rgleason]

I can only say from my recent experience. Before it was not so.
Even tried large fast boat polar, single polar, with a grib with high winds. That failed. Then put my little boat with winds up to 18-20 and compute completed.
Without at least two polars you will not complete. Ever, in my experience. This is windows. What do you use?

[rgleason]

When did you last use it?

[AedanC]

Originally Posted by rgleason

When did you last use it?

About 30 seconds ago!

I was intrigued by your post so I just ran an old test case again, using OpenCPN 4.6.1 on Windows 10 using what's probably an old version of the weather routing plugin, it identifies itself as 1.10. I can download the latest version and try that but before I do that is there anything else you would like me to try?

Definitely only one .pol file referenced.

Cheers,

Aedan

[AedanC]

Attached is a screen grab of a completed routing and it's setup. Still version 1.10 of the plugin.

[Bleemus]

Regarding the Marblehead Halifax route. I wouldnt want to be pinned against Cape Sable as a lee shore. Did that once in a gale. Never again.

[rgleason]

Aedan if you are windows os, it looks like you are, would you download the most recent c compiled from Opencpn Beta File Thingie rguser rgpass and look in 4.6.0 WIN PI see thread for Sean's plugins for the link.

[AedanC]

I'll try that this evening or tomorrow, I'm away at the moment. Aedan.

[AedanC]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Aedan if you are windows os, it looks like you are, would you download the most recent c compiled from Opencpn Beta File Thingie rguser rgpass and look in 4.6.0 WIN PI see thread for Sean's plugins for the link.

I took a look on beta file thingie but there was no weather routing executable in that directory. I have just tried the latest one from the official download page and it behaves just the same as version I used yesterday.

Is there a more recent version hiding somewhere?

Aedan

[sshow bob]

I think I'm just missing a setting, but I cannot find it: when I run the weather router it calculates the route (with only one polar file loaded, for reference in that dialogue) but does not display the route calculated unless I select export. On my last laptop the plug in worked properly for a while, then displayed the same behavior.

Windows 10 Home, 64 bit.
OpenCPN 4.6.0
Router 1.10

What am I missing?