Weather Routing

[stelian]

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

Hello Sean,

A little bug. Without doubt easy to correct. See the two screenshots attached.
The item "Current configuration" is translated in a strange way in French.

I watched the translation in the Crowdin. The translation that exists in the Crowdin is not the one that currently appears in the screenshot of the French version.

It is probably necessary to update the language files in the next version of WR.

I have regenerated the POT file and updated the French translations. Pull request submitted to Sean.

However, the pot file should probably be pushed to Crowdin too, since all the other language files need some serious love...

[stelian]

I have also made some other localisation changes, I believe the French translations are now 100% complete.

[rgleason]

A new Beta here
https://github.com/rgleason/weather_...tag/1.1101beta

Fixes Polars and Includes Sean's commits for Basic / Advanced Tabs etc.
-Looks better to me Sean, and its more intuitive. Thank you!
I am not sure I have Stelian's language changes, maybe.

There are a couple of problems I;ve noted in issues, about Editin Boat Polars, the Crossover Chart, and the crash when a Boat file does not find the file.
https://github.com/seandepagnier/wea...ting_pi/issues

Please give this a spin and let Sean know what you think!

[SoggyPaws]

It looks to me like the "polar fix" to the data file did not get included. The TWS-6-20.pol file still looks like this, which appears to be a copy of (or similar to) the 0-6 one:

twa/tws;1;2;3;4;5
52;4.3;5.1;5.7;5.9;5.9
60;4.6;5.5;6;6.2;6.2
75;4.9;5.8;6.2;6.4;6.4
90;5.1;6;6.3;6.5;6.5
110;5;5.9;6.4;6.7;6.7
120;4.7;5.8;6.3;6.6;6.6
135;4.2;5.2;6;6.4;6.4
150;3.6;4.5;5.4;6;6

I uninstalled and double-checked that all the data files were removed in both Program Files and Program Data, before I re-installed the new version.

All the pol files in my directory after install

<programfiles>/OpenCPN/plugins/weather_routing_pi/data/polars

are of the same date...3 days ago. Continuing to poke around...

[Gilletarom]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Just what do you expect? Climatology is 30 years of NOAA data averaged for each of 12 months. Think of it as a super digital version of Pilot charts but it contains considerably more information.

RGleason, roughly speaking, there are two kinds of Weather-Routing users:

1° Those who want to cross the Atlantic or the Pacific, and who wonders when, it is better to leave to cross in good or good conditions. Those need statistical information because the current weather forecasts do not allow to project over time over a long period. For those, the Climatology plugin provides useful information.

2° Those who stay in an area like Western Europe where the quality of weather forecasts is extremely good for both wind and currents.


Let me defend OpenCPN users who practice coastal shipping in Europe.

I had the opportunity, at the boat show in Paris, in December, for several years, and again this year, to listen to conferences made by developers of weather-routing software used here in France.
For all navigations these other software use exclusively the data provided by the models resulting from the meteorological services and the services of study of the European and American seas.
Today, the quality of the data in question has reached such a level of quality and reliability over the next 24 hours, and even over the next 48 hours or 72 hours, that the use of Climatology's statistical data is totally useless.

And that's why I used Skyron's grib files, because they use both the meteorological data of the major national and European meteorological services and the sea study services set up by the European Community. And Skyron provides grib files that gather all this data into a single "Grib 1" file.

It's been three years now since the other softwares I'm talking about here, had the means to use all the data and in particular those of the ocean study services regarding currents. For that, they had developed better skills than the OpenCPN Grib plugin. Their software was able to simultaneously open grib files from multiple sources and "multiplex" wind and current data

Rasbat started to produce grib files containing data related to the currents of the European Sea Service (service located in Toulouse, France). But at the level of OpenCPN, it did not have the expected echo. Rasbat finally gave up this job.

The availability of Skyron files, produced for free by Greek specialists, is OpenCPN's rescue buoy. This will allow him to keep his head out of the water, here in Western Europe, in the field of weather-routing.

Unfortunately, these Greek files do not cover all European shores. And where SkyRon files do not exist, here in Western Europe, the plugin Climatology does not provide information.

RGLeson, have I managed to explain to you the needs of all European navigators practicing coastal navigation?


Hello Stelian, :
J'explique ici mon point de vu personnel. Quelle correction y apportes tu ?

[stelian]

Hi Gilletarom and rgleason,

I'm not sure I get what this discussion is all about, I have the feeling that we all agree...

For coastal navigation: climatology is useless, do not use it, use whatever grib you can get

For longer navigations (more than 48-72 hours), start with grib, continue with climatology.

For even longer navigations (oceans cross etc), don't even bother with the gribs.

Am I missing something ?

[Gilletarom]

Hello Stelian,

Originally Posted by stelian

I have regenerated the POT file and updated the French translations. Pull request submitted to Sean.

However, the pot file should probably be pushed to Crowdin too, since all the other language files need some serious love...

I just did a quick test of the very latest version of WR.
- On the one hand I appreciate the simplification of the window that opens when opening a "Configuration". It is much simpler than in older versions of WR.
- On the other hand, there are some items that remain in English, but it must be easy to solve.

That said, in this window, at the bottom, there is "Close" ( "Fermer" in French). It seems to me that "Ok" would be more suitable. And maybe, a "Cancel" button to not take into account possible modification could be welcome. But, does this lead to too much modification in the code?

More. Help me please :
- I need to understand the difference between the role of the "Max diverted course" item that is in the "Base" tab and the "Max course angle" item that is in the "Advanced" tab.

- I need to understand the role of the item "Inverted region".
- I also need to understand the item "Tacking time".

For these two items, the translations into French seem very bad. So, it will be necessary to improve the translations in the language file, unless the last modifications of the code related certain items in English to other items in French.

Last remark: Now, every time I change language, going from English to French, in OpenCPN options, OpenCPN crash. but when you restart, everything looks normal. And we find ourselves in French.
Is it due to WR or tests with draw or with WD ?????

[SoggyPaws]

Some things tested and working (Windows 10, fast laptop, plenty of memory):

1. I did get the new warning if I put my max latitude constraint lower than the start or endpoint. Good fix.
2. The file path problems with the contours files has been solved. They look right in the xml file and also there are actually some contours files in the Contours folder.
3. The "boat" name associated with a routing can be displayed on the Configuration page. Nice feature if you are helping a friend with a routing.

The problem with the weird scales on the Report / Plot screen has not been fixed, but I noticed that not every parameter has scale problems. I also would like an explanation of some of the plot parameters, especially Wind Course and Wind Direction and Wind Course Ground. And why is there no "True Wind" parameter.

While I was playing around with these, trying to guess at the differences, I discovered a hint as to the location of the bug on the scales.

In the first plot screen, I have 3 parameters, and they all look sorta reasonable, scale-wise (I have not validated the numbers, but the scales at the left at least look reasonable).



Then I change only ONE parameter, the middle one, then TWO of the scales change, and they both have huge numbers. What's up with that? Probably a fairly simple bug there... maybe an index off by one or something.



That's enough for tonight, the Captain is demanding his dinner...

I did have LOTS of fun running several different boats on Pacific crossings... even checking out the route my friends took from Pohnpei in Micronesia to Sitka Alaska this summer. The Climatology routing followed almost their same route and complete the passage within about 2 days ahead of the time they did (and they, encountering real weather, spent a day or two hove-to letting weather go by). Fun thing to play with, now that it is working.

Still waiting for a friend to bring me the high res shoreline data on a USB stick, so the close-in shoreline stuff works better.

[stelian]

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

- On the other hand, there are some items that remain in English, but it must be easy to solve.

I've done some extra translations, available in my git, but not yet picked/compiled by Rick.

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

That said, in this window, at the bottom, there is "Close" ( "Fermer" in French). It seems to me that "Ok" would be more suitable. And maybe, a "Cancel" button to not take into account possible modification could be welcome. But, does this lead to too much modification in the code?

I'm not sure if it is easy or not to add a Cancel button, since all the changes are immediate.

For the label of "OK", it's easy. You can find the latest fr.po file here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/st...dates/po/fr.po

Feel free to edit it and send me (better privately) the new version, while waiting for Sean to update the Crowdin thing.

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

More. Help me please :
- I need to understand the difference between the role of the "Max diverted course" item that is in the "Base" tab and the "Max course angle" item that is in the "Advanced" tab.

- I need to understand the role of the item "Inverted region".
- I also need to understand the item "Tacking time".

The help file does have some explanation of these items: Help -> Info

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

For these two items, the translations into French seem very bad. So, it will be necessary to improve the translations in the language file, unless the last modifications of the code related certain items in English to other items in French.

See above.

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

Last remark: Now, every time I change language, going from English to French, in OpenCPN options, OpenCPN crash. but when you restart, everything looks normal. And we find ourselves in French.
Is it due to WR or tests with draw or with WD ?????

I tried on Linux, and indeed it does crash, but only when the "WR Edit configuration" dialog is open. If only the main WR dialog is opened, I can switch languages just fine. Can you confirm you have the same issue ?

[rgleason]

Jeez, I fix one polar and the other one goes bad and becomes a copy of one of the three polars used!

This appears to be a problem with SAVE! But it needs to be confirmed somehow. This is the second time this has happened.

Somehow the EDIT programming retains the pathname of the previous EDIT???!!! Is this possible? THIS HAS HAPPENED TWICE NOW.

I will fix it again. ---I just checked and all the TWS polars are correct in my local github DATA folder, why would the PR be wrong? I did add all 3 files with git add ----.

See the Compare here.
https://github.com/seandepagnier/wea...40378dace8c66b
TWS-0-6 is OK, notice the TWS=7 has been added.
TWS-6-20 is OK, notice that that was fixed.
TWS-20-60 now got switched in the PR, however it appears to be correct in my github DATA directory!

twa/tws;20;24;28;30;32;34;40;50;60
52;6.2;6.4;6;5.5;3;0;0;0;0
60;6.5;6.8;6.3;5.5;3;0;0;0;0
75;6.8;7;6.5;5.7;3.2;0;0;0;0
90;7.1;7.3;6.8;6;3.4;0;0;0;0
110;7.4;7.6;7;6.5;3.2;0;0;0;0
120;7.6;7.9;7.4;6.8;3.3;0;0;0;0
135;7.5;7.8;7.4;6.8;3.3;0;0;0;0
150;7.3;7.7;7.4;6.7;3;0;0;0;0

Why?

Will try again!

Originally Posted by SoggyPaws

It looks to me like the "polar fix" to the data file did not get included. The TWS-6-20.pol file still looks like this, which appears to be a copy of (or similar to) the 0-6 one:

twa/tws;1;2;3;4;5
52;4.3;5.1;5.7;5.9;5.9
60;4.6;5.5;6;6.2;6.2
75;4.9;5.8;6.2;6.4;6.4
90;5.1;6;6.3;6.5;6.5
110;5;5.9;6.4;6.7;6.7
120;4.7;5.8;6.3;6.6;6.6
135;4.2;5.2;6;6.4;6.4
150;3.6;4.5;5.4;6;6

I uninstalled and double-checked that all the data files were removed in both Program Files and Program Data, before I re-installed the new version.

All the pol files in my directory after install

<programfiles>/OpenCPN/plugins/weather_routing_pi/data/polars

are of the same date...3 days ago. Continuing to poke around...

[rgleason]

Soggy Paws,
Sorry about that. I don't know what happened with the Polar file.
Please try this: https://github.com/rgleason/weather_routing_pi/releases
version 1.1102 installed into a clean Opencpn or it won't initialize.

I've made another PR to Sean with the change.

If check the files after you install and enable, before any Editing of Polars!
Make sure they are correct please.

Then compute some configurations, and then try to Edit the polars and SAVE and try to determine if they get screwed up. Let us know what happens.

You can report here on this thread and in Sean's wxrte PI Gitub Issues
https://github.com/seandepagnier/wea...ting_pi/issues

Add a new Issue for each problem please.

[stelian]

Rick, I have tried your build (1.1102) and I can reproduce the crash.

I have build a binary from my git (branch pot-and-french-updates), and I do NOT have the crash, everything works fine: http://popies.net/tmp/weather_routin...1sp1-win32.exe

I don't know if the crash is due to the changes I made (but there isn't much...), or the different build environment.

If you can try to build my branch and test maybe it will help find the issue. I'll try the same (build from your git) later.

[rgleason]

Some information about Crossover TAB and lower left dropdown Polar and Speed.

https://github.com/seandepagnier/wea..._pi/issues/100

Thanks Stelian, before I Clean and Download yours, can you please confirm that you are doing the same thing as I am in your test.

Edit Polar > Dimension TAB Using the TWS-0-6.pol highlighted, Enter 8.0 in the upper left and then press "ADD". Then the 8.0 appears in the bottom of the TWS column. Then hit SAVE at the bottom. Do you get the circle and eventual failure of OpenCPN?

Maybe my Polar file is write protected for some reason? It is in the user directory programdata. But is the PI actually accessing that location? I'll check the opencpn.ini next.

[PlugIns/WeatherRouting/BoatDialog]
Orientation1=1
PolarPath=C:\\ProgramData\\opencpn\\plugins\\weath er_routing\\polars

Boat-Climatology.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<OpenCPNWeatherRoutingBoat version="1.11" creator="Opencpn Weather Routing plugin">
<Polar FileName="C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\weather_r outing\polars\TWS-6-20.pol" CrossOverContours="C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\ weather_routing\contours\C__ProgramData_opencpn_pl ugins_weather_routing_polars_TWS-6-20.pol.contours" CrossOverPercentage="15" />
<Polar FileName="C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\weather_r outing\polars\TWS-20-60.pol" CrossOverContours="C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\ weather_routing\contours\C__ProgramData_opencpn_pl ugins_weather_routing_polars_TWS-20-60.pol.contours" CrossOverPercentage="8" />
<Polar FileName="C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\weather_r outing\polars\TWS-0-6.pol" CrossOverContours="C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\ weather_routing\contours\C__ProgramData_opencpn_pl ugins_weather_routing_polars_TWS-0-6.pol.contours" CrossOverPercentage="6" />
</OpenCPNWeatherRoutingBoat>

All the paths are OK!!!

Under properties, the TWS___ .pol files are not checked Read Only.

[stelian]

Rick, read my message above.

I can reproduce the problem when using your exe, doing the same steps you do.

I cannot reproduce the problem with my exe.

[rgleason]

Great info ea

I did have LOTS of fun running several different boats on Pacific crossings... even checking out the route my friends took from Pohnpei in Micronesia to Sitka Alaska this summer. The Climatology routing followed almost their same route and complete the passage within about 2 days ahead of the time they did (and they, encountering real weather, spent a day or two hove-to letting weather go by). Fun thing to play with, now that it is working.

In doing some Atlantic crossings and checking actual vs predicted, I find the predicted is a little fast, and it is better to put the wind at 80% of full strength. I was able to predict quite accurately a crossing from Canaries to St.Lucia, but that was after some experience with the boat's progress.
It pays to keep testing and using the plugin, you learn more each time, particularly with real world voyages.

1. I did get the new warning if I put my max latitude constraint lower than the start or endpoint. Good fix.
2. The file path problems with the contours files has been solved. They look right in the xml file and also there are actually some contours files in the Contours folder.
3. The "boat" name associated with a routing can be displayed on the Configuration page. Nice feature if you are helping a friend with a routing.

Good, Agreed. Nice.

After using the Weather Route Plot a little I think it can be a good graphical representation with the scales and functions all working. Your reports are helpful.