While I held my summer studious testing hardware and software in conditions of extreme hardship, developers lined fierce relentless miles of lines of code to improve our navigation applications. What devotion, what sacrifice !
Stressful working conditions…
Concerning navigation applications, mainly come from the new Navionics Marine and Transas iSailor. In honor where honor, start with the leader of our smartphones and tablets, Navionics charts…
Navionics Nav Module
The 21 August, Navionics added a module on iTunes AppStore "in-app", that is to say to purchase directly from the application, for Navionics Marine (iPhone) and Marine HD (iPad ). Sold respectively 1,59 € and 3,99 €, Nav Module finally brings real features for creating and monitoring routes.
Access to purchase the Nav Module
Once installed, the module has a left side drawer, retractable, which provides the data for each waypoint of a route : distance, heading, mean time to go, etc,. A menu button "Route", at screen bottom, shows available fonctions.
The "Edit" to create, move, remove successive waypoints of a route with simple finger taps and slides, while viewing real-time updating of data in the drawer. In the same way, one "Go" button activates the first waypoint can always interrupt, reverse and modify the current route.
It is well designed and easy to use. I only had a little trouble figuring out how to create a new route when a route is already active, the process is a little twisted. I'll let you look, and do not rely on the built-in Help to help you !
iSailor 1.5
The 3 September, Transas has posted on the AppStore the latest version 1.5.0 of iSailor. Completely redesigned, application now has multiple layers (or views) which facilitate the use. A significant improvement to the quality vector cartography, but the interface was, until this version, more than summary.
A welcome window provides information on the latest version, namely the different icons and their functions.
Once the map is displayed, it switches from one view to another by tapping on the 3 white buttons at the bottom of the screen, which shows the icons of different views.
The third icon opens the Create view and edit waypoints and routes. In this view, just drag the icon from the window side waypoint "Roads" on the map to place successive points and create the road. Pressing the waypoint can rename, support of the long put differently. It takes a bit of skill but you get used to.
You can then edit the route, change the position of waypoints by dragging, manually enter their Latitude and Longitude. A simple tap on the second line of the window "Routes" to create a new one which will add waypoints. Side window "Tracks" can start recording tracks.
Several other features have been added to this version :
- Cursor location tool
- ETA and XTE data added to the waypoints
- EBL tool (Electronic Bearing Line) referenced to the position
- Support of long track recording for long-distance
- Manually entering coordinates for the waypoint and other personal objects
- Support import / export to GPX format (waypoints, routes)
Here is the good work done during the summer, which shows the growing interest of the private charting publishers our smartphones and tablets.
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iNavX vs Navionics Mobile
Navionics Mobile and Community Sharing
iSailor : Transas charts on iPhone and iPad
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Hello,
Thank you for this very interesting article.
Following your advice and different opinions on the internet, I am equipped with the infernal trio : iPad , iNavX and Navionics Gold for navigation 10 days in Britain and North Channel. Used paper maps and rule Cras, it is clear that this "trio" is akin to a crew member dedicated to navigation !
To you, of the three solutions iNavX, Navionics app and iSailor seems more ergonomic ? From my point of view, I found iNavX rather simple and. The only criticisms or ideas for improvement would be to visualize the currents directly on the base map, to manage waypoints (waypoints) by folder (arrive at a score that is difficult to navigate), improve the ergonomics of the "instrument" view with explicit displays rather than all these abstruse trigrams…
Another question, Do you know a way to automatically establish polar speed ? Assuming of course that the speedo, vane anemometer and are connected to the app.
My personal choice is focused on iNavX. Currents on the charts, I wrote a note on the subject because it is not easy. Management Waypoints folder (as in GPSNavX and MacENC) was requested for some time the developer, it's in his "ToDo List". The "absconts trigrams" that you speak of are unfortunately the English acronyms used in all navigation devices, GPS, card readers, chartplotters. Untranslatable and irreplaceable. You have the list in the Help section in iNavX Instruments. Replaced by Pictograph like MaxSea would be a real headache and it would be more understandable. You can, in the settings, delete the data you want to see on the screen.
The answer to the last question is no. There is no automatic way to generate speed polars. The polar base are provided by architects, but then it is a long and tedious to achieve with his boat, and according to the sailing games, the precise polar.