Introduction
Program Features
Ship Track Plot over Worldwide Geopolitical Data
- Capable of plotting ship's track overlayed on a map-type display of world coastline, river, place name, and other type data.
Data Browser for Plot Configuration
- A Data Browser dialog allows the user to interactively select
real-time data to be displayed. Elements of the dialog's user
interface allow selection of data types, plot formats,
colors, scaling values, etc. An example Data Browser screen is
shown below. Click on the image to view a full sized version.
Map Key Shows Plot Parameters and Data Values
- A Map Key display shows plot configuration values and data values
for items selected in the Data Browser for display on the chart, or
for only display in the key. An example Map Key display is shown
below. Click on the image to view a full sized version.
Accepts Variable Navigational Sources
- Ship's track from varying navigational sources may be plotted as a solid line on the program's display.
Scalar Data Plotting Options
- Scalar data associated with ship's position may be plotted on
ship's track.
- Scalar data includes such values as wind speed, sea surface temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, calculated surface salinity, rain guage readings, etc.
- Scalars may be plotted as text labels along the ship's track
- Scalars may also be plotted as colored rasters, with user-defined ranges of values mapped to pre-defined color pallets (rainbow and gray scale).
Vector Data Plotting Options
- Vector data associated with ship's position may be plotted
on ship's track.
- Currently the only vector values available are winds. When the ship's ADCP system becomes a client to the XMIDAS Server, ADCP vectors will also be available.
- Vectors are plotted as arrows, scaled by user-defined values.
- Arrows may be drawn as "leading" or "trailing" type vectors, with or without arrow heads.
Tools Available for Chart Manipulation
- User may zoom in and out, plus recenter the map with the mouse. Tools are chosen from a toolbar in the program window.
Ruler Tool for Chart Measurements
- An interactive "ruler" tool lets the user measure distances on the chart, plus optionally create a "rubber band ruler" that can measure distances from the ship to a fixed point. This ruler tool will show distance and heading from ship to point, plus estimated travel time for ship to reach point at current ship's speed. See the Map Key image above for an example display of this data.
User Defined Waypoints for Cruise Track Planning
- User may create, delete, and edit waypoints on the chart.
- Waypoints may be drawn in several scales with a variety of common standard navigational chart symbols.
- Waypoints may be drawn with an optional text label.
- Waypoints may be linked with arrows to represent cruise tracks.
- Program will generate optional routing statistics for waypoints from linked waypoints. This is useful for estimating ship track travel distances and times.
- Waypoints may be loaded from and save to disk files for future use.
Sample Screen Displays
This is a screen dump of a typical program run. The ship's track has been displayed, with sea surface temperatures plotted along the ship's track with colored raster values. Coastline and river data is being displayed in the background, but place names have been turned off.
Click on the image to get a full scale image of the program window.
This is a second screen dump. This is a more simplified display that includes an example of the "rubber band" ruler that is measuring the distance from the ship (located in port) and a waypoint labeled "CTD Cast". See the example Map Key above for the text information display that accompanies the ruler.
Internals
- X Windows display based.
- Is a Client to the central XMIDAS Server -- a sockets based server for assimilation and distribution of real time data in a networked environment.
- Dynamically analyses data stream from XMIDAS Server and automatically classifies data types coming from server for display.
- Utilizes the XMIDAS Instrumentation Database to identify each data item from the server.
- Geopolitical data for chart display is from the DMA's Digital Chart of the World (DCW). The DCW is a 1,700 MB data base of vector geographic information. It provides global coverage of topographic information equivalent in detail to 1:1 million scale maps.
- Written in C.
- Source code available.
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