I am pleased to say that I have now released v1.0 of PassagePlus, my ARCS-compatible navigation application for OS X. Information about the product and a download page are available at
http://www.windvector.com
I will of course continue to make enhancements, so any constructive feedback is welcome.
Regards
Jonathan Fewtrell
Wind Vector Ltd
Hi
I tried the Demo version of your program.
I'm impressed by the scrolling speed of the maps.
Another feature I like is the Emergency menu.
I always wondered why GPSNavX doesn't have a MOB function, which will automatically show you the way back to the accident.
OTOH I hope I will never need such a function.
Also the tides function seems to be interesting, but it is only useable for the UK system, which I learned recently and seems to work everywhere on the world, compared to the German and French methods. The French method is very easy and accurate but this mainly works for french atlantic coasts.
BTW what's the difference between ARCS and BSB charts?
And will your program support ENC charts in future versions?
Continue your great work.
Regards,
Manou
Thanks for your comments.
ARCS and BSB are functionally similar; both are raster images of paper charts with various metadata added. The differences are mainly the file format and the security/encryption schemes which mean that unfortunately the two are not compatible.
I wrote PassagePlus mainly because there was no OS X application that would open ARCS charts.
I'm not sure whether I will do an ENC application. MacENC already handles S57, and my hope is that S57 will become more or less standard and we won't have a bunch of incompatible vector formats. Certainly I won't do anything on ENC yet because, for now, I still have a lot of work to do on improving PassagePlus.
Regards
Jon
Sorting out all the nuances of S-57 vector format is not a trivial matter. Not all S-57 ENCs are equal. The OS X S-57 reader/renderer is still a work in progress. Trading off performance for artistic beauty. Not only does MacENC read/render S-57, but it also supports the S-63 encyrption found on international ENCs. Add in BSB raster format and you have a complete solution.
Anyone considering taking on the task of an S-57 reader should check out the specification..
http://www.iho.shom.fr/publicat/free/files/31Main.pdf
And then the object and feature catalog..
http://www.s-57.com/