April 2, 2010 15:26
Sorry for the late reply! I was out sailing this week, outside the usual communication range (what a concept, I actually get to sail from time to time 
). It ain't all fun and games - I also get to stress-test PolarView and make a longer TODO list for myself .
You are correct - PolarView is a free chart viewer/planner/GRIB weather viewer/tides & currents viewer. PolarCOM is an NMEA instrument multiplexor and display.
Combining them together into a comprehensive navigation product requires a paid license (which gets installed in a PolarView). Once you obtain a license, you will get a "live ship" on a chart functionality in PolarView.
This will also provide route information so that various route related instruments (distance/time/bearing to next waypoint, destination, XTE etc) will work in PolarCOM.
And, as correctly noted above, while NOAA chart data is free, - official Canadian charts are decidedly not free (which, I think, is quite unfortunate).
). It ain't all fun and games - I also get to stress-test PolarView and make a longer TODO list for myself .You are correct - PolarView is a free chart viewer/planner/GRIB weather viewer/tides & currents viewer. PolarCOM is an NMEA instrument multiplexor and display.
Combining them together into a comprehensive navigation product requires a paid license (which gets installed in a PolarView). Once you obtain a license, you will get a "live ship" on a chart functionality in PolarView.
This will also provide route information so that various route related instruments (distance/time/bearing to next waypoint, destination, XTE etc) will work in PolarCOM.
And, as correctly noted above, while NOAA chart data is free, - official Canadian charts are decidedly not free (which, I think, is quite unfortunate).