July 5, 2005 13:24
Hi,
Yesterday I was at a life demonstration of MaxSea (Basic, with GRIB, STREAMING and ROUTING module) (costs a total of 1500 EURO).
The program looks great and seems to be intuitive, but there wasn't much that GPSNavX couldn't do.
Features I like to see in GPSNavX:
* tidal stream arrows like the GRIB data, with the possibility to have tidal or weather (GRIB) data at any point the mouse pointer points (CTRL-Weather/Stream)
* view 2 or more charts at once (like vector, raster and areal photograph) with all the waypoints and boat / routes being on every map.
* log book, which automatically saves all waypoints plus infos about changing weather conditions or wind conditions with a filter function:
if wind increase by 10 kts include it in the logbook
* but the most interessting feature was the routing module:
just plan your route with waypoints and from any point where your boat is, the ideal route is being calculated and drawn as movable vector object. This route considers tidal stream forces and directions (taken from streaming data file) as well as wind force and direction (taken from GRIB files). (Just like a navigation system in cars shows you the shortest way or fastest to reach your destination.)
Of course routing calculation is used too with MOB, where wind and streams are taken into consideration too to find back your man/woman on sea.
The presenter of MaxSea told us that other progs do this too, but don't consider streaming data.
BTW when asked why MaxSea doesn't come back to MAC computers, the answer was, when C-Map charts are being ported to MAC, MaxSea will be ported back to MAC too.
By the end of 2005/2006 MaxSea will have S57 charts.
All in all I was very impressed by the presentation, but GPSNavX nearly has all the features (except those mentioned above) but for a much lesser price.
Another topic mentioned was the vulnerability of laptops under seaweather conditions.
Most laptops today do have rigid enough harddisks which can quietly absorb some shocks. But the problem is the ventilation inside laptops (computers) which gets salty moisty air inside your computer. This humid salty air can destroy motherboards. So better would be to have small selfmade PCs without ventilations. BTW how does a Mac mini compare here?
Yesterday I was at a life demonstration of MaxSea (Basic, with GRIB, STREAMING and ROUTING module) (costs a total of 1500 EURO).
The program looks great and seems to be intuitive, but there wasn't much that GPSNavX couldn't do.
Features I like to see in GPSNavX:
* tidal stream arrows like the GRIB data, with the possibility to have tidal or weather (GRIB) data at any point the mouse pointer points (CTRL-Weather/Stream)
* view 2 or more charts at once (like vector, raster and areal photograph) with all the waypoints and boat / routes being on every map.
* log book, which automatically saves all waypoints plus infos about changing weather conditions or wind conditions with a filter function:
if wind increase by 10 kts include it in the logbook
* but the most interessting feature was the routing module:
just plan your route with waypoints and from any point where your boat is, the ideal route is being calculated and drawn as movable vector object. This route considers tidal stream forces and directions (taken from streaming data file) as well as wind force and direction (taken from GRIB files). (Just like a navigation system in cars shows you the shortest way or fastest to reach your destination.)
Of course routing calculation is used too with MOB, where wind and streams are taken into consideration too to find back your man/woman on sea.
The presenter of MaxSea told us that other progs do this too, but don't consider streaming data.
BTW when asked why MaxSea doesn't come back to MAC computers, the answer was, when C-Map charts are being ported to MAC, MaxSea will be ported back to MAC too.
By the end of 2005/2006 MaxSea will have S57 charts.
All in all I was very impressed by the presentation, but GPSNavX nearly has all the features (except those mentioned above) but for a much lesser price.
Another topic mentioned was the vulnerability of laptops under seaweather conditions.
Most laptops today do have rigid enough harddisks which can quietly absorb some shocks. But the problem is the ventilation inside laptops (computers) which gets salty moisty air inside your computer. This humid salty air can destroy motherboards. So better would be to have small selfmade PCs without ventilations. BTW how does a Mac mini compare here?