February 7, 2010 12:30
bobetter Wrote:...to optimize raster quilting would not be very cost effective for any developer (are you or anybody you know doing it?) nor would the end result be as effective as running vector on a small screen....This is a very healthy and interesting debate. First, yes, I know of multiple developers besides myself who are developing raster and vector quilting code. Have you seen our NOAA charts in our X beta? How about MaxSea Time Zero's unbelievable handling of raster and vector data?
The raster vs vector debate has gone on for a long time. Both are important and I'm not convinced that raster is going away for a while. I'd even expect to see vector charts rasterized for viewing in the future.
Raster vs vector is the very common computer tradeoff between time and space. While vector data is certainly smaller, it takes longer to display it. Raster data is much larger but is very quick to display if the data is organized in a way to display it (something that iNavX isn't optimized for right now since it appears to go back to the KAP data often which is line based). If memory size is an issue then vector data is better. But it's 2010 and memory is cheap and easy to get. I'd rather have speed over memory savings in today's world. Instant zoom and pan is more important in my opinion than saving a gigabyte or so of memory.