First of all, great software! Iv'e got a long history with marine mapping and GIS and the product is up there with professional commercial bathymetric mapping!

It is also great to see the programme evolve with upgrades and new functionality at a blistering pace - I just hope it doesn't get bought out by one of the commercial chart plotter / mapping companies such as Lowrance or navionics as their development seems to be so much slower and their costs so much higher!!

Anyway, I've a couple of suggestions that would be 'nice to have' but are by no means criticisms!

1/ I think someone has already asked, but it would be good to have the ability to plot track points on the contour display. Perhaps they could also be plotted as depth values (i.e. spot depth values such as on a conventional navigation chart). Obviously with a lot of track points, it might be necessary to allow the scaling of text and the ability to have a user defined spacing (e.g. every 10th track point, or better still, spaced closely where topography is rapidly changing and further apart where topography is more stable ).
2/ Where the track points are displayed already on the sonar and tracklines, it would be good to be able to change the size of the 'dots', especially the ability to make them smaller. I realise the depth is not a single point d/t the 'cone' of the sounder, but smaller dots would help during post processing.
3/ Again, i think its been mentioned, but it would be nice to have some kind of user input to define where the program determines the depth from the sonar data - e.g wrecks are ignored by the depth calculating algorithm and so if you want to show the wreck as part of a contour / 3d chart, you have to manually change the depth values (at least i had to).
4/ The export map image only appears to be on the contour page. It would be good to get this on all displays and perhaps the ability to have an 'overall' export display that could show multiple 3-D, contour and track data parameters along with user comments. I feel the software has great potential for marine industries that may need to produce surveys and subsequent reports - improving this facility may open up a bigger market for RM. Of course, there is always the MS 'word' option though!
5/ I'll probably be shot for saying this!!!, but a more conventional compass rose (rather than the logo) on any export image might be advantageous...... developers prerogative i know!! Forget that one :-)
6/ Would it be possible to allow user defined text size / contour line thickness on the actual contour / 3D displays - not just the export map image?
7/ Might be useful to include the aquired time on the track point pop up window (presently only depth, lat and long)
8/ when selecting a point on the sonar display, the position and vector of the vessel doesn't seem to update on the track point chart - the point is selected and pop up window appears, but the vessel icon stays on the previous point.
9/ I suspect its a licensing issue and not possible, but could you not plead with google to allow google earth as a background map? (I'm in an area with poor map quest aerial coverage). I have produced charts by exporting kmz's and imported from google earth, but it would be so much easier to have the aerial tiles update in the RM software (e.g like the navionics charting application).

I appear to have got carried away! Anyway, like i said, the product is already excellent - just a few thoughts.... Ive got a few more, but best i stop for now!

cheers

Hi Hermes, thanks for your suggestions, the kind words!

1. We will add spot depths from track-points. A few people have asked for it, and after the side-scan release we will have more time to go back and visit some of the "nice to have" requests. Not sure exactly how we would implement it yet, but some sort of filtering based on the flatness of the area will probably be necessary.

2. It wouldn't be a lot of work to add a track-point size option (even just a global one, perhaps), so I'll put it on the list.

3. We don't calculate the depths ourselves - we take depths from the sonar files that have been calculated on the units. It's unlikely we'd ever implement a system that completely recalculated depths, but we are looking at improving the way in which depths can be edited in the sonar viewer. Something more similar to the way DrDepth used to do it, with some automatic edge detection and a way of manipulating the entire "line" of depth, rather than individual track-points. What we have now is (just about) functional, but a little clumsy and a few people have requested improvements here.

4. Agreed - at the very least the option should be available on all project pages. 3D export has always been a bit of an issue, because of the technology we use for 3D. That's changing for the better towards the end of this year - we'll have a much nicer 3D display, along with export options.

5. Yeah - it's our branding, I suppose.

6,7 Yes - we could do this.

8. It should, I think - I'll look into it. There's a few changes coming here anyway along with the side-scan release, including chart view locking onto the boat position during track replay in the sonar viewer.

9. It's a thorny one this; we've spent quite a lot of time looking into base map options and the licensing is either too expensive or not possible due to terms of use. Google is completely out, Bing is a possibility (but pricey). One alternative we have looked at is MapBox, which has good coverage of the US (they all do) and much of Europe, but is a bit lacking elsewhere. Hopefully we'll get something lined up this year.

Sounds good.... And sounds like you guys are very busy !!!

Incidentally, re suggestion 1, I actually did some work on this during my uni days (reducing data points from single Chanel marine reflection data to calculate volumes of marine aggregates), many moons ago. Involved eliminating data depending upon a specified correlation coefficient - ie in flat areas, points were removed, but in more changeable topography, more data was kept. Wrote a program in C using a pretty straight forward algorithm that was then used in GRASS GIS. Not sure if it would help in this case, but I could mail it to you if you think it might be useful?

Hi Hermes,
Sure - it would be interesting to take a look. Feel free to get in touch on info(at)reefmaster.com.au!

thanks,
Matt

ok matt, will do - in about 4 weeks though as i am stuck offshore in japan on a seismic survey ship (with no beer - dry ship) :-(