Tuesday, November 7, 2023

A new layer in the GeoGarage platform : Netherlands nautical charts based on rasterized ENC material from NLHO

Nautical charts for Netherlands today which leads to the availability of a new dedicated layer for Netherlands with NLHO rasterized ENCs

Until today, the GeoGarage platform used the raster chart material (RNC) provided by NLHO display nautical charts for the Netherlands areas.

For internal management reasons specific to NLHO, the Netherlands Hydrographic Office has made some technical changes to deliver updates to their commercial licensees (whose GeoGarage) causing us problems to deliver updates for our customers in our chain of processes.

The GeoGarage platform was already in the capacity to deliver a rasterized visualization of Electronic Navigation Chart (vector ENC) through their web services (WMTS) for their B2B customers involved in webmapping and other onshore GIS activities.

Today, the GeoGarage platform is ready to propose the visualization of official ENC to their customers using mobile navigation apps (non SOLAS) so Weather 4D Routing and Navigation on iOS and SailGrib on Android.
 
In consequence, the GeoGarage platform no longer offers a subscription to Netherlands Raster maps for Netherlands on its e-commerce platform for mobile apps.
However, the Netherlands RNC subscription will continue for their current mobile customers until its expiry date (visible on your W4D R&N/Sailgrib application) but will not be automatically renewed on this date.

The RNC plan is replaced by a new layer based on ENC type maps edited by the Netherlands Hydrographic Office (NLHO), and rasterized for W4D/Sailgrib : Netehrlands (derived from NLHO ENC)
The price of the annual subscription (24.99 EUR) remains the same. 
 
So Weather4D R&N and Sailgrib users (with last updated versions) can right now display the whole catalogue of NLHO ENC (166 ENC at this time), with a half-yearly updating process : see GeoGarage news

Today, in this first version, the vector ENC are displayed using a graphical rendering similar to the one used in official ECDIS (s-52 IHO specifications) : they are not to be used for shipping navigation (IMO SOLAS), but only for recreative use, not as a primary tool for navigation.
Effectively, in contrast to the use in ECDIS, there is no possibility -today with the W4D/SailGrib current version- to ask for text info and details regarding any navigational objects (beacon, buoy, marks...).
 
View of Amsterdam harbor with RNC chart
 
Same view of Amsterdam harbor with ENC chart

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