C-Map by Jeppesen TrueView high-resolution
aerial photograph overlaid on a C-Map vector chart to
show key approaches and landmarks.
Several years ago, graphics processing chips
reached over a billion transistors per chip
(1.5), clock speeds of over 1 gigahertz (GHz),
and 24 megabytes (MB) of on-die memory—
all on a rectangular chip slightly larger than a
25-cent piece. With all this processing power,
it’s no wonder that chartplotters have become
multifunction displays (MFDs). Concerning
the many technological advances, Navionics
Product Manager Shaun Ruge says, “Some of
that has gone to other things; the multifunction display is a good example. You’ve got a lot
of things happening at once,” referring to the
technological complexity of MFDs.
These advances in IC technology underlie
both the hardware and the software aspects of
chartplotting. While hardware manufacturers
have taken advantage of the increased speed
and processing power of the microprocessor
chips to dramatically improve the performance characteristics of the plotter (chart
redraw speeds,
smoother pan,
zoom, scale and
chart changes,
etc.) through
vastly improved
chart engines,
the cartography
suppliers have capitalized on the increased
data storage capacity to dramatically increase
the number, information content and type of
value-added features. These include
panoramic pictures, 3D/2D views with satellite imagery, aerial photo overlays and points
of interest (POIs). At the same time, software
companies have developed increasingly powerful and innovative software “engines” to
make optimum use of the library data on the
chart card. A lot of this has its roots in the
PC/video gaming industry, which has led the
charge in fast-changing 3D graphics.
The problem for chartplotter suppliers is
how to convey these advances in features and
performance to the end user. Features are relatively easy; they either appear on the list of
features or they don’t. Performance improvements are more difficult. As Ruge says, “The
other issue is that, just from a pure sales end
of things, the changes in features on the packaging is obviously verifiable, that’s easy for the
end user to see. Whereas if we just say, ‘it’s
faster,’ that’s difficult for the end user to validate unless they can make a side-by-side comparison, and most people just don’t do that.”
