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Comment by Solvency | Hacker News Reader

1. Never in a million years would I suggest this Raspberry Pi project being the answer to the ugly that is nautical software.

2. Even the big fancy screens in fancy yachts have god awful UI.

3. I am not talking about meaningless fad designs. Google Maps decades ago made road maps intuitive and beautiful at the same time.

By comparison, the vast majority of those chart plotters look like ancient Windows95 graphics. It's disingenuous to suggest that's as good as it can get. Google could have easily just scanned a bunch of awful old school highway maps and called it a day if that was true.

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On commercial vessels, the colors have to follow the Solars standards. To make sure there are no misunderstandings in the charts. Many, software for no-comersical ships have much more fancy displays in random colors. Including 3d views of your route with sonar overlays. Satellite maps, but the clarity of the standard colors, or colors close to them as used by are much clearer in my view. For an overview of what Navionics, Garmin's chart brand, gives (https://www.navionics.com/fin/charts/features/garmin).

Google maps is not a good comparison as it is so empty. A nautical chart is designed to show much more information all at once.

You missed the point.

Those chart graphics (colors, symbology, everything) are an industry and legal standard, even if you don’t think they are aesthetically pleasing or intuitive. Any trained mariner can get onboard and understand the information regardless of brand. They aren’t meant to be intuitive and beautiful, they are meant to match extensive training and expectations of professionals. They are meant to be the digital evolution of a product with centuries of development. Nothing about nautical charts is a mistake. By comparison googles maps are extremely faddish, the look of their maps has changed quite a bit since launch their launch 19 years ago.

As far as the UI outside of the charts, that works the same as any iDevice or app.

The fact that I can think back over my work history and not remember the brand of the instruments and displays I’ve used is a feature not a bug.

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