Expedition Navigation Software 
1 - JimmyH
- Contributor
Offline - Registered: 10/27/2020
- Posts: 5
C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
I am running Expedition with C-MAP MAX charts and its lagging more than I´m happy with when panning and zooming (I´m on a laptop with W10 and 8th gen i5 processor and Intel 620 Graphics). Now with C-MAP MAX soon end of life will Expedition become even slower if I go with C-MAP 4D? And if so are there any faster alternatives?
- TomH
- Expert
Offline
- From: London (and Chichester)
- Registered: 2/06/2016
- Posts: 65
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
My experience making that move earlier in the year was that even with a pretty old laptop running Win10 was that it ran well - faster if anything. I suspect better use of hardware acceleration helped. That said the C-Map Max performance wasn't as bad as you describe. My boat PC (the only Windows machine I own...) is an old i5 (2557M) 1.7GHz with 6 GB, if that helps.
- Fergal
- Administrator
Offline
- From: Galway, Ireland
- Registered: 9/09/2015
- Posts: 159
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
I run Expedition with CMAP 4D on two systems - 1.7 GHz i5 with 8GB RAM and a Tablet with a Celeron1.1 GHz with 4GB. It runs great on both. Both running Window 10. I wouldn't be concerned about your move to 4D
- JimmyH
- Contributor
Offline
- Registered: 10/27/2020
- Posts: 5
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
Thanks, really appreciate your feedback! 
- •
Thread Starter- us7070
- Expert
Offline
- Registered: 12/06/2017
- Posts: 260
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
I find the 4D much harder to use than the older c-map.
I am running both versions on my laptop and never use the 4D
- TomH
- Expert
Offline
- From: London (and Chichester)
- Registered: 2/06/2016
- Posts: 65
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
us7070 wrote:
I find the 4D much harder to use than the older c-map.
That's interesting. I've got to prefer it because of the ease of flipping between raster and vector charts, and online updates but don't find it that different. What's the appeal of Max for your use -am I missing something?
Tom
- us7070
- Expert
Offline
- Registered: 12/06/2017
- Posts: 260
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
I have two problems with 4D that I have not been able to fix:
1) with the older charts, i can see navaids at zoom level C/0 - this is a level i like to use for coastal distance races, as it enables me to see a good bit of the area around me.
with the 4D charts.., i do not see nav aids at any of the C zoom levels. with 4D I need to be zoomed in to level D to see nav aids. This is too zoomed-in for me.., and with 4D I am often navigating at one of the C levels - with no nav aids visible on the chart. I even went so far as to make marks for some of them so i could see them at level C where I was navigating - but that's what i bought the charts for...
2) In 4D I have been unable to get rid of the blue shallow water color.., and it expands to fill deep water as one zooms out. With the old charts, i can force the water areas to be white at all zoom levels. When viewing the weather - say wind speed shaded in different colors - having a white background is much better, as the blue makes it hard to see the gradient in the wind speed. I greatly prefer having white water areas.
I will try to post some screenshots
I have played extensively with the settings in 4D an have not been able to fix these things, so if anyone has a solution please post it.
- flamman
- Contributor
Offline
- From: Sweden
- Registered: 5/09/2022
- Posts: 5
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
Hi! New Expedition user looking to buy charts to use in Baltic and found this thread. I have assumed that 4D-charts is the way to go but reading the above issue with zoom-levels makes me want to check before buying..
I have so far with the free C-map world chart the same second issue that us7070 mention above. That when you zoom out to get an overview (of weather, routing, etc) a lot of the deep water is shown in blue.
Is there a way within Expedition to configure this so that all deep areas show as white at all zoom levels with C-Map 4D charts? Or is this hard-coded into the C-Map 4D charts?
Update: Did find in the advanced C-map settings that you can change the "Depth shading" to "Safe" and it removed most (maybe all) of the blue marking on the deep areas of the the chart.
Last edited by flamman (5/10/2022 12:18 am)
- Campbell_Field
- Moderator
Offline
- From: UK
- Registered: 9/16/2015
- Posts: 238
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
When zooming out a long way for an overview, I switch to the built in world chart - nice and simple.
4D is the way to go, especially with the raster charts, vector never tells the full story.
:::Campbell Field::::::www.fieldyachting.com:::
- flamman
- Contributor
Offline
- From: Sweden
- Registered: 5/09/2022
- Posts: 5
Re: C-MAP MAX End Of Life alternative?
Ah, ok. That chart is very clean yes. So could be a work-around for the issue.
Do you use a keyboard shortcut to switch charts or is it possible to configure Expedition do automatically switch?
Seems like a hazzle to manually switch in the menu each time wheen zooming in/out. We do a lot of costal and near shore races so would want the switching to be as easy as possible.
Update: Also found that if you in the Advanced C-map settings change "Depth shading" to "Safe" it seems to remove most (or all) of the blue marked deep areas in the C-map chart. With that found I think I will take the plunge now and buy the C-map 4D charts.
Last edited by flamman (5/10/2022 12:20 am)