Notable NCC Challenges as of Version 1.2
from starpath.com/NCC

Feb 19, 2023 noticed new ver 2.0, slowly adding the changes we find. Only the color comments have been checked.

1) Sector lights do not have labels in ENC, and lights partially obscured are treated as sector lights, so we end up missing a lot of light labels, such as Fl (1) R 4s 10.2m 6M. This is an important issue to be resolved. In V2.0, Seems this important point has been fixed.

2) Sometimes even a simple light on a beacon is missing its full label, but this is another issue related to ENC label displays in general. Label and symbol sizes remain constant in ENC, even on different display scales. Thus there can be congestion or overprinting of labels in some cases, and how this is handled depends on the app showing them. If the app rules out overlap then we can miss some labels. We suspect that NOAA will develop a sophisticated label display to account for this, such as used by qtVlm. There are also a class of ENC symbols that move around depending on the view, and these too require special attention. Labels in general seem better in v 20. Not checked all yet.

A new issue is the way NOAA converts from feet to meters and back to feet (truncating rather than rounding the conversions, see Introduction to Electronic Chart Navigation) leaves the depth contours with the wrong labels. A 12-ft contour is labeled 11 ft; a 30-ft contour is labeled 29 ft, etc. Hopefully this will get sorted out in later builds.

3) NCC do not tell the variation if you shut off compass roses. V2.0 shows the point magvar symbol and data at each location where a compass rose would be on the paper version, but if your chart does not have a compass rose, it still does not tell us variation. This is still on the todo list.

4) Compass roses show up wherever they were on the RNC source of the ENC, which means they are often in awkward locations or end up getting cut off when we design our own chart areas. Best to just note what the variation is for the chart you care about, then shut off the compass roses. If you want a rose or two, make one from our compass rose app and paste is where you want it following our instructions. Still no control over compass rose location, so still on the todo list... at least a numerical value should be in the notes.

--- not checked the points below yet in v2.0 ---

5) Background color can periodically change from white to blue on parts of the chart. This can occur when we make a custom chart over a region that uses two different ENC that have different depth contours in them. The blue vs white represent colors on either side of the safety contour, which the user chooses in the NCC creation process—recalling that only actual contours in the chart can be used. Experiment with 4-color vs 2-color options as well as changing values of selected safety and deep water contours.

6) Terrestrial features are sadly scarce on ENC, and that weakness propagates into NCC, which are based on the ENC. There is not much we can do about this for now, but all the data are there and easily accessible by the NOAA app. In fact they could do much better than we see on the traditional paper charts, but we have to just hope this gets addressed. Spot elevations show up, but unlike some other nations, US ENC have very few elevation contours—despite the fact they are readily available as shape files... as are the buildings, and roads, etc. The free nav program qtVlm can overlay all of these on ENC as they are right now, so it is clearly doable.

7) Recall that ENC only show restricted areas cross-hatched with "symbolized boundaries," so to simplify the chart appearance choose "plain boundaries."

8) For historic reasons that are no longer documented, and contrary to the policy of all other nations, US ENC do not include the known nominal ranges of lights on buoys, thus we do not get this valuable data on NCC—which is a pity, since this new format would be a good place to correct that long standing shortcoming.

9) To date there is no way to control the density of soundings. Most ENC display programs (ECS) offer a way to turn soundings on or off, or to control the density of them. Soundings are, of course, crucial navigational data in many circumstances, but in other cases the contours alone along with isolated danger symbols are adequate, and we do not need the sometimes cluttering presentation of soundings. Users of traditional paper charts are accustomed to dealing with the density of soundings, needed or not, but as the NCC are proposed to be a superior product, this is a feature they might consider.

Switching to fathoms is one way to simplify the chart, simply because the numbers are smaller, not to mention that the native RNC could have been in fathoms. But when doing this, you must reassign your choice of contours, because the NCC app uses the units you selected. You may end up with issue (5) above when the safety contour changes.

10) Effect of SCAMIN. Check this.