Hi all,

 

I do not know if this is the right place.

 

Anyway I'd like to suggest to any developer or X-Plane staff the ability to have a sextant available for use in a ship or an aircraft. Flying Boeing's 314 "Clipper" the way it was real flown navigating with dead reckoning and Celestial navigation must be something to cherish.

 

I know that it takes time and lots of programming to design such a utility within X-Plane but I'd be happy to have a simple "Point at a Star/Planet/Sun then get angle above horizon with a certain margin of error". No need to identify the celestial body nor do all the calculations to pinpoint your location. This feature is in the Virtual Sailor software but sailing in X-Plane's world is much more fun.

 

Yes I know GPS is used but I'm learning Cel nav and I'd love to sail in X-Plane by myself. No GPS, cellphone etc.

 

tks

This is on the list of things I'd very much like to make. Glad to find someone who knows about celnav! How good is the X-Plane sky - are the stars accurate?

 

Literally all you need is a tool to point at a body and get the angle above the horizon? This should not be hard...

 

You might be able to do this immediately if there's a dataref for camera angle above the horizon.

 

The old navigation ways are the best. The advent of EFIS and GPS makes everything so boring. (have you seen the 'Children of the Magenta' lecture about the FMS/autopilot mindset of modern pilots?)

Yes that's all I need. A simple tool to look at something using one of the views and having the angle above the horizon given. No hassle in designing a sextant within the sim.

 

A while ago one of the staff (Xplane) wrote me that it was in their plans such feature but so far nothing. Since I lack the skill I was begging for help here.

 

And yes, the "old stuff" is much better. Having to plot , DR, Celnav. Amazing that it's been done for centuries that way. The "self-satisfaction" that a person gets when not relying on electronic devices is beyond words. I've actually got inspired by a real life event that I've heard. One experienced sailboat owner decided to cross the ocean to South Africa from Brazil. After the 6th day he returned because he either dropped or broke his gps I can't recall but he then went to study celnav saying "bloody gps!"

Playing the Silent Hunter submarine game using Stellarium and Celnav (from iPhone app) was a big factor as well. I just find unrealistic in the 1940's to have my sub position displayed 100% accurate on the map chart.

I got a sextant as my christmas present! Any tips on good websites where I can learn how to use it?

I loved Silent Hunter III back in the old days. Never quite committed enough time to it to completely figure out how to plot torpedo solutions though. I like playing computer games which require plotting things on paper and using a protractor - hence interest in realistic-y aircraft navigation.

 

I've found a likely candidate dataref: sim/graphics/view/view_pitch. I think it's the camera boresight angle above the horizon in degrees (so negative values are below the horizon).

 

It can be easily read with DataRefEditor. Remember the DataRefEditor window can be resized by dragging the edge, and moved by dragging the centre, and if you type in view_pitch in the (not very obvious) filter box in the lower left frame, it will hide all the datarefs except this useful one.

 

I'm wondering how a sextant tool might work in sim. It might be possible to have the main part of a classic naval sextant animated to stay vertical and aimed at the horizon, with a preset camera position at the pivot-point of the arm. (I'm inventing names for sextant bits here.) Then you'd manually aim the camera in the vicinity of the star, move the arm so it lines up with the star, and read off the arm angle from a scale on the 3d object. If the base and the arm of the sextant are both rotating around the preset camera position to keep the base aligned and the arm lined up with the star, this could probably be done without complicated camera-override-y plugin code - in fact probably without any plugin work at all.

 

Aircraft bubble sextants and periscope sextants, used in the age of pressurised aircraft, would probably need a camera-override-y plugin and a bit more work.

I got a sextant as my christmas present! Any tips on good websites where I can learn how to use it?

 

 

Which one you got? I plan to buy the ASTRA VII because it has a "bubble" for training in-land when there is no ocean which is my case since I live at least 100 miles to the nearest coast.

There are some books regarding Cel NAV "for dummies" at Amazon.com but a specific site for that I still have to find.

 

Cheers.

 

ps: http://www.boat-links.com/linklists/boatlink-34.html

Yes, The SH series is something to remember. I currently check subsim.com. SH IV (I think III as well) using Stellarium is a great fun to determine your position using only a "snapshot" of the sky from your boat's position. I just gather the angle above the horizon and let the iphone app do the calculations until I learn to do it myself.

 

Since my programming skill is zero I'll discuss this with my friend since he is an app developer. He's also interested in learning cel nav. We're going to download X-Plane 10 to check it out if this can be done. Designing a bubble-sextant just like the one used in the old days would require enormous efforts which we do not have time. A nice addition though. I bet that many sailors would use it just for navigation on sailboats and ships. Crossing the ocean in a 314 Clipper would be very welcomed. There is a bubble sextant add-on for the FS2004/FSX but I haven't tried it yet. I am kind of retiring those sims.

 

For a quick work-around I was looking for something simple as having a camera view and having a cursor/marker at the center then wherever I 'd look I would have the angle above the horizon displayed. Then I would just look at a celestial body.

 

Thanks for the heads up. I'll see to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I loved Silent Hunter III back in the old days. Never quite committed enough time to it to completely figure out how to plot torpedo solutions though. I like playing computer games which require plotting things on paper and using a protractor - hence interest in realistic-y aircraft navigation.

 

I've found a likely candidate dataref: sim/graphics/view/view_pitch. I think it's the camera boresight angle above the horizon in degrees (so negative values are below the horizon).

 

It can be easily read with DataRefEditor. Remember the DataRefEditor window can be resized by dragging the edge, and moved by dragging the centre, and if you type in view_pitch in the (not very obvious) filter box in the lower left frame, it will hide all the datarefs except this useful one.

 

I'm wondering how a sextant tool might work in sim. It might be possible to have the main part of a classic naval sextant animated to stay vertical and aimed at the horizon, with a preset camera position at the pivot-point of the arm. (I'm inventing names for sextant bits here.) Then you'd manually aim the camera in the vicinity of the star, move the arm so it lines up with the star, and read off the arm angle from a scale on the 3d object. If the base and the arm of the sextant are both rotating around the preset camera position to keep the base aligned and the arm lined up with the star, this could probably be done without complicated camera-override-y plugin code - in fact probably without any plugin work at all.

 

Aircraft bubble sextants and periscope sextants, used in the age of pressurised aircraft, would probably need a camera-override-y plugin and a bit more work.

 

 

Which one you got? I plan to buy the ASTRA VII because it has a "bubble" for training in-land when there is no ocean which is my case since I live at least 100 miles to the nearest coast.

There are some books regarding Cel NAV "for dummies" at Amazon.com but a specific site for that I still have to find.

 

Cheers.

 

ps: http://www.boat-links.com/linklists/boatlink-34.html

 

Stanley sextant 1892 model. Can't claim any cel nav expertise - so will have a look at amazon - thanks!

Sorry, I have nothing useful to add here, except that the Recently Discussed Forum Topics pane cuts off the topic and only shows "Sailing in X-Plane with Sex". I couldn't help myself and had to look.