SOB can also read C-Map cartography on cartridges. This requires a C-Map USB Multimedia Reader. Unfortunately, DigiBOAT finds itself in the same boat as companies like NavSim, which are waiting for C-Map to distribute the support files for its latest USB 2.0 readers. In the interim, DigiBOAT's website requests users who already own the USB 2.0 version to email for a copy of their driver test file. You can use the USB 1.0 reader, but there is a quirk if you use your laptop's energy-saving options, which most boaters must do to conserve their battery while underway. If your PC goes to sleep, it loses the C-Map device and does not re-acquire it when the computer and application wake up. You must quit and restart SOB.
SOB's documentation is some of the best we've seen. The company philosophy is that any charting and navigation application has a learning curve. Realizing they cannot design every bit of novelty out of the interface, they work hard to get you started. SOB's installation places a folder on your C Drive called SOBvMAX. This folder contains a gold mine of resources, including New User Information, a QuickStart Card, a User Manual, release notes, hardware installation guides, and more.
The 172-page User Manual, also available through their website as a PDF, is a fantastic resource. It includes full chapters on networking and connecting NMEA devices. This document was clearly written in-house by experienced boaters, not sub-contracted to a technical writer. It doesn't simply list the buttons and knobs; it often explains when you would use them and why.
DIGIBOATDigiBOAT is optimized for touch-screen use. Menus, mousing, and keyboarding are minimized and screen real estate is maximized. F1 displays the shortcuts. With no menus and few actions that require dragging a mouse, SOB has a slightly different look-and-feel. In fact, SOB is designed for future use with a touch screen, either directly or through a wireless device. Mouse support is considered additional functionality until touch screens become more mainstream. But Blundell points out that mousing, particularly clicking on small icons or dragging-and-dropping objects, is difficult in a moving environment.
Instead, SOB focuses on a toolbar and an extensive set of shortcut keys. The toolbar contains icons for intuitive actions such as zoom in and zoom out, creating a waypoint, getting range and bearing, centering the boat, auto-panning the chart, dropping a man overboard marker, and locating ports and services.
DigiBOAT's goal is an interface that answers a variety of detailed questions with one or two finger taps (or today, mouse clicks). For example, the distance between a buoy and a headland is obtained by clicking on the dividers icon, clicking on the chart buoy icon, and clicking on the headland. A single click on the paper-clip icon brings up the ViewPanels window, which includes pertinent data such as your vessel's heading and speed, the depth, and any saved messages or notes. The Quick Navigation Box displays a condensed overview of navigation to a designated point. The Great Circle and rhumb line distances are included in this display if they differ by more than five nautical miles, a handy detail for long-distance voyagers.
SOB's minimal-mousing is more successful with some actions than others. Most notably, waypoint or route creation requires more levels of clicking than some other navigation applications. In addition, because windows are not resizable, you sometimes have to move the vertical and horizontal elevator bars to show important data.
Relying on shortcut keys is another common way to avoid mousing. Because of its "no-menu-bar" interface, SOB uses shortcuts heavily. Of course, the flip side of shortcuts is having to memorize which key triggers which function – and there is a fair bit of memorization with SOB. But to be fair, they provide a handy cheat sheet to get you started and many of their shortcuts are intuitive, such as "I" for Zoom In, "O" for Zoom Out, and "C" for Show Cursor.
SOB also has a very useful status bar at the bottom of the screen that contains lots of relevant data. You can interactively read the latitude and longitude of the cursor position on the chart; the distance of that point from your boat; and its true, magnetic and relative bearing (such as 4.4 nm 132°T [138°M] [21° Stbd]). The status bar also shows information about your current chart, such as its number, scale and depth metrics. Most important, it notes whether the chart is displayed at "real chart" scale or at "over zoom," in which case you have over-magnified the chart image and compromised accuracy.
As Americans, we found the learning curve to be a few degrees steeper than it might be for boaters from Canada, Europe or Australia. Some of SOB's feel is a bit different from what American boaters are used to finding when they fire up a piece of software. Most of the differences are metrics you can change, such as setting the program to use feet instead of meters. Some are simple word choice differences, such as "Centre" instead of the commonly-used "Go To" command. But there are also some tougher challenges. For example, to optimize (or shall we say, optimise) the chart display for your screen, you must enter your screen size in centimeters. Americans think in terms of inches. If DigiBOAT were to make a few of these easy adjustments in advance, it would help SOB break into the U.S. market.
