Furuno NN3D charts, some issues?

The good news is that more Furuno NavNet 3D MFDs are getting delivered and installed; the bad news is that some of the first users aren’t happy with the charts, neither the rasters nor the vectors. For instance, the two empty MFD12 holes we saw a while back are finally filled, but now the owner—Hull Truth poster “PSW”—is wishing he could use Navionics cards in his MFD12s, as are fellow posters “srmote” and “snowpup”. And I know that our own frequent poster Russ was not pleased with his first look at the charts on his MFD8. My own NN3D experience off Cape Cod did not leave me nearly as negative, but I did note some weaknesses. It helps that I like raster charts and am used to plotting on them, but I didn’t think they worked very well on the 8” display, as suggested in the screen above. Some other levels of zoom/chart scale looked better, and some worse. 3D perspective can put more info on the screen—and fast panning/zooming make it all more tolerable—but there’s just no getting around the fact that you’re looking at a large paper chart through an 8” window. The rasters looked fine to me on the 15” display that was also on the test boat, and I’d guess they’d work OK at 12” (but the Hull Truth gang don’t seem to think so).

The vector story is harder to pin down. I didn’t use them much off the Cape because they seemed light on detail and  I presumed that the smaller area (large scale) charts had not yet been vectorized by NOAA (unlike rasters, the U.S. S57/ENC portfolio is incomplete), and hence had not been turned into NN3D charts by MapMedia . But when I later checked the ENC coverage using Coastal Explorer, I found that the coastal 1:40,000 charts in this area are available (though the 1:5,000 harbor chart of Woods Hole is not). However, when I compared one of the few vector photos I took with a CE image of the same area—below, and bigger here—it seemed to correspond fairly well. But I’ve also seen a screen photo that Russ took in Maine, similar in zoom level and available chart detail, but with no spot soundings at all! I’m guessing that Furuno needs to tweak its vector presentation, but also that boaters used to Navionics/C-Map/Garmin vectors will not be totally happy with NOAA S57s until all chart scales are complete.
   And what about NN3D charts outside the U.S.? My understanding is that wherever MapMedia (part of MaxSea and hence a Furuno partner) currently has raster charts, like the U.K., they have been (or will be) converted into the NN3D-friendly format (actually called “.mm3”). In other parts of the world, like the Bahamas, the chart data will be in vector form from Navionics. But apparently converting Navionics to .mm3 has been a little tricky, and I’m not sure anyone has seen any yet. (I believe that the Bahamas are set to come out soon {they’re out, along with most of North America}, but have heard that Bermuda won’t be available until early 2009.) So it appears that for areas outside the U.S. there will be either rasters or vectors, but not both, at least for a while. And, mind you, neither format comes with POI information or panoramic harbor photos, though they will usually include bathymetric data and hi res photo maps. Yes, I know I sound vague, but that how it seems to be. After all, Furuno bit off a huge chunk here, deciding to produce its own charts on top of a radical new MFD system. The end results I’ve seen are fantastic, but anyone wanting to get a boatload of NN3D gear and go anywhere may need some workarounds, and some patience.