Subsurface dive planner - List of findings

[Dirk Hohndel]

I fat-fingered adding Stefan to the accepted user list. Oops.

/D

----- Forwarded message from Stefan Fuchs <sfuchs at gmx.de> -----

Hallo Dirk, hello Robert, hello Joakim,

wow, you guys are really quick!

Ok, I'll try to give you a more detailed description below.

Am 14.02.2015 um 17:38 schrieb Robert C. Helling:
> Stefan,
>
> thank you for your feedback!
>
>> On 14 Feb 2015, at 16:28, Stefan Fuchs <sfuchs at gmx.de
>> <mailto:sfuchs at gmx.de>> wrote:
>>
>> Hallo Dirk,
>>
>> honestly I love the planner capabilities you built into subsurface.
>> The implementation is from my point of view even nicer than e.g.
>> V-Planner - and V-planner is really expensive.
>> If it's ok for you I would like to help debugging the tool and maybe
>> also add a few remarks for some enhancements.
>>
>> Here are a few more findings from testing the dive planner:
>> - If I manually enforce a change from e.g. back gas TX21/35 to deco
>> gas EAN50 in the dive plan
>> "Planerpunkte" the tool will not show the gas change in the results
>> "Tauchplandetails" any more
>
> Although that is not transparent to the user, the planner
> distinguishes between waypoint („Planerpunkte“) that the user entered
> and those that were computed by the planner. The latter are thrown
> away every time the plan is recalculated and the user is not supposed
> to change those (apparently we need to make sure the user cannot
> change them). The way to force a change to a deco gas at a specific
> point in the deco is to manually set the „Change to“ depth in the gas
> list. The planner will always switch to that gas when reaching that depth.
I meanwhile found out that the missing gas change information in the
calculated plan has also s.th. to do with an "injected" waypoint which I
didn't enter but which appears in some cases.
I do the following:
- I have a dive in the planner mode with three gases: Tx21/35, EAN50 at 21m
and Oxy at 6m
- Waypoints are:
52m    5              Tx21/35
52m    15            Tx21/35
40m    16            Tx21/35
40m    30            Tx21/35
21m    32            Tx21/35
21m    34            Tx21/35
21m    37            EAN50
- The result I get at the first moment is good. I have a calculated dive
plan which shows the gas change to EAN50 at 21m and to Oxy at 6m.
- Now I save the dive
- Now when I replan the dive the waypoint list has one more entry:
52m    5              Tx21/35
52m    15            Tx21/35
40m    16            Tx21/35
40m    30            Tx21/35
21m    32            Tx21/35
21m    34            Tx21/35
*21m    34            Tx21/35*     <---  This one added by the tool
21m    37            EAN50
- The calculated dive plan is still ok save the fact that it doesn't
show the gas change to EAN50 at 21m any more
- When I delete the additional 21m  34 entry again manually the result
is perfect again but the "injected" entry will appear again and again
when replanning the dive


>> - When I save a planned dive with two gas changes e.g. to EAN50 and
>> OXY, in the profile view the two gas changes exchange there position.
>> You can even watch the two bottles walking to the other position.
>
> This I cannot reproduce. Please be more specific how to reproduce that
> behaviour.
Yeah, this in fact is the most funny issue I found! ;-) Maybe I should
do a video of this one?!
What happens is:
- I have a dive in the planner mode with three gases: Tx21/35, EAN50 at 21m
and Oxy at 6m
- Waypoints are:
52m    5
52m    15
40m    16
40m    30
- The calculated plan looks perfect with gas changes at 21m and 6m
- Now I save the plan with the "Speichern" button
- Now I can really in the profile view watch the cute little tanks for
gas change to EAN50 and Oxy walking to each others position
- Finally in the profile view the little tank at the 21m position shows
"Gas change: Oxygen" in the information window when I put my mouse
pointer on it and the little tank at 6m shows "Gas change: EAN50" in the
information window. The graphs for the tank pressure are still correct
and the "tank bar"/"Tankleiste" is also still ok. It's really only about
the little tank icons and what is shown in information window.

>
>> - When I save a planned dive and then modify it again after saving
>> and reopening also my logbook XML, I will have not only my input in
>> the dive plan "Planerpunkte" but also all the calculated deco stops.
>> Also in other cases some additional entries are added to the dive
>> plan "Planerpunkte“.
>
> The first thing is a known bug: The distinction between user entered
> and computed waypoints is not saved to the file, so upon loading them
> all waypoints appear as user entered when replanning. As a work
> around, you don’t have to delete all computed waypoints one by one but
> you hold the control key (command for Mac) when you click on the trash
> bin icon of the first computed waypoint and that will delete that
> waypoint and all following (that should be in the manual somewhere).
> Can you guide me how to reproduce the other apperance of waypoints?
Ok, understood. For the "other appearance of waypoints" please see my
first item in this mail.

>
>>
>
>> One idea for a maybe easy enhancement:
>> - To quickly calculate "lost gas" scenarios it would be great to be
>> able to enable/disable a gas in the gas list
>>
>
> You can do that with the „replan“ feature: You first plan the dive
> with all deco gases and save it to the dive list. Then you reopen it
> with „replan“ and delete the gas you want to delete and instead of
> „save“ press „save new“. This will add the dive with lost gas to the
> dive list in addition to what you have already. Of course you can
> repeat that for all gases.
>
>> With the new dive planner I have the following issue:
>> When I plan a dives the tool always uses the gases EAN33 and Tx50/15
>> while I didn't select them. I selected Tx21/35, EAN50 and Oxy for my
>> dive. 
>
> The planner always comes up with the gases of the currently selected
> dive. That way you can plan a dive that is similar to an existing one.
> Or you can save fake dives to represent standard gas sets and start
> planning from those.
I already started to type this when Joakims mail arrived which mostly
explains my finding because yes, I'm using a OSTC 2N and these "zombie
gases" may have been in the gas list of the OSTC. Nevertheless I decided
to not delete my description. Maybe it would be worthwhile to fix
Subsurface in a way to not copy the unused gases from dive computer to
gases for planning while at the same moment not showing them in the list
from first moment.  What happens on my side is the following:
- I select a "real" dive in my logbook where I only used one gas EAN32
- I do "Plan dive"
- The dive planner opens with the correct gas list "Verfügbare Gase":
There is only the EAN32
- But the dive plan from the very beginning uses a Tx50/15 and Oxy as
deco gases. The waypoints a have at the beginning are 15m / 1min, 15m /
40min
- When I now save this dive plan I see in the equipment / tanks list
many additional gases: Oxy, EAN33, Tx50/15, Air - I now know where these
gases came from: The OSTC gas list.
- If I now "replan" this dive I see this gases also in the gas list
"Verfügbare Gase" and I now can delete most of them. The EAN33 I can't
delete because the tool tells me this gas is used but it is not really
used in the plan and BTW I also wouldn't like that the tool here
restricts me in this way.


Many thanks!


Viele Grüße
Stefan

-- 

Stefan Fuchs
Banzhaldenstr. 66
70469 Stuttgart
Tel.: 0711/4116289
Mobil: 0172/8922025
E-Mail: sfuchs at gmx.de <mailto:sfuchs at gmx.de>


----- End forwarded message -----