Colregs Lights & Shapes

using HTML Canvas to dynamically visualize lights

For some time now I have wanted to improve the lights and shapes section of bosunsmate.org to include a more interactive experience with more light configurations. The HTML Canvas element that allows direct drawing in a web page should finally allow this...

The image shown is a screen-shot of our test area where all four of the light diagrams are generated by the web browser. There are no uploaded graphics involved. This means we can store instructions to tell the browser how to draw each configuration and change things like size, time of day, eventually even distance from the target to create a very dynamic experience. Adding new configurations for different regions and/or conditions will not pose a problem either.

Granted it is going to take some time to polish the code and create a comprehensive database of different configurations, but the possibilities are extensive and we should see the first implementation coming online soon.

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