dBSea 2.1

Expanding graphics

Tour of the additional/improved features in dBSea v2.1.

Improved Projection Handling:

dBSea no longer assumes that your imported map is square. For small data sets, and close to the equator this change is doesn't mean much, but as you increase the size of Earth's crust you wish to represent on a flat screen, or are interested in polar regions, the effect is huge. dBSea now finds the central UTM zone of the loaded bathymetry and uses that to project the data.

East-west distances are no longer distorted in dBSea. This makes a real difference for large datasets that cover large areas, especially close to the poles.

If you are working on large scale maps, this tweak should mean that all results now line up with maps exactly, even over long ranges. We still do not take to curvature of the earth into account during propagation calculation, but we agreed during R&D that the lack of curvature wasn't the limiting factor on prediction accuracy (over these long distances lack of accurate environmental data makes models inaccurate to a much higher degree than lack of a curved bathymetry surface).

The UTM zone designation can be somewhat ambiguous, as some just give the general UTM zone number (eg. 29 for Ireland) and then either "S" or "N" to determine Southern or Northern hemisphere. The fuller UTM zone gives more detail, and states how far north or south a given zone is by adding letters A-Z to the UTM zone (Ireland would be UTM 29U). dSBea uses this latter method.
(Download ESRI shapefile UTM grid with coordinates or view in google maps/earth)

UTM zones of the Earth. Read more on Wikipedia.

This change means that as long as you map is within the 6 degree wide UTM zone distortion is less than 0.1 %. On larger maps the distortion will increase, but as you can see from the picture of Europe at the top of this post, the distortion is much lower than a square approximation.

Image Overlays:

dBSea 2.0 introduced the ability to import ESRI format shapefiles into dBSea to better show areas of interest right in the modelling tool. From version 2.1 you can import JPEGs into dBSea should you wish to add roads, or true terrain and colours to the dBSea map.

Sound Level Contour Shapefiles:

Apart from being able to export exclusion zones, dBSea 2.1 can also export sound level contours as shapefiles.

Simple contour line export from Moray Firth in norther Scotland

We hope that these improvements will make it easier for you to produce better noise maps with less clutter and more focus on the details that matter.

If you wish to try out some of these features, go to dBSea's download page and download the free dBSea Basic, or if you're serious about your noise modelling request a trial licence and a quote for the full version, and get access to the advanced solvers.

As alway - Thanks for reading!