Explore Display

The purpose of the Explore display is to allow special problems to be solved quickly by making it easy to back into solutions. That is, you change various inputs until you get the desired output. Over the years we have talked to many users who had unique problems they wanted to solve, problems they could only solve by backing into the solution. For example, assume you want to know what muzzle velocity a reload needs in order to have the same energy at 200 yards as a particular factory load.

Without the Explore display you would need to enter a velocity for the reload into the Trace window's Muzzle Vel parameter and then click on the Graph or Examine displays to see the results. You would then need to repeat this process with new velocities for the reload until a solution is arrived at.

With the Explore display you click the tab for the trace the reload is in and then click the tab for the Energy graph. Then move the slider controls for velocity until the reload's energy at 200 yards matches the factory load's energy at 200 yards. It's much quicker and you get an update whenever you stop moving controls. If you have other displays open, such as Examine or Graph, they are also updated. This allows you to monitor other output data, such as velocity and wind drift at the same time you are viewing energy. The Explore display makes it easy to solve problems no one every anticipated or coded into software.

Explore Display's Controls

The Explore display features a number of rapid acting slider, tab, check box, and arrow controls that change major trace parameters. Whenever a control is changed, the trace results are recalculated and displayed after a short selectable delay. The delay avoids recalculations occurring while a control is being changed. The default update delay is 0.25 seconds. This delay can be changed by clicking Options in the upper left of the window and selecting the Update delay menu. Select the delay that works best for you on your hardware. An update is often perceived as a flicker and too shot of a delay may result in double updates, while too long a delay makes you wait unnecessarily to see the results of a change.

As with the other displays, open the Trace windows and enter or load the parameters you want to work with. Each open trace has a tab on the lower left of the Explore display. Click the tab for the trace you want to adjust settings for. Along the bottom and to the right are nine tabs, one for each type of graph. Click the tab for the type of graph you want to view.

Slide controls are used to change muzzle velocity, ballistic coefficient, temperature, altitude, cross wind, head wind, as well as zeroed range when the C.D.F.C, Path, or Target graphs are selected.

When the Target graph is selected, there's an additional slider control for the target's range. To operate a slider control, click on its pointer and drag it in the direction you want to go. You can also use the mouse wheal or the keyboard arrow keys to change the selected slider control.

The padlock button shown circled in red along the right side locks or unlocks the three traces together so their zeroed range can be changed simultaneously or individually. A side effect of this feature is that just opening the Explore display causes the zeroed ranges of all open traces to change to the value in the trace previously selected in the Explore display. This may not be what you want, so the following dialog pops up allowing you to unlock the traces' zeroed ranges.

Check "Don't show this message again..." if you don't want this dialog opening again during the current session. Note that this dialog never pops up if you don't have the Helpful program hints option checked.

Printing

With the tab selected for the graph you want to print, click Print in the upper left area of the Explore display. If the Print Preview option is selected the Preview window opens. Click the printer icon button to print. After printing, or if you don't want to print, click the exit door icon or just use the X in the upper right of the Preview window to close it. Note that the Explore display always prints using portrait orientation.

Saving Images

With the tab selected for the graph you want to save, click Save in the upper left area of the Explore display. This opens a standard Windows dialog for selecting a file. Note that images can only be saved as Windows bitmaps.

Most, but not all, image editors can read these files. If you have an editor that can't, then load the saved image into the Windows Paint program (free with Windows) and then save it with another name. Use the renamed file with your editor.

Color options.

Y0u can control the color used to graph the traces and the background color of the Target. Click Options in the upper left area of the Explore display to open a menu and then click Set Target color to set the background color of the Target. Or click Trace colors to set the colors of the traces. Select Use Graph Display's colors if you want the trace colors to be the same as those used in the Graph display, or click Set trace colors to individually set the color for each trace.

Target Graph

Click for more information about the Target Graph.