Compliment; question: google maps support?

[navaid]

Hi!

First I want to give the authors of TopoFusion my most hearty congratulations for one of the finest pieces of software I've used in quite some time.  I've owned a Garmin Etrex Vista (with altimeter) for about 2 or 3 years, and use it for all my hobbies: mounted on my bike, during hikes, walking around cities, on hunts for a dozen geocaches, when flying my 4-seat Cessna, and sometimes watching out the window of a commercial jet on a coast-to-coast flight.  All that time, my Garmin was silently collecting track logs that I had never once viewed.

Last week I had my GPS on my bike during a 20-mile ride around an island, and the bicycle-rental guy asked if he could have the data.  I was afraid to say yes since I had no idea how to access the data -- tools I'd tried in the past would just draw a track on a white page.  After a long and arduous search I finally found TopoFusion which claimed to overlay the track on a map.  So I decided to give it a try.

Let me tell you: when I started downloading the data and all the 12,000 track points I'd accumulated over the years started whizzing by on the screen, it was the most amazing thing.  I was reliving the past 3 years of my life at warp speed!  Bike rides I'd long forgotten zoomed past in great detail.  All the fun of past geocache finds and hikes with my girlfriend came back to me as they were animated right before my eyes.  Topo maps would show me at an airport taxiing around, then ZOOM right down center of the runway and shoot into the wild blue yonder!  It was one of the most amazing 5 minutes covering 3 years, a dozen different states, and countless trips -- let me tell you, it nearly brought tears to my eyes.  That's not something I can say about much software.

Needless to say I paid $40 for the full version immediately, and generated some beautiful maps of the San Juan Islands, along with elevation data that the bike shop can hopefully use to draw a more accurate map to give to riders!  (We'd been surprised by some big hills that were not on the map they gave us.)

Now on to my question: is there any possibility of adding a feature to overlay tracks over the NAVTEQ maps from Google Maps?  Google Maps data is, in some ways, superior to the USGS data -- it's clearer, more up to date, and has more detail of roads.  (On the other hand, it does not have topograhic data such as mountains, lakes, etc.)  But, I think it would be a great alternative to the USGS data, and the Google Maps API probably lends itself easily to TopoFusion, since it allows fast downloading of individual sectors at various resolutions (unlike, say, MapQuest.)  Are there any plans to integrate TopoFusion with Google Maps data?

I'm a software developer; is the source available for TopoFusion if I want to add this feature myself and contribute it back?

Thanks again for a simply wonderful piece of software.

[tymbee]

Hi Nav-

Fun, ain't it? There are numerous programs that will analyze track logs and many of them have features similar to TopoFusion. I own a few, such as Mapsource, Ozi, etc.

However you made a great find with TF as their overall system-- to myself at least-- is much cleaner and easier to use than most.

I do see on their list of anticipated additions for future development (http://topofusion.com/future.php):

>>Ability to display and calibrate user maps.

One of our main uses is to organize our aerial photo shoots. Works great.

Are you using the Google keyhole pro system of maps? I've downloaded their eval but since it expires in 7 days haven't installed it yet, not having enough time at present to do much testing.

[navaid]

Thanks for the reply.  I don't have their keyhole product; I'm just talking about the public logical maps available at http://maps.google.com.  There are various "hacks" around now (e.g. displaying apartments or crimes using Google Maps) and I was hoping such a hack might also make its way into TopoFusion.

Another question: when I import GPS data, I get a table of the various tracks that were downloaded, with options to merge them and save them separately.  I can't seem to get this dialog box back without re-downloading the data.  Is there any way to get that dialog back from a saved track-points file?  I know it's possible to merge tracks using the map, but that table view is much more convenient since my tracks are all over the country.

[Krein]

Hi there.

Thanks for the wonderful feedback.  Hearing from folks like you makes all the hard effort that went into TopoFusion more worthwhile.  We do make some money from it, but it's still more of a hobby than a real business for us.  

I love how a GPS can be a record of adventures and trips.  Sometimes efforts to 'capture' an experience ruin the experience itself, but a GPS turned on usually doesn't require any attention.  And it's pretty cool to look back to trips I did years ago and see exactly where I went and when.  It will be odd to go through my GPS data 20 years from now (and laugh at how low resolution it is).

As for google maps, it's a nice map source, no doubt.  I think we'd need to ask them for permission to use their maps first.  Someone suggested that on our forum, but I haven't gotten around to asking them yet.

The code is not available, but we're open to proposals like yours for adding functionality.

To your other question, no, there isn't a way to get that dialog back.  That's something I had not thought of doing, actually.  It does show a nice view of what tracks you have in a file and could be a nice way to further organize/manipulate data.  I'll add the idea to the list and give it some thought.  It might not be too hard to adapt it to work on regular files.  Thanks.