New maps! Beta 3.20

[Krein]

Beta v3.20 is out.  Here are examples of the two new map types added:

Canadian Topos:



Coverage is all of Canada, though I understand some areas may not have the highest (0.003 degrees per 512x512 tile) detail.  I haven't seen any of these areas, but I don't have a large collection of data up north either.

Regardless, these are pretty nice maps.  The server is a little slower than most of the other servers TF uses.  But for folks in CAN, this is a great addition.

TIGER



This sever is quite fast.  However, it is somewhat old (1998) census data.  In many cases the roads are more up-to-date than the USGS topo maps from Terraserver.  Still, these are not has high quality as, say, Google Maps or the like.  However, they are free, public domain (you can publish/sell maps with them), and I've already found them very useful for a few projects.

The coverage is US only, and you only get street names when zoomed in to the 4 meter tileset.  

I should also note that the projection on the maps is not perfect.  I had to do a few hacks to reproject the image, and it is not perfect.  You may notice some errors and misalignments between image tiles.  Some are unavoidable (the brown county boundaries, for example tend to go crazy).  But if you notice anything strange, especially roads not at all lining up, please post an example here with coordinates.

Like I said, they aren't perfect, but for free it's hard to complain.  A major benefit I've seen (besides getting street names) is for overview (large scale) maps.  The TIGER maps are much less "busy" than the topos.

There's good potential for doing combo maps with TIGER/aerial and TIGER/color aerial.  Also, CAN Topo and Landsat (both are in  geographic or lat/lon project, so they can be combined easily).  Look for more combo options in a future version.

As usual, errors, comments and suggestions post here or email us!

Thanks.

Change log:

3.20 – [12/30/07]  (Beta)

Added new Map Server: Tiger Line data for US
Added new Map Server: Topo Maps for Canada
  Find the new tilesets in the “Map” menu or the tileset dropdown
Major speedup in track drawing (clipping) esp. with large files
Fixed Lap Analysis exports for files with multiple tracks
Fixed problem adding elevation to files crossing UTM zones
Fixed splining GPS tracks across UTM zones
Made simplify dialog default to 500, or higher with large tracks

[Larry]

Krein, first try; works great. The TIGER maps will be quite handy figuring out access to routes that I plan with TF. No need to switch to another program.

Would it be possible to have different combo selection, one with the TIGER Maps and the photos? Again, this might be nice for quickly getting the name of logging roads I use for access.

I wouldn't use it that much however, so I wouldn't want it to change the toggling with the 'a' key, which has become habit.

Larry

[Krein]

Thanks for the positive report.

I imagine a setting (probably in the "image processing" dialog) where you choose which two tilesets you want to combo.

Some possibilities:

bw/topo  (default)
bw/tiger
bw/color ?
color/topo
color/tiger
topo/tiger ?
landsat/can topo

So you'd like the "a" key to continue to work as is, cycling between topo,aerial and combo (with bw/topo)?  That might cause a bit of a hassle, but I'll think about it.

[Larry]

Quote (Krein @ Dec. 31 2007,6:44)

So you'd like the "a" key to continue to work as is, cycling between topo,aerial and combo (with bw/topo)?  That might cause a bit of a hassle, but I'll think about it.

Hmmm, well, I guess what I really want is a quick way to ID obscure roads. A bw/tiger combo could do that, (my first thought), but only if the the text was clear enough.

Maybe this would be a better solution: just add one more item to the 'a' key toggle list, like this. topo, aerial, combo, tiger. All I would need to do is hold the cursor over the road I am interested in as seen in the bw, and toggle till I get the ID.

One more item on the 'a' key toggle, that should not confuse me too much.  

Larry

[dumketu]

Krein,

I like the addition of the new map sets. Have not been to Canada in a while, but i hope to get up there to do some trekking. Nice to know Topofusion will support it when that day comes.

The tiger maps are useful, but you are right, they don't line up very well. In the Albuquerque NM area they are almost 500m off. I'm sending a screenshot to the support@topofusion.com e-mail address.

I'd still like to see images or maps of the rest of the world (I'm living in S. Asia) but I guess we need to wait until somebody creates a map server for this part of the world.

Brian

[Krein]

Brian -

Thanks for the screen grab.  The tiger maps are definitely off there for the roads.  It's strange because the State Route is right on (I can see it toggling with aerials also), but clearly the smaller roads in the area are not right.

Guess there's not much we can do about that.  It's the first time I've seen errors like that.  I'm glad to know about it, though.  So, thanks again for reporting it.

We're always on the lookout for more servers with the appropriate terms of use such that TF can use them.  I'd love to get better coverage outside North America.