MSRMaps (Terraserver) shutting down
April 10th, 2012We regretfully report that Microsoft’s MSRMaps server (formerly known as Terraserver) is shutting down. For the last 10 years, MSRMaps has given TopoFusion its base “topo” and black and white aerial tilesets for the United States. After May 1, copies of TopoFusion will no longer be able to pull new tiles for either of these tilesets. Might be time to do some batch downloading!
Here is the official announcement:
http://msrmaps.com/About.aspx?n=AboutShutdown
Terraserver was a key piece in creation of TopoFusion, so it’s with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to it. Fortunately we still have great tilesets like MyTopo, Open Cycle Map, Color Aerials, Open Aerial, Canadian Topo’s, among many others! Terraserver maps were getting quite out of date, and I don’t think any of our users base relied on the old black and white aerials any more since they have been superseded by more up-to-date and color aerial images. Still, sometimes the superfast load times and older sourced maps did come in handy, so we’ll miss it.
There’s still time to download and permanently saved Terraserver tiles to your TopoFusion map cache! Get downloading!
Edit: See new version 4.5 for the new US Topo tileset, with the same Topo maps as MSRMaps.
April 29th, 2012 at 2:52 am
>> I don’t think any of our users base relied on the
>> old black and white aerials
For me the B+W images from 1994 have been invaluable in locating now “lost” hiking trails, since back then the trails were better maintained and often show up well in the images, despite their relatively low resolution, whereas the trails cannot be seen in current color images. But they are still available from Google Earth (though not for import into TopoFusion).
April 30th, 2012 at 12:56 am
I’m guessing if they are the same maps, from the same source, they will also be going away in Google Earth too, unfortunately.
You are right, there are good uses for old maps and imagery. It will be a shame to lose MSRMaps.
We do have a replacement USTopo server working. New release coming soon.
April 30th, 2012 at 8:10 am
I was using the old topo maps to trace abandoned railroads. Now my project seems to have been expired as well.
April 30th, 2012 at 9:56 am
Hurry and download the maps you need. They’ll still work in TF indefinitely.
Also, the new USTopo layer has the same vintage of topos as the old server.
May 11th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
I just now accessed msrmaps through their ogc server using http://msrmaps.com/ogccapabilities.ashx. Could it be they’ve decided to keep it going?
May 12th, 2012 at 11:11 pm
The tile service has continued into May, yes. But it seems to be intermittent. There is a small movement to urge Microsoft staff to keep it active. See this thread:
http://www.topofusion.com/forum/index.php?topic=7171.msg112529#msg112529