request: some sort of basemap

[hallucinati]

i think it would be really excellent if there were a national [heck, global!] basemap that sat underneath all of the tiles and could be seen when zoomed all the way out.  that would make it much easier to maybe check out other states or locate cities.  i personally would prefer a simple map [state borders, major cities, maybe rivers] that would show through instead of the "downloading" tiles.

[hallucinati]

hey why not also display "higher" tilesets underneath "lower" ones while they are loading? then one could stilll browse around while the higer resolution images are loading.

[Krein]

Good suggestions on both counts.  We do provide the "states.gpx" file for the navigating around the country, but a basemap would be even handier.  It will take some effort to get this going but I think it is well worth it.

Lower/higher tilesets is another idea that we haven't revisited for some time.  It would be useful, but with highspeed connections (at least ours) the tiles fill the screen almost instantly and waiting does seem to bother me.  This is on the todo list, I think, but is not high priority at this point.  A basemap would be better.