Topics

1

Feature Requests / Support for users' Geotiffs

« on: February 20, 2007, 10:46:00 AM »

I would have thought this has come before, but a quick search doesn't show anything, but...

It is great that version 3.0 allows for user-supplied maps.  But they have to be user-calibrated, which works only to a certain extent.

It would be great if TF could use geotiffs (even if they had to be a specific projection) and then skip the user calibration.

I've got a ton of custom geotiffs (and create more as I need them ;-) and they are more useful than older aerial photos.  I've done this recently with Google Earth, where there are tools to create tiled/multiresolution user map overlays which are especially important as the aerials (actually satellites) that GE uses for my area are terrible.

For example, and since I know you folks are Mountain Bikers, here is a (map in progress) grand overview of our MTB stomping grounds in Western New York (Requires GE 4.0):

http://www.wnymba.org/static/maps/ny-pa/ny-pa-5.kml

I would love to be able to load maps like this into TF, and have the georeferencing done automatically from the geotiff tags or world file.  I realize tiling would be tough, but I could do that manually if needed.

2

Archived - Feedback and Comments / GPS tracking at Tour de France

« on: July 26, 2004, 09:01:06 PM »

I thought the simulation linked at this page:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2004/07/24.html

reminded me of the playback feature of topofusion.  Pretty cool in any event.

Jon S.

3

Beta Testing / DEMs render too far west, or...

« on: March 19, 2004, 10:32:26 PM »

..or alternatively maybe I am pushing the program too hard, and I need a workaround.

First of all, the 3D stuff is absolutely fantastic!

However, I have noticed one decrepancy which may be nitpicking, and if so, I need a workaround for something.

The "bug" is that the DEMs apply their elevation data slightly too far to the west.  For example, take a look at this screenshot from some of the trails we used at the IMBA Ellicottville Epic: http://www.trailmap.us/topo-drg-2.jpg   You can see the creek on the left sitting on the edge of the hillside rather than in the valley.  The switchback in the middle of the picture was laid out by the IMBA trail crew using a clinometer to get precisely a grade of 10%, but here it looks like it is on flat ground.  The valleys further to the right show creeks on the hillsides, which is seen better in this screenshot: http://www.trailmap.us/topo-drg-3.jpg  This screen shot also shows a V-shaped section of a trail that is supposed to be out on a spur (and is according to hte contours) but is shown off the east side of the spur instead (with contours "draped" over the spur!

Also, going back to here, you can see that the track is floating above the valley on the western sides, but is hidden "beneath the surface" on the eastern sides of the valley. (note, the brown track is an export of a shape file of my map, and has no elevation information, and thus its corresponding red track is located beneath the map surface (at sea level actually).  

Another, more dramatic example is this: http://www.trailmap.us/sp-drg-1.jpg where the contours describing the west side of the stream valley are instead lying on the valley floor, with the creek halfway up the eastern wall of the gorge.

I thought this may be an artifact of the DEMs that I downloaded from the CUGIR repository at http://cugir.mannlib.cornell.edu/, so I checked that by loading the DEMs into Arcview.  A 2D image of the DEMs and the shapefile that generated the non-GPS track is shown at http://www.trailmap.us/av-dem-1.jpg and I can see, for example, that the V-shaped section of trail is indeed on the spur as described by the DEM data.

May or may not be important: I made sure that the coordinate system I used fas the default for topofusion matched the coordinate system that the DEMs wre provided in, specifically, NAD27 datum with a UTM projection.  Could there be some possible hard-coded assumption that the DEM data are in NAD83?  This is just a wild guess, but I throw it out since the difference between the datums would be on the order of the error seen in these screenshots.  

I noticed a similar artifact is seen with the sample data provided with the beta distribution. (See http://www.trailmap.us/topo-sp-1.jpg )  But as fas as I can tell, the artifact is the reverse, with the DEM data being rendered too fact to the east, but in any event, we have the "draped" contour syndrome again.

Now as I mentioned above, I may be pushing the program to more accuracy than it is set up to do, which is OK.  The program still rocks!  I can live with it.  However, I was wondering if there was anyway to just show the "projection" of the track onto the surface, rather than the projection plus the actual 3D coordinate position.  As shown in my first screenshot, the GPS track (the one with the elevation data in the GPX file) is shown hovering above the surface on the west side of the valley while on the east side it is "underground".  If I wanted to publish some screenshot images, I would like to show just the projected image of the trail on the surface.

Thanks.

Jon Sundquist

4

Archived - Feedback and Comments / An interesting (I think) application of photfusion

« on: March 08, 2004, 02:12:29 PM »

Just checking back to this board to see if there were any ideas on my problems getting the beta with 3D to work.  Meanwhile, thought I'd point out what I think was an interesting application for photofusion.  The developers may be interested after reading some accounts of recent MTB trail maintenance work.

We (WNYMBA) hired Rich Edwards of IMBA Trail Solutions to do a one-week review of trails at a local park that had just been the subject of a master plan.  I took his recommendations and made a point-n-click interface using photofusion.  Check it out here

For the trails, I mapped the trails using a combination of arcview and OCAD, using shapefiles to exchange between the two programs.  I had to force all the trails into a single long trail (some doubling back required of course) so that I could export the final shapefile to a GPX file that displayed in topofusion without lines jumping from one end of a trail to the start of the next.

I then put in artificial times into the dbf file that is part of the shapefile, and figured out at what "times" each of Rich's recommendations were at on the trail.  I then created a bunch of dummy photos with the appropriate time stamps hand edited in so that photofusion would print the little camera symbol and create the hot-zone links on the image map.  I then pulled the jpegs outputted by running photofusion into CorelDraw to replace the camera symbols with numbers corresponding to the recommendations.  After some editing of the photofusion HTML to have each image-map link point to a recommendation page rather than a photo, I declared victory.  

A lot of work but it turned out nice and was a great way to summarize all the recommendations.

5

Beta Testing / TF beta 1.6x won't run

« on: March 07, 2004, 08:04:33 PM »

No luck getting either 1.61 or 1.65 to run.  I have tried on two computers.  Both are Dells running WinXP (one Home, the other Pro).  There's other differences, too.  But both have similar video cards: nVidia GForce MX400 or MX420 or thereabouts.  One came with one computer (so it is Dell branded) the other is a Jaton brand.  Memory is 64 and 32.  On the MX420/64/Dell, I was using the default driver that came with it a year ago and didn't work.  I upgraded to the latest nVidia unified driver from their website and it didn't work either, but did screw up one of my son's games (thank god for Win XP driver roll back).  The MX400/32/Jaton came with a driver disk that appears to install a driver that at least has an interface similar to the latest nVidia driver, so I think it is pretty up to date.

I provide all this video card data because I am presuming it has something to do with the Open GL requirements.  I saw no Open GL settings on the "old" nVidia driver, but did on the new driver.  However, this apparently does not make a difference.

I really would like to check out this version.  New York (where I am from) has great access to DEMs and other GIS data at http://cugir.mannlib.cornell.edu/browse_lis/dem_list.html

When I say doesn't run, I mean just that.  No splash screen, no error message, nothing.  I am sure it is looking for some dll to link to but can't find it so quits.

Any help would be appreciated.

Note, Putting back the old executable and the GPSMater control allows 1.5x to continue working.