Topics

1

TopoFusion Pro / Tilesets

« on: March 22, 2022, 07:06:19 AM »

Please excuse my laziness, but I ran into another online service (not a mapping app) that uses several appealing map tilesets that are not included in TF.
But before I immerse myself in:
http://topofusion.com/wms.php . . .
 
Are Bing tilesets compatible with TF?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/articles/bing-maps-tile-system
If so, might you consider adding them?

And more generally, is there a quick way to determine a tileset's compatibility with TF?

2

TopoFusion Pro / "Land Ownership" toggle (Combo view) disables track tools

« on: October 20, 2021, 07:16:56 AM »

Bug?
When the "land ownership" overlay (very useful to identify public lands) is toggled ON, several tools seem to become inoperative including (1) the single point selection tool, (2) the track splitting (scissors) tool and (3) the track merging tool.

This would not seem to be the intended and/or desirable behavior.

3

TopoFusion Pro / Wonky display when resizing file "properties" window

« on: July 04, 2021, 07:28:26 PM »

Hi Scott-
Some more consistent peculiar behavior.
It looks like two similar but separate issues.
When displayng the "properties" window of a loaded file and then maximizing (or resizing horizontally), some of the contents on the left side disappear or get blocked when the window width becomes larger than about 1350 pixels. This doesn't seem to block the  "file information" box, but something (like the appearance of an unused control) can be seen going on in the left margin space.

Horizontal resizing beyond about 2200 pixels (on my system) results in "Run-time error '6': Overflow"
This always occurs. The symptoms fit an integer overflow issue when expressing the windows width in finer system units (twips?).
 
 

4

TopoFusion Pro / FIT files revisited - no waypoints

« on: June 27, 2021, 03:15:06 PM »

This is a persistent issue that I have mostly ignored on a Garmin Epix that I have used for a few years.
The Epix (a discontinued wrist type device) stores its waypoints (aka "locations") in a "Locations.fit" file in a "Garmin\Locations" folder.
Both of the following result in an empty TF entry,  i.e. no waypoints  (and no error messages).
  (1) Using the TF GPS transfer function - "Download waypoints,"     
  (2) Directly reading/loading "Locations.fit" as a file.

In contrast,  FIT files for tracks (aka  "Activities") can be read/downloaded into TF either way.

This missing waypoint issue seems to be specific to TF.  Other GPS software and/or FIT file conversion utilities I have played with seem to handle the waypoints (or the Locations.fit file) from the Epix as expected.

5

TopoFusion Pro / Can Track labels be toggled off?

« on: May 09, 2021, 11:37:38 AM »

Track label functionality seems to have changed in some recent version. I can't find a way to get rid of them when they are blocking a portion of the view.
What am I missing?
My sense is that toggling them on/off with a right click on a blank portion of screen would be intuitive to me.

Thanks 

6

Feature Requests / Multi Playback Control

« on: February 05, 2018, 11:17:57 PM »

Oh yeah, almost forgot -
In "multi playback" a method to select a start point AND define a direction.
I often find myself trying to compare portions of "out and back" tracks, but clicking on a map point can start playing a track in the "bacK" direction when I really wanted the "out."

It seems that this could be as simple as selection of the start point and then a second point to establish direction.

7

Feature Requests / Live(ish) Satellite Imagery

« on: December 23, 2017, 01:37:26 PM »

Yes, it's available. For example:
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
Any chance of getting TF to be able to use such near-real-time imagery? 

8

Feature Requests / Batch waypoint naming

« on: September 18, 2012, 07:49:14 PM »

Here's what I 'd like to be able to do:
Drag a bunch of waypoints into a file.
Then have a function to rename all the waypoints with a user defined format that can use the properties of each waypoint. I was specifically thinking of being able to mark elevation but I can see other properties being useful too.

In the same vein I'd like to see the waypoints created by "lap analysis" auto-nameable by, for example, elapsed time from the track. Sort of a poor man's "virtual training partner."
 
Edit: And combining concepts above = how about waypoints auto created by "lap analysis" at designated integral intervals of elevation? 100,200 ... or 6000, 6500...  either by absolute or relative elevation.
KenF

9

TopoFusion Pro / Support for "Tempe" Sensor

« on: August 31, 2012, 12:30:59 AM »

Garmin is introducing an ANT+  temperature sensor that will record ambient temperature with a trackpoint.
http://garmin.blogs.com/softwareupdates/2012/08/tempe-sensor.html
Will TF be providing support for this?
KenF

10

Feature Requests / Trackpoint Box - Track Segment Deletion

« on: September 26, 2011, 11:01:05 AM »

For editing a file, especially when trimming file segments using the trackpoint box under properties, it would be a godsend to  have simple function to delete a track segment by number rather than having to manually select  the points within that segment. 

i.e., an option along the lines of "Delete all points in Track #2 - Yes/No"

KF   

11

TopoFusion Pro / Shaded Relief

« on: September 05, 2011, 07:40:56 AM »

I turned it on and can't seem to turn it off.
Shouldn't the "Turn shaded relief ON" button in the Relief/ Elevation Tileset Options be a toggle?
Am I missing something? 

KenF

12

TopoFusion Pro / Open Aerial Tiles

« on: August 25, 2011, 08:37:42 AM »

Lately, if using the Open Aerial tileset,  I am getting many tiles with the "unable to display map for this location and tileset." They are mixed in with tiles that display properly.
No other tileset seems to have this problem.
Is there anything on the TF end of things that might correct this issue?

KF

13

Feature Requests / Consistent Scaling

« on: June 07, 2011, 07:44:50 AM »

The availability of the ever-increasing variety of mapsets is wonderful but that leads to several issues:

(1) It would be much nicer if the scaling of the current view would remain consistent when switching mapsets. That jump in scale is fairly annoying when trying to compare different maps on the same view.

(2) The dropdown mapset menu (upper right) is pretty cluttered. It could be greatly simplified by presenting the same list as that shown in the Options/Combo Blending i.e eliminating the individual "1M" or ".003" designations and letting TF find the best scale for a single map type, perhaps relying on selections made in the Options/preferences/tilesets box

(3) On that note, that box also needs to be updated.

KenF

14

TopoFusion Pro / Garmin Mobile XT Windows Support

« on: November 01, 2010, 06:27:18 PM »

This isn't a feature request yet...
I'm being forced (kicking and screaming) into a cell phone "upgrade" and, so, will soon be using a "Windows Mobile" smart phone that will be able to run the Windows version of "Garmin Mobile XT."
At this point I don't even really know what that means or what feature and functions "Garmin Mobile XT" really offers.
As far as I can tell, it's the portable version of what runs on those ubiquitous dirt cheap  "turn-by-turn navigating" GPS devices that seem to be (in this century) necessary for urban navigation.
So (if you know), does TF offer any measure of compatibility with "Garmin Mobile XT?"

Or, more simply,  anyone ever used "Garmin Mobile XT" (any version) on a PDA/smartphone and have any comments?

KenF

15

Feature Requests / Individual shadings for track segments

« on: October 27, 2010, 08:08:46 PM »

While "track color" can be applied as desired on a "by file" basis, it would sure be nice to be able to either break up a track (or take one that already has multiple segments) and be able to individually color code the segments.
OK, track shading by elevation already exists in TF. But do the various file formats - GPX, TCX, KML, etc, preclude changing color mid-track in a stored file?

KenF

16

TopoFusion Pro / Quirks

« on: October 27, 2010, 07:41:48 PM »

Things I have noticed but that are not entirely consistent.
When they happen they are annoying.
I may have mentioned this before.
There seems to be a common issue of "Cursor" - well loosely anyhow.
(1) Cursor does not always stay tied to menu selection. The one I have noticed numerous times is the "Pan" cursor showing  when the "Zoom" tool is active  (or maybe its the other way around).
(2) Points selected with the "Select points" tool do not always stay highlighted even though the cursor shows as the "crossed 4-way arrow."

(3) The subject of how  a "selection rectangle" should work has been raised before.  Note the inconsistency between the "select points" rectangle which works (predictably) corner-to-corner,  in contrast  to the  "zoom box" tool which seems to work in some other strange fashion. I vote (again) for making them both work like the select points box. (And/or like a Photoshop "fixed aspect ratio"  selection box when trying to match the monitor's  aspect ratio).

Lest there be any confusion, I constantly whine abouts details because I constantly use TF.  Don't know what I would do without it.  

KenF



 

17

Feature Requests / Grade

« on: October 16, 2010, 08:10:25 PM »

On a track, I'd like to be able to select two points and determine grade along the track between them.

This is pretty simple but does not seem to presently exist in TF.

I do this regularly.  I find myself taking TF data from a profile - a pair of mileages and elevations, yet I have to do the calculation outside of TF.

KenF

18

Feature Requests / Multi Playback toggles

« on: October 11, 2010, 08:02:31 PM »

The available "toggles" are good but it would be nice to have a way of providing a more streamlined display.

Simple example - For cycling take a group of riders in a road race and play back their GPS data together to show how the race unfolded. The display becomes pretty cluttered when riders are close together.  
Being able to show, for example, just bib number would be good.
Just being able to toggle the file .GPX or .TCX extension would provide a means of doing this by using a short file name, even with no other changes.
[Edit: Hmm... am I missing something?   What I described above is shown here:
http://vimeo.com/15039037 ]

Additional toggles for distance and elapsed time would be useful for such purposes too.
[That DOES seem to be missing. Time especially would be nice to have in an unobtrusive window somewhere on the screen to avoid the need for placing the multi playback dialog box partially over the recorded display as shown in the video above.

The man/dog toggle allows a rough comparison of racers, but a true comparison of gap distance and/or time along the track would be more in line with the analysis that one might wish to see for racers or overlays of multiple rides on the same course.]

It would also be nice to have separate toggles for each separate file. That way one file could be showing the significant "overall" data, while others could just show the most basic identifying info. Moving display of some of this data onto the main screen would make captured video more informative.

KenF

19

Beta Testing / Elevation Tiles- Comments

« on: September 24, 2010, 08:48:21 AM »

Just comments-
Wow! Is that S-L-O-W!
Any way to store data or imagery to speed it up?

Interesting feature but, for now, I cannot envision any real "use" for it. 
But that's just me. Maybe using it in some  "combo" display may prove beneficial.
For now, the glacial redraw speed is likely to inhibit my desire for playing with it much.

But one small detail that I do like is the "maximum/minimum" elevation (shown in "Relief/ Elevation Tileset Option" box) for the displayed view.
I would love to see those figures added as a "permanent" part of the displayed elevation data in the bottom bar, along with cursor elevation as is presently shown there. That would be an easy addition, wouldn't it?

KenF

20

Feature Requests / Projecting waypoints/trackpoints/tracks

« on: August 31, 2010, 04:41:21 PM »

I'd like to see a capability of starting with a known point and then creating a track or group of waypoints using vector information.

The most common example of this would be creating a track from a legal description, perhaps being able to simply paste legs into a table and then using the know lat/lon of starting point, convert and save it as a track. Or for that matter being able to create the track and then drag one of its points to a point on a TF display.

For any given point there could be an "on the ground" GPS reading and a calculated value based upon following the legal description starting with a different point as waypoint.

I have done some of this using my own calculations, but having it integrated into TF would be a treat.

While a "bulk" capability would be ideal,  even a simple "Project new waypoint" option for an existing waypoint would be very useful. Or does this exist and I have missed it? I see that the track drawing tool could be used to do this roughly but its resolution is pretty coarse.  
(And what ever happened to providing a tooptip for the draw track tool which also mentions "measure distance.")

KenF

21

Feature Requests / Track Profile - Multiple Data Overlays

« on: August 02, 2010, 10:46:08 AM »

Garmin finally got around to a software upgrade (2.30) for the Foretrex 401 to make HR data downloadable. (Yet they have not updated this info on the relevant web page. https://buy.garmin.com/shop/store/downloadsUpdates.jsp?product=010-00777-00&cID=144&pID=30026)

TF handles the new download capability just fine.

So what I'd like to see is more graphical information available in the "Profile" box.   
A simple option to  provide multiple simultaneous choices (overlays) of the presently existing options in the "Y-axis" drop-down menu would do it.
 
KF

22

GPS, Trails, Training / Backup Trip Odometer Toggle track on/off

« on: June 08, 2010, 10:07:42 AM »

OK here's something for you Dakota/Oregon users to experiment with.
I was aware from my own tinkering that the "stopwatch" feature could be used as a secondary trip odometer since it provides running time and distance that can be turned on/off and reset independently of the regular trip odometer.
(I have no idea what they were thinking when they implemented a lap/split feature where marking a new lap erases the last one forever)

But here's the new discovery:  
I have heard from a couple of sources, including Garmin tech support, that the "stopwatch"  function is actually supposed to save a gpx track file which corresponds to the data accumulated while the stopwatch is running. That would seem to offer many interesting possibilities  

Of course, I have not yet been able to get this to work on my own Oregon.
[Edit: It now works with a software upgrade. I had ver. 3.20 before]  
The file is supposed to be called stopwatch.gpx and should be located in the garmin/archive folder on the device. [That is where it is found]

KF

23

TopoFusion Pro / Oregon HR data

« on: June 04, 2010, 03:44:17 PM »

I've been going round and round with Garmin Tech support regarding some flakiness I'm experiencing with HR recording on an Oregon 550 . They, of course, have resorted to the knee-jerk "blame the non-Garmin" software approach even though, in the GPX fles on the unit (100% Garmin created), there are dropouts where no HR data appears. And that occurs  despite the HR being shown on a handlebar-mounted Foretrex at the same time.

But that brings up a question. 

The corresponding .gpx files I get from TF have an HR value of 255 at those dropout points.  So, I am really just curious, is that how TF is handling the non-existent Garmin data?

KF

24

GPS, Trails, Training / Bye Bye Track Bird

« on: April 18, 2010, 05:25:03 PM »

http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/augmentation-assistance/news/failure-imminent-waas-geo-satellite-9841

25

TopoFusion Pro / HR Support for Forerunner 301

« on: April 16, 2010, 07:50:15 PM »

I realize this is ancient history, but does the TF download of heart rate data now work with the Foreunner 301?

I ask because this unit is now available new at a very good price and I have always liked the same tiny form factor in my Foretrex 201.

Garmin still seems to be working on the storage of HR data in the Foretrex 401 (displays but doesn't store).
Aside from that the 401 is nice and has the same screen size as a 201 on smaller face area but it is thicker and a bit heavier

KF

26

Feature Requests / Merge/Delete Dialog

« on: January 18, 2010, 04:17:04 PM »

The new
 Added option to load additional GPX/TCX files into “Merge/Delete Downloaded
  Tracks dialog.  Defaults to “Archive” or “History” dir, depending on GPS
feature will be very useful. In fact I already took advantage of it to recover some data from an "archive" file.

But the l-o-n-g  list of track segments that now appears reminds me of a detail that I have always found a bit frustrating. After using the "merge selected" function, the "selected" track defaults to the first track in the list. It would be oh-so-much-nicer if the newly created track remained "selected" after the  merge operation.

KF 

27

TopoFusion Pro / Old DEM data

« on: January 15, 2010, 04:33:27 PM »

This arises as a matter of (1) housekeeping and (2) curiosity.
I have a far amount of (now ancient) DEM data in the TF directory designated for that under options/preferences.
Is that merely a legacy setting at this point?
Or is that data more detailed than that which is now downloaded concurrently with map data?
Despite my packrat tendencies with data and the tedium I recall going through to acquire it, I could just as easily benefit from cleaning up my TF/GPS installation.
Thanks.

KF
   

 

28

TopoFusion Pro / "error writing log file"

« on: January 10, 2010, 09:49:04 PM »

What file would that be referring to?

KF

29

TopoFusion Pro / Heart Rate - Garmin Oregon

« on: December 15, 2009, 04:27:12 PM »

Are there any specific tricks for configuring an Oregon and/or TF to have heart rate recorded? It's showing up on the screen of the unit but is missing from the corresponding recorded track.

KenF

30

GPS, Trails, Training / Newest Garmin GPS units and TF

« on: November 16, 2009, 09:22:24 PM »

I know that I had visions years ago of what I would like my GPS techno-arena to include and TF has filled in a huge part of that vision. Newer Garmin GPS devices appear to be another step toward my perfect system.

So some of you folks must have some of the newer units that support TF uploads of TF created images (Oregon, Dakota and Colorado). Seems like the best of all worlds.

Presently I would be leaning toward acquiring a Dakota 20 for its size, price and general capabilities.
Downsides (from research) seem to be display readability (Scott?) and a mere USB 1.1 interface (if that is true).  Is it true that the wireless capability does NOT work with a  computer running TF? (understood that a Garmin USB dongle might be necessary) A shame if true.

So whady'allthink?

KF
   

31

Feature Requests / Tweaks, Toolbar right clicks

« on: October 20, 2009, 08:45:18 AM »

OK,  minor tweaks to improve user friendliness, easy to implement (I assume)

Several toolbar items have settings that are accessible via "options."
That access could be streamlined by also utilizing a direct "right click" function on each respective toolbar icon.

The obvious examples:
Colors/Shading via Toggle Track Shading
Blending/Shaded Relief via Toggle Relief Shading
Internet settings via Toggle Map Downloading
3D settings via 2d/3d Toggle 

It would also seem that  "3D settings" and "Blending/Shaded Relief" would appropriately be tabs under "Options/Preferences" to maintain some consistency in accessing the various settings, and make other "preferences" accessible with a single click rather than the present two steps required when using the toolbar. (OK, call me lazy) 

The draw tool could also have the area measurement tool accessed via right click.
That tool would also benefit from a tool tip ("Draw track/Measure") or icon (Pencil/ruler) or additional key shortcut ("M") suggesting its measurement capability.

KF

32

Feature Requests / Shaded Relief controls

« on: October 03, 2009, 08:00:54 AM »

Shaded relief is a nice addition.
Is it my imagination or has the original shading method been tweaked?

I had noted that it seemed to create a noticeable reduction in contrast (haziness) on the non-shaded portions of a color view. Maybe that's inherent in the shading method. Seems to be better now than in the beta version.

In the controls for shaded relief "Darkness" seems to operate non-intuitively since the shading is lightened as the slider is moved to the right.

For the "lighting angle" control, instead of a 1-100 scale, it would to be preferable to have a 0-360 control so that a solar position could be easily simulated by number. For example, high noon lighting would be a setting of 180.   Since that's just a matter of the displayed scale it should be very easy to implement.  Along the same lines, a circular graphical control would be nice too.

Ken

33

TopoFusion Pro / UTM Zone Weirdness

« on: July 13, 2009, 01:25:42 AM »

I'm trying to get a handle on this UTM zone thing since I'm a user with a boundary crossing right in my local area.
For a clear example go to the following point and "color" view.
37.27080° N, 108.00391° W

Kinda FUBAR.

Can that be fixed with a change of server?
 

34

Feature Requests / Add a note or comment to a file

« on: June 28, 2009, 12:10:45 PM »

Can a note or comment be added and saved in a GPX file?
I know the log book feature allows this but I can envision a bunch of uses for saving the note within the gpx itself. 

KF

35

Feature Requests / Profile annoyance

« on: June 26, 2009, 10:23:08 AM »

Why are profiles shown with flat "plateaus" rather than "slopes" between adjacent trackpoints?
It's not a big issue when dealing with many track points, but creates an inappropriate visual effect when fewer trackpoints are being displayed.

KF

36

Feature Requests / Continue drawing (add to) a saved track

« on: May 31, 2009, 12:08:15 PM »

I would find it very useful to be able to use the Draw Track  tool to add on to an existing track.  Something along the lines of (1) Select draw track tool (2) Right click on a track (3) Message box asks for confirmation "Add to track  _trackname_?"  Or asks to pick one of several close by tracks, just like the right click on the pan map tool 

Or is there already a way to do this?

While the suggestion above would be useful in a number of ways, I specifically could have used it today when I ran into a scenario (that I have encountered before) while drawing a track where the draw tool seems to become stuck in "drag" mode, as if the left mouse button were being held down when it is not. I am not quite sure what steps are required to reproduce this behavior. It seems to happen when a drawn track reaches close to 300 points. But I have not found the magic sequence to force it to happen.

37

Feature Requests / Consistency and/or settings for Profile Scaling

« on: May 09, 2009, 08:02:00 PM »

In order to allow visual apples-to-apples comparisons I would like to see TF create exported (or even on-screen) profiles that are all scaled identically, perhaps based upon "option" settings.

Yes, I know I can manually  stretch the on screen version (and the resulting export), but I can't do that with any accuracy of without lots of tedium. In fact Photoshop is a much better alternative for that type of manipulation since I can specify scaling numbers.   

I regularly look at profiles of rides for myself and,  more importantly, create onlines images for the courses of a TT series that I run for the local club.
TF presently (I believe) spits out each exported profile in exactly the same  size box.  A 15 mile profile with 500 feet of elevation gain looks much like  a 60 mile profile with 2000 feet of gain.
Similarly the vertical size is fixed with each profile being stretched to fit the box,  rather than the other way around. Ie.  Let's allow stretching  the box instead.

In conjunction with this I would like to see elevation color coding consistent over a chosen range. For example we do local TT's on courses withe elevations as low as 5000 feet and as high as 11,000 feet though not necessarily on the same course.  It would be nice to have more consistency to provide a clear and distinct  visual comparison between the profiles of two courses to reflect a difference in elevation, even if the amount of elevation gain is similar.
(Going from 6800 to 8600 is NOT the same as going from 8800 to 10,600 even if the courses have identical lengths and grades.)

The box would be scaled to the length and net elevation difference over the course and the color coding would reflect actual elevation.  Let's say for example, 7100 feet would end up being always shown as an rgb value of (82,165,95) on ANY profile (that may already be in place).

So settings options could include minimums and maximums for elevation, profile length, display box height,  display box width.
KF

38

Beta Testing / v 3.76

« on: May 02, 2009, 12:14:19 PM »

I must say that elevation caching and the features that it enables are very cool.

Since I broke my arm on my last (duh!) ride 2 days ago I have been playing with TF a bit ("virtual riding") and have run into a few things.
For example, I created a track consisting of two points with the intention of filling it in by "adding" points using the spline function. The result was intended to provide a nice cross-section along the line between the start and end. However when I right click on the initial 2 point track, and select "simplify/split/spline track" TF crashes with the error message "Run time error '380' Invalid property value"

The crash is avoided if I add a single mid point using the "select point" / Insert key method.

So now I have a 3 point straight line track that I want to fill with a bunch of other points to be able to show a profile other than a single stair step. There seem to be no settings of the "interpolate" function which will add points to this simple linear track.

Also, twice now I have run into a scenario while drawing a track where the draw tool seems to become stuck in "drag" mode, as if the left mouse button were being held down when it is not. I am not quite sure what steps are required to reproduce this behavior, although I also note that the wonderful "e" key shortcut for removing the last segment was not working just before that happened. However when TF was closed and restarted the track drawing returned to normal. 
   
KF

39

Feature Requests / Quick Operations w/DrawTrack tool, high res profiles using cached data

« on: May 01, 2009, 08:13:28 AM »

Unless I am missing something a manually drawn track must first be saved to a file before it can be "selected" with the "pan map" tool to compute area.

How about adding "compute area" to the Draw Track menu (right click options) so that it can be accessd on the fly?

Hmmm ... for that matter now that elevation data is cached how about a similar  "on the fly" profile capability?
That could even include high resolution profile data along a track and not just limited to the defined track points.
Even single track segment could show a nice detailed cross section of terrain.

Previously,  in order to avoid blocky profiles (typically from manually drawn tracks) without having to do tedious (i.e. lots of track points) track drawing I have used the add points  (spline) function to add points to an existing track,  then added local DEM or Downloaded elevation data to the track so that even each new point has a complete set of data. So in essence it seems that all the functionality (at least one way of doing it) is already there and might be easily combined into a one click operation.

KF

40

Feature Requests / Undo or Warning on Draw Track Tool (deletion)

« on: March 29, 2009, 08:44:56 PM »

When using the "Draw Track" tool (pencil icon) it is WAY too easy to "clear all segments" when all that was desired was to "clear last segment."
And the "undo" feature does not retrieve the deleted segments. 

So how about (1) adding a warning popup - "Dumbass - you didn't really want to delete all those last 43,241 track points that you just placed so carefully by hand, did you?"

Or (2) allow undo to retrieve the erroneously deleted points.

Or both.
 

41

Feature Requests / Bulk File Conversion

« on: March 29, 2009, 08:38:54 AM »

Since TF supports a number of different file formats, it would be very useful to be able to select a group of files and convert them all to one of the other formats in a single operation.

[filling]

42

Feature Requests / 3D Display

« on: November 20, 2008, 09:17:00 PM »

I'll have to admit having resorted to Google Earth in the recent past for the truly amazing 3D detail and "flyover" capability offered there  (and even the free version allows importing GPX  files for display).

But now that TF has full color aerials ....

So I'll sugest that  TF might look into incorporating some of the 3D  functionality found in GE.
I like the TF 3D controls - much faster than GE.

But of GE features,  the most significant would be filling a screen with a 3D view rather than the "tile floating in  space" view that relies on the constraints of the 2D view converted to 3D. When the 3D view (from, for example, a wide screen view)  is rotated, there is a LOT of black space on the  screen, even after redrawing.

Another would be a linear travel or "flyover" capability without requiring interim "redraws." For that matter automatic redraws under any 3D change of view would be worthwhile if it could be accomplished without dramatic delays in display speed.

Whadyathink?

43

Feature Requests / More Minor Details

« on: November 19, 2008, 07:15:00 PM »

First, I must again say that the new color aerials are an absolutely fabulous additon to TF. They provide more recent, more detailed and just generally much better views than those from Terraserver. But you knew that.

OK, Let's add a "hot key" or other method of setting the zoom of the  the current tileset at 1:1 resolution, that is, 1 tile pixel per  monitor pixel. That way the resolution can be maxmized for any given view.

And while the "Zoom Box" has a  negative function (right click) lets add the feature that the right click causes  the "current view" to  zoom out AND center on the clicked point. This is pretty standard functionality on many mapping packages.  

For riding/training (and cheapskates).  
Add in a formula for "power" based on GPS climbing data alone.
While riding I have found that the Garmin "vertical speed" indicator is actually a pretty good measure of performance (as also recognized by a Dr. Ferrrari), if not accurate to the tenth decimal place. For any given track segment, if speed and grade are known (which they presumanbly are via TF calculations) , then a rough calculation of power requires only the additional input of weight (total of bike, rider and "stuff"). This wouldn't replace, nor be as accurate as,  a true power meter but would be a reasonable use of the available data for those who ride mostly hilly terrain and use only a GPS receiver and TF. Obviously this would be relatively meaningless for flat terrain.

Again, I expect this should all be very simple stuff.

44

Feature Requests / Feature/Interface  Consistency

« on: November 16, 2008, 06:04:27 PM »

Just a couple of suggestions regarding access to features that exist but are not always obvious.

How about offering a choice of toolbar icons for the pencil tool? A little tape measure would make the distance feature a bit more obvious. And/or change the pencil tooltip to  "Draw track/Measure distance."

And adding a toolbar icon (Track tools?) that would enable a left click to bring up the menu which corresponds to a "right-click" on a track would be a great step toward making the user interface a little more consistent (not that it's bad now).

45

Feature Requests / Upoad Network to track

« on: November 08, 2008, 03:51:57 PM »

I just recently started playing with the network feature and have a nice file for a group of trails that are basically out my back door.  But what I would like to do is load the compiled network into my (non-mapping) GPS receiver (Garmin Foretrex) as a single track so that I effectively have a map which will display on the GPS screen.

Maybe I have missed something but I cannot seem to do this, at least not as a single track. I do realize that there is probably an issue of continuity since the network is, for lack of a better term, a "spider web" made from the combined  tracks.

Anyhow is there a way to do this? Can there be?
Thanks
KF

46

Archived Support / UNloading Map Data

« on: November 11, 2007, 02:43:42 PM »

Having used TF for quite some time I have accumulated LOTS of map data and am running low on space on the disk where I have it stored. There is much of that map data that I only used briefly and could happily delete. Is there any way to downsize the data files by selectively deleting/unloading only data that is no longer useful?
If not,  can I simply delete some of my .DAT files?

KF