Topics

1

Feature Requests / Track averaging

« on: August 24, 2007, 05:01:08 PM »

Greetings:

One of the things I seem to do a LOT with TF is average tracks. TF can approximate this with the Make Network (MN) tool, but this approach has some drawbacks: using MN requires one to split all tracks into averagable sections in separate files, and disable all but the sections to be averaged; and MN (irrevocably?) marks the result as a network.

What I suggest is something akin to the Track Merge ™ tool, except that it would average multiple tracks instead of catenate them. Operation would be: select the tool/mode, click on a track, shift-click on additional tracks, and use a right click menu item to save the average (or remove last, etc.). As with the TM tool, selection would not cross track breaks (so each bit to be merged would not have to be saved to a separate file).

Thanks for continuing to develop this great program.

2

Archived - Feedback and Comments / Network Splitting and Scattering

« on: April 23, 2005, 11:33:48 PM »

The network analysis tool often generates networks where the track segments do not always meet at endpoints (e.g., one segment "T"s into the middle of another). This makes constructing composite tracks with the profile tool quite difficult: one must first identify all such intersections by hand, break them with the cut tool, and fix the ends so that they are in proximity again. It would be nice if TF could automate this process, so that all segments are manifold.

As an adjunct to this, it would be nice if TF could automatically split segments into separate files. This would make it easier to copy parts of one network into another. One simple approach would be to save each segment in a file named according to the source file and that segment's terminal waypoints.

3

Archived - Feedback and Comments / Track Interpolation and Smoothing

« on: April 23, 2005, 11:23:56 PM »

I thought that these used to be on the "to do" list, but I don't see them anymore, and I can't find them in TF.

First, my crappy Magellan unit has a really small tracklog, which means that I often get tracks with fewer points than I would like. Alternately, I get lazy when drawing tracks, and space points widely when the track is straight. What I would like is for TF to insert points into such tracks to where no two adjacent points are more than a given distance apart. This would allow for more effective application of DEM data to the track, as well as providing a wealth of points to match against maps.

Second, some of my drawn tracks have the opposite problem--too many points! When dragging the cursor with the drawing tool, one can get a truly impressive number of points. It would be nice if TF could smooth these tracks down to a given mean inter-point distance.

A single tool could probably accomplish both tasks, with the user defining minimum and maximum inter-point distances. Several different algorithms could be used, with varying degrees of fidelity to the original track.

4

Archived - Feedback and Comments / Re-Center On This Point

« on: April 23, 2005, 11:08:20 PM »

I thought that there was a way to do this, but I can't find it now. What I would like is to be able to quickly move a point to the center of the window. For example, double clicking while using the "hand" tool would move the clicked point dead center in the display.

5

Archived - Feedback and Comments / 3D Mode Rotation Controls

« on: April 23, 2005, 11:06:10 PM »

It would be nice if the arrow keys worked as axial rotations in 3D mode. Using the mouse I always manage to get the map cocked off to the side pretty quickly because my cursor is not exactly centered on the screen, or drifts to the side as I drag it. The arrow keys would be much more precise.

The UP and DOWN arrows would rotate the image about the horizontal centerline of the display; the LEFT and RIGHT arrows would rotate the image about the vertical centerline. I would suggest having the plain arrow keys be macro adjustments (say, 10 degrees per press by default), and SHIFT+arrow be micro adjustments (1 degree per press).

6

Archived - Feedback and Comments / Zoom and Tileset Suggestions

« on: April 23, 2005, 10:46:59 PM »

I have a few suggestions regarding the handling of tileset and zoom factor in the TF interface. Since these suggestions may not make sense on their own, I'll start by describing the situations which prompted them.

First, there are times when I wish I could manually control which tileset is being displayed, independent of the current zoom level. For example, my preferences are set so that a zoom of 8.88 maps to Topo 16M, but for this particular map I'd rather use Topo 4M. You can sometimes force TF to do this by messing with the preferences, but not always.

Second, I often wish I had a way to switch to an exact zoom level. Relative zoom is nice, but I find myself wanting to reset the zoom to a specific value every so often (most commonly, 1.0). The tileset selector provides a partial solution, but only if you are changing tilesets. If I'm using Aerial 4M, and want to jump to 1.0 zoom, I can simply select Aerial 1M. The tileset is changed, and the zoom set to 1.0. But there's no easy way to set the zoom to 4.0 when using Aerial 4M; selecting Aerial 4M does nothing as that is already the current tileset. Instead, I have to change tilesets twice: away from Aerial 4M, and then back again. This is frustrating, especially on an old computer like mine, which is painfully slow at scrolling scaled maps.

Finally, a related problem shows up when editing tracks. I'm examining the map, and see something which bears closer inspection. I zoom way in, and disentangle some trackpoints. But when I'm done, there's no easy way to get back to the view I just left.

The first two of these are easy to fix--at least from a user interface perspective. One normally wants the tileset to be linked to the zoom level, but not always. One could add a checkbox between the zoom level and tileset droplist which controls this linkage. When checked, TF acts as it does now; when cleared, zoom and tileset act independently. To easily control the precise zoom factor, one could make the zoom display control a combobox; the droplist would contain common zooms (0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, etc.), and the user could type in an exact zoom level.

The last item is slightly harder: it implies a history of views, with the ability to move back and forth between them. The metaphor used by web browsers may be of use here. One has the current, live view, and a history of saved views. Buttons allow one to move back and forward through this list, and to push a new saved view. Moving or zooming makes the current view the live view, and discards any "forward" views from there. One could even get fancy and allow combinations like holding the SHIFT key while zooming with the magnifying glass to automatically save the view before zooming.

I know this was a pretty long post, but I think these minor interface changes would improve the ergonomics of the interface greatly.

7

Archived - Feedback and Comments / Path handling suggestions

« on: March 30, 2005, 09:33:07 AM »

I have a couple of suggestions on how to improve path handling under TF:

1. Add a preference item indicating that TF should remember the most recent working directory between sessions.

2. Add a file selection dialog button to the Network Analysis dialog. Currently, one must use a separate program to see which files already exist, and one cannot change the directory in which they are stored.

If these have already been suggested, my apologies.

  -- Mark

8

Archived Support / Drawing errors w/o 3D accelerated graphics?

« on: February 25, 2005, 06:40:48 PM »

I just grabbed 2.5 and installed it. I almost immediately went for the 3D mode (since I had never gotten that to work on my own with previous versions), and almost immediately ran into trouble.

Unfortunately, I don't have the exact message in front of me, but the gist is: "Cannot create texture; Needed Size: 2048x1024, Maximum Size: 1024x1024." This message is followed by a warning telling me that I don't have 3D accelerated graphics (which indeed I don't), and then a grayscale surface map. Disappointing, but not completely unexpected.

Then, after scrolling around a bit, salivating, TF suddenly locked up. No reponse from anything. I let it sit for a few minutes (since rendering the GL scene can take a minute or two on my machine), but TF never came back. I finally killed it with Task Manager (Win 2000, up-to-date). Again, TF does this on a somewhat regular basis anyway, so I wasn't too worried.

Unfortunately, when I reloaded, TF was not happy. The window comes up, and all the controls draw, but the map area never does. It simply retains the image of whatever was drawn there most recently (desktop, tool-tips, menus, etc.--just not the map). The program responds normally, and acts like it thinks its drawing (pauses in the same way for rendering), but nothing ever actually gets drawn. Toggling between the various 2D/3D modes and tilesets doesn't seem to help--in fact, nothing seems to help.

I have recreated part of this second problem on another machine: late-model P4 with 3D acceleration and gobs of memory. The moment I try to toggle back to 2D mode, the drawing area stops redrawing (and just collects garbage). On this machine, though, hitting the 3D button again will bring up a new 3D view, and toggling the state of the track list twice will finally cause it to show 2D plots again.

Any ideas? Also, is 3D acceleration basically required for TF to operate at this point (like with Roxio)?

Thanks. From what little I saw, the new version looks nice.

  -- Mark

9

Archived Support / Remote Desktop and TF

« on: August 31, 2004, 03:52:51 PM »

TF doesn't appear to redraw correctly when using it via a Winders XP Remote Desktop connection. In particular, the main window does not get redrawn reliably. For example, after selecting an area with the load maps tool, the download dialog leaves an afterimage. Similarly, trying to draw a new selection leaves an afterimage of the original selection.

Forcing a redraw makes it all purty again, of course. Also, FWIW, the map under the cursor gets redrawn properly, so one can "paint" the afterimage away if one is sufficiently bored.

This is more FYI than a real problem for me, BTW.

  -- Mark

10

Archived Support / Automation API?

« on: August 30, 2004, 07:54:33 PM »

Does TF have any sort of automation API? OLE Automation, custom COM, whatever?

  -- Mark

11

Archived Support / No Live Tracking Log?

« on: August 30, 2004, 07:53:06 PM »

So, there I am, all happy that I can finally use TF's live tracking feature with my Magellan GPS, and then I can't figure out how to save the live track to a GPX file!

My GPS can only store 2000 trackpoints; when taking trackpoints at 0.01 mi (the only way to get a half-decent-resolution trace on that bloody thing), this doesn't get you far. I had hoped (nay, prayed) that I could use TF's live tracking feature as a way around this limitation.

Am I just being dense, or can TF really not do this?

  -- Mark

12

Archived - Feedback and Comments / Suggestion: Map Tile Status & Auto Download

« on: August 30, 2004, 07:42:46 PM »

I recently used the live tracking feature of TF for some navigating on old mining roads. While it worked (now that 2.1 finally supports my POS Magellan GPS), I ran into a problem. I had tried the pan-around-to-cache-all-the-tiles approach to seeding my cache, but I apparently missed some crucial tiles. Zooming in or out didn't help, since I hadn't cached those tiles at all.

My suggestion has two parts: First, it would be nice if one could see easily what tiles are cached. Possibly overlaying the target grid onto a larger grid's images, so one has some context about what tiles are missing (e.g., show the 4M tiles, with shading showing the status of the 1M tiles).

Second, it would be *really* nice if TF allowed batch downloading of multiple resolutions and styles for a given area. That is, given this area, download all 1M, 4M, 16M, and 64M topos and aerials. Obviously, this could be abused pretty badly, but perhaps limits could be built in?

  -- Mark

13

Archived Support / Trouble getting DEM to work...

« on: August 28, 2004, 01:16:27 PM »

I recently upgraded to 2.1, and decided that it was time to try the whole 3D thing again. I am promoting a mountain bike event here in Socorro, NM, and I would very much like to use TF to make my trail maps.

I can't seem to get the 3D view to work.

I tried option #1 from the 3d.php page. I zoomed to the area in question, saved a NED GeoTIFF file, used 3DEM to convert it to an ASCII DEM file (~6 MB), and placed that file in my DEM directory (C:\Program Files\TopoFusion). I load up my track, zoom it to fit, and hit the 3D button.

I get a beautifully rendered, but completely flat map. '>

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

 Â -- Mark