Current Forest Service Topo's

[geekonabike]

 I've been loading these in 'windows' - 'user maps'  & they are much better than the USGS Quads

 http://svinetfc4.fs.fed.us/rastergateway/regions/regions.html

 The maps are in .tar.gz archives which are simple in linux, but 7zip is what worked for me in windows.
 the 'nocollar' maps come in .tif's which won't load in TopoFusion so I opened the .tif in MSpaint & 'save to' changing to .png in the extension drop box (.bmp would work too, .jpg wouldn't).
 Now you get to calibrate your map (I suggest you read the online manual here) this is going to be a little work, but you can keep trying until you are happy with the position. For me working with the 4m topo's was easiest. Pick a red grid corner close to a mountain or lake & select that point on both maps. you can do 3 separate points but 2 towards the corners works best (use the arrow keys to move you 4m topo to your point if it's off the page)

                                                               Later, mike
                                                              www.geekonabike.com

[Larry]

Thanks for this Mike,

The difference in quality of these topos compared to the standard ones TF uses is *amazing*. Scott, you might want to check these out. They are so much better, you might be tempted to figure out a way to make these an optional tile set. That would be fantastic, as big an improvement as adding the high res color tiles.

[edited to add:] As a trial I've made a user map from one of these new quads (Mt. Stuart in Washington), and it is really spiffy. However, it appears that the topo lines have been smoothed somehow. On the quad I checked, the fine wiggles or scallops, which are a very useful clue that a steep slope may have rocky ridges that are not easily passable, are gone. So the new quads are not a complete replacement for the old ones it seems.

Larry

[ScottMorris]

These are nice looking maps.  Too bad they are only for national forests, not everywhere...

I don't think a tileset makes sense, however we could add tiff support as well as tfw (calibration info) file reading.  That would make these maps pretty easy to add as user maps in TF.

Larry -- that's interesting about the topo lines.  Wonder how/why that happened.

[geekonabike]

 I was curious about the calibration info myself, is there a way to use this now? Almost anything would be easier than the manual method?
 A good incentive for the cheapskates to try this is, it gets rid of your Demo tiles in the free version. I know be cause that what I'm running on my XP netbook which doesn't download tiles set well enough for me to justify using one of my installs on it.

[Larry]

Scott, it would not be high on my list now, but anything that would make it easier to use these new topos as user maps would be nice. I did however notice that even having just one load at startup delays things noticeably. That alone would limit my use.

I wonder if these new topos use some sort of digital line smoothing.

[ScottMorris]

Yeah, if you have large user maps checked (turned on), the software loads them on start up and can be a bit slow.  If you loaded a bunch of them it'd be prohibitive for sure.  I need to make it only load them when they become visible on the screen, moving the delay to when panning over to the map(s).

Tif requires a tif library -- I didn't like the options last time I looked., but I will look again.

[LDWhite68]

I think these TIF images may be what is loaded (with some color modification?) by "http://www.mytopo.com/maps.cfm?". Unfortunately not all the national forests have their data on the server yet (e.g. Ouachita NF in Oklahoma).

The problem with sluggish performance due to TF loading all checked user maps at the start up has been a big problem for me before. I was overlaying with edited Canadian nautical charts over a long section of coast. I had to keep on checking and unchecking files to keep the program from getting completely bogged down. Comparing the sizes of image files that I was using to the memory on the computer, it didn't seem like it should degrade the performance so drastically. My guess was that TF must take the PNG files and work with them as bitmaps, which would be much larger in most cases. Automatically tying to only load user maps within (or maybe near, for caching) the current window would be a big help.

Loren

[Larry]

I think these TIF images may be what is loaded (with some color modification?) by "http://www.mytopo.com/maps.cfm?".

Thanks for the link Loren, Having checked a few spots, I think a quick way to see if the maps are new is to check some elevations. The new ones dispense with the 'T' (for transit elevation) and none appear to be hand written now. Nice not to have to struggle to figure out an elevation.


Larry