We’re excited to announce the release of v3.80 of TopoFusion Pro, featuring a long sought after addition to the software… elevation caching!

Thanks to Lucian Plesea over at JPL, we now have rapid access to tiled DEM (elevation) data. As you pan around in TopoFusion in v3.80, you’ll automatically be downloading DEM data, so it’ll be there if you want to go to 3D mode, or if you want to add elevation to your tracks.

Now 3D works offline, if you’ve got the data and in general it’s a whole lot faster and easier to use. That means you can add elevation to tracks and do Climbing Analysis on tracks offline, too.

Also, the ‘undo’ command has been enabled to ‘undo’ many more operations than it used it.

A summary of elevation features:

Added local caching of DEM data
– DEM data is automatically downloaded as map is panned
– Fast downloads, using OnEarth’s tiled WMS
– Stored in maps.dat structure, download once, always have
– Elevation at mouse cursor given in status bar
– Faster 3D model generation. Works offline.
– Elevation automatically added to tracks as they are drawn
– Automatically uses NED (30m) data inside US, 90 SRTM elsewhere in world
– Option for forcing SRTM available (useful for US border areas)
– Climbing Analysis uses cached data
– Increased accuracy for elevation gain and “Add Elevation to Track”
– Added box filtering to Climbing Analysis (selectable filter width)

Head over to the Download Page to try TopoFusion out, free of charge.

Registered users refer to your registration email for the download link, or go here to request your code and the download URL.

Full list of changes

For a complete list of changes see the Revision History

Team Royal Yellow, image courtesy tybee500.com

We’re continuing to improve and test our SPOT tracking software, and plan to introduce SPOT specific features in the TopoFusion app itself sometime in the near future.

The latest event to sign up to be tracked is the Tybee 500. It’s a 500+ mile endurance sailing race that runs the length of Florida and more. It’s the longest sailing race in the US. Over 6 days a total of 24 teams will test themselves. The race started this Monday (5/11/09) and runs until Saturday.

For more info on the race and frequent updates, go to www.tybee500.com Also, check twitter: http://twitter.com/tybee500

Our tracker is here: http://topofusion.com/tracker-tybee.php. Check out the daily recap videos we are posting using TopoFusion’s Multitrack playback tool.

Let us know if you have an event you’d like tracked!