Well after last weeks mission to provide the best maps possible on CCBYSA 2.0 data which will still be good to use for several weeks, I continued my efforts. As currently no bots have been deleting data AFAIK and the data still got updated, I will again use the newest map data. Probably for [...]]]>

Well after last weeks mission to provide the best maps possible on CCBYSA 2.0 data which will still be good to use for several weeks, I continued my efforts. As currently no bots have been deleting data AFAIK and the data still got updated, I will again use the newest map data. Probably for the last time, as the bots should start cleaning the data very soon.

So what got updated?

New Maps of Asia

Well first of all, I worked a lot on Asia. Asia as a continent was likely the worst to use map, often not possible to send it to GPS due to various OSM data bugs. Hence I decided to provide maps for all Asian countries instead (well all except the Asian part of Russia). The larger part than rendering those maps, was of course creating contourlines for all these maps, which took a lot of time.

So from tomorrow – Friday you can download the following countries including integrated contourlines (contourlines are a premium download – find them at the bottom of the download page):

Azerbaijan, China, GCC_states, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel_and_Palestine, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia_Singapore_Brunei, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.

As there is probably no more update to the Asian maps under CCBYSA 2.0, I made sure that such things like heavy flooding don't occur. China and Iraq therefore are without ocean. Also contourlines for all of asia are online and linked now, as well as a separate extract (20m interval) for the Himalaya region.

New Maps of Russia and Belarus and further Improvements to Contourlines in Europe

Besides In Europe the last missing country were Russia and Belarus, which I added too now – of course also including contourlines (premium download), and added contourlines to Turkey. Also as promised Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina contourlines are now integrated. As well as Tanzania and Libya in Africa. (Somalia I have not boundary file for, hence cannot create them right now). Also for the Canary Islands the contourlines got updated. So effectively, excluding Canada above 60° North and the Asian continent map, all maps now have integrated contourlines available.

Over the next week I will still update the contourlines, of Alps, Austria and Germany to close some data holes and start working on contourlines for Canada (Canada only if I find time, I expect this will take 100-200hours work as the data is in not easily to convert formats).

Please Support Openmtbmap and Velomap by Donating some coins…

As it's a lot of work to run Openmtbmap and Velomap, and keep everything up to date and up to best possible technology, I ask you to donate some coins toward it if you haven't done so yet. Simply donate a bit after your next install of openmtbmap/velomap when you see the donation page. For people who already donated money, and want to prolong their account I'll soon set up a separate page for them. Also you will be reminded to stock up by email before your account expires and instructions on how to prolong it (7-14 days before it runs out).

First of all, as promised I worked a lot on getting more and more maps with contourlines shipped. So now for the United States maps, there are pretty good contourlines without too many holes available – based on SRTM1 [...]]]> Well a bit late, but better late than never the announcement for last Fridays map updates.

First of all, as promised I worked a lot on getting more and more maps with contourlines shipped. So now for the United States maps, there are pretty good contourlines without too many holes available – based on SRTM1 data. For Canada on the other hand – it wasn't so easy – and for right now the contourlines are only up to 60°north – so the Northern part of Canada does not yet have contourlines. I'll try my best to get contourlines out based on data published by the State of Canada – but it ain#t so easy.

Besides I added contourlines to Australia-Oceania (actually just 2 days after I had them finished, Jonathan from viewfinderpanoramas added a bunch of new data – so I redid them). I also created contourlines for Australia, and for New-Zealand separately, so one doesn't need to download the full Australia-Oceania contourlines or maps. Oh yes – New Zealand and Australia as separate maps is new too.

For Africa and separately for South Africa and Lesotho, as well as for South America and Central America I now also added contourlines. So besides Asia – contourlines are now available worldwide (as are maps) – for people who got an account on Velomap or Openmtbmap (well you need to donate to get one)…

Oh well I twice tried to create contourlines for all of Asia – but without lot's of handwork I won't be able to do so, and my Server twice ran out of memory – I think under 16GB it will be difficult to create them . Maybe I will sometimes in future give it another go – but for right now I'm not sure if I will ever offer contourlines for Asia… – though maybe I try to create some for the Himalayas…

On the other hand, as the maps got bigger and bigger, I though it's nice to be able to quickly change the layout of the maps. Now there is a new .exe that quickly guides you to change the layout. Just doubleclick it from the folder you installed your map too, or from the link on your programs/Start menu and you're done within 5 seconds to change the layout.

Then I thought – well Mapsource/Basecamp aren't really fast for creating maps for the GPS, and now mkgmap can create gmapsupp.img with address search too. So I put many (about 40 hours) into creating a very advanced and very failproof new batchfile (create_gmapsupp.img(_velomap)_with_mkgmap.bat) which depending on the input files offered asks you 1-5 questions to let you easily and very quickly create a gmapsupp.img for your GPS. If contourlines are present, it will ask you if and how you want to have them integrated (so both users of new generation or old generation GPS can choose if they want them integrated, and if they want to be able to switch them on/off separately from the maps or not). Also you are asked if you want to have an adress index generated or not. For users that have City Navigator maps installed, or people with low RAM a good option to turn off, for everyone else a good option to turn on. If you enable address search – then you are asked for free amount of RAM – so it should cater for old and new PCs… — if it isn't enough RAM then it will simply rego without address search. And of course you can choose the layout.
 (if anyone can help me to change that batch as it is now from batch to an .exe executable, preferably based on NSIS – I offer you a free 25 year account on Velomap/Openmtbmap)

Well and as I worked through quite many nights last week to really improve the quality of the openmtbmap/velomaps I also corrected or improved some things on the maps themselves. E.g. check that there are not cities/places without names, that could disturb the search function, updated the layout of contourlines in Mapsource/QlandkarteGT/Basecamp layout to be not so dominating, and made some more checks to not have private swimming pools found in the POI section or search and integrate the key railway=dismantled…

So I thought, nice work and I can go into a relaxed longer weekend, when suddenly last week I got notified that the France map if fully installed to a modern (not older generation) Garmin GPS device could stop the device from booting. Such a thing never happened before and I spent at least another 15 hours on checking why and how it's possible this can happen. So far it seems to be related to maptiles having nearly no information – something that very rarely happens (actually worldwide only in some parts of France). The real bug is still a misery and noone on the mkgmap mailinglist got any real clue how and why this can happen. I solved it for now in two ways a) I try to have as big maptiles as possible and looked through every country if I can make the maptiles bigger (too big, and you get empty tiles because there are also upper limits) and what should hopefully make the bug impossible to reappear include some OSM ocean/sea objects, like ocean/sea names via POI, or very big navigation constructions. With that effort I hope, that even though the real reason could not be found – it will never happen again (note only the map of France if sent fully to modern GPS device was problematic).

So for next week I hope to find some time to update some more tutorials on the website, and also have some video tutorials. Beside I will try to make some things on the installer documentation better to read/choose.

Wow I think that's been one of the longest and biggest newsletter I've ever wrote – so I wish everyone who got down to here – a good start into a new week (and hope I find some more free time for sports again…)

well instead of posting entirely happy about the fact that for nearly all countries (exception for now Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway) that I offered contourlines for – now have them integrated,  I have to say that at least the Alps and Germany the upload crashed – so please don't post further [...]]]> Hello to all,

well instead of posting entirely happy about the fact that for nearly all countries (exception for now Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway) that I offered contourlines for – now have them integrated,  I have to say that at least the Alps and Germany the upload crashed – so please don't post further comments and emails about the countries currently not downloadable.
 

After last week I spent a lot of time of fixing my website server, I didn't found time to get in the updates timely enough for checking that they are okay before going on holidays. I'm in Dubai on stopover on my way to China with my girlfriend and even though everything is really modern here, well working internet seems to be big trouble (tried 3 internet cafes besides my hotel so far and at all places internet really trickles in). Means I currently don't manage to get a stable/quick enough connection to log into my server to schedule the uploads to be done again. I hope I can do so tomorrow evening, else I'll try from Beijing (hope that i get through the big internet wall without problems…

For the future I'll try to setup a folder syncing between the server I generate the maps on, and my website server from which on the maps are mirrored to GWDG cause upload breakups got a bit unstable lately.

Also I'll try to generate contourlines for the Europe Map and some more country maps. The new contourlines are of higher quality than the ones before because due to phyghtmap being released I was able to take the 1" files from viewfinderpanoramas instead of the 3" files, meaning 300% better resolution for the alps – hence higher quality. Also now there are no more cutting artefacts – so the contourlines are a bit cleaner (wasn't a big problem though). At some (very very few) places due to data holes in the DEM data there are still artefacts – but e.g. for the alps this are 3 places where this problem exists. The contourlines are definitely of higher quality than in the latest Garmin maps of Austria/Germany, but not so good of course than in printed 1:25k topo maps that still bought the contourlines from the national map survey agencies.

So far so good, I'll just edit this post once the problems are solved.

EDIT: Tuesday 13:00 GMT: All countries should be correctly uploaded now. Europe full Velomap/Openmtbmap Premium downloads should be working again by 15:00 GMT.

First of all I decided to add besides the easy layout, a special hiking layout. I introduced it because I felt that the easy layout is still showing too much information related to cycling or mtbiking than what one [...]]]> Hiking Layout

Well for this time the changes  are more visually than on other map changes.

First of all I decided to add besides the easy layout, a special hiking layout. I introduced it because I felt that the easy layout is still showing too much information related to cycling or mtbiking than what one needs as a hiker. The new layout therefore omits all bicycle/mtb related information. So instead of mtbiking, cycling and hiking routes, only hiking routes are shown. Also POI like bikeshops disappear earlier when zooming out. On the other hand hiking routes are shown longer than in the other layouts. There is also no separation on oneway arrows depending on whether you are allowed to cycle against the direction of traffic flow or not and many other little important bits.

Going with this change I show all streets/ways/paths that are part of a hiking route also in zoom resolution 21 – just like before for cycling/mtbiking routes. Effectively this is quite a good step forward also for mtbiking/cycling as the rather important ways are shown when zooming out longer, while footways/paths in cities usually are not affected and disappear much earlier. This also gives a more consistent network of important ways for mtbiking/cycling.

Oneway Arrows

When I introduced oneway arrows difference based on the information whether you are allowed to cycle against the traffic flow or not I invented a different arrow design to show the change. However I think the arrow design I used was more prominent than the arrow design for roads that you are not allowed to cycle against traffic flow. On one hand this was nice -as those roads are often the ones that you really want to omit and never cycle along. On the other hand it wasn't so logical why roads with less stringent oneway behaviour would be more prominent. Therefore I took up the task and changed them all around.

Other changes

An important change is that I found a bug that blocked tracktype being considered for "unpaved" road avoidance. I fixed it after I thought that the new Basecamp v 3.3 beta didn't work as expected (more on that later).

Besides I got a bit annoyed that the fixme=continue arrow showed up sometimes too prominent – and it is more and more used on ways that no tourist/cyclinst/mtbiker ever takes anyhow. Therefore I moved it to resolution 24. As especially Europe gets more and more complete on ways, I think the importance is less urgent than it once was (with the aim to encourage people to record new ways for OSM).

There were quite a lot of other small changes/optimizations that I not mention here..

Oh and last week I went over the website and tried to update most pages cause some of them had gotten a bit outdated.

Basecamp v 3.3.0.2 beta and Garmin introducing new routing algorythms

Well after me being the first map producer worldwide to really push mtbike and cycling autorouting since about 3 years, Garmin seems to have noticed that if they want to continue to sell maps, they have to improve their maps and functions. Basecamp 3.3 beta (look for it in the garmin forum). They now introduced many many activity profiles like mountainbiking, mountaineering, ATV, dirtbike, walking, hiking and so on. This change could be noticed pretty strongly since as of Basecamp 3.2 Garmin decided not to take restrictions like cycling forbidden, or foot forbidden, or taxi forbidden in their maps into consideration. One has to say that even though they had this functionality in their software and firmware since I can remember or trace back, never an official map sold by Garmin included this information. Either they coudn't get it, or they cheaped out on buying this information…. This lead to many people wondering why they were lead onto motorways while cycling or walking activated as means of transport in Mapsource/Basecamp or on the GPS.

Of course as we knew how to implement these switches, and OSM has this information to a rather good standard, I used it and it made up for more possibilities on restricting which way quality you could take or not. Now with Basecamp 3.3 the selection of means of transport changed to activity profiles, and they are not similar to the means of transport that existed in the maps all along. Instead the profiles now exclude the use of certain (however not yet known) road types or maybe additional information that we don't know how to encode. As of now the new modes don't work any better than before also for official Garmin maps, but the announcement lead to believe that Garmin will in future on new maps make extensive use of the activity profiles. Not only by different autorouting, but also by telling that in future based on the activity mode the map layout will change.

As soon as I find out more on how this affects autorouting, and more GPS (currently only the new etrex x0 series is already affected) switch to the new way of working, I will adapt (if possible) the openmtbmap autorouting modes to suit it. Currently however http://openmtbmap.org/about-2/autorouting/ has to be taken as a bit outdated when it comes to Basecamp 3.3 beta…

I don't really know what implications this will have to Openmtbmap/Velomap and also OSM. The point is, that the information that Garmin would need to actually really implement the ideas of their developpers on the software side, is not really available on the map data market – with the exception of Openstreetmap. I predict that shortly (2-3 month) after the license change in OSM, that will allow much more restrictive (like DRM and other) maps based on OSM map data, Garmin will bring out themselves not free but payable and not copyable maps based on OSM, maybe enriched with other data like higher quality DEM from laserscans (even though recently Garmin maps showed worse and worse DEM and contourlines – probably to save money) and maybe other data goodies in order to have a more competitive standpoint for people buying their maps. Also they will probably make sure that their maps show exclusive features that we will not be able to implement with mkgmap cause we don't know the newest map format specifications.

I see this process as part of a natural way things behave. I (and others who followed by making maps with autorouting for outdoor purposes) shaped the way to force the industry to react cause their offerings are of lower quality (IMHO in Austria/Germany/Switzerland OSM is on ways/highways in general now far ahead of the official map data providers, but of course still way behind on topographic features) and they have to follow. Giove was the first GPS PNA producer to have autorouting for outdoor purposes officially supported but in my eyes failed completely because their map data was neither consistent nor of good enough quality (except in some parts of Italy). Falk, Brydon and others tried to jump on the train, but so far don't offer competitive products. All of them suffer mainly from the fact that there isn't good enough map data available. If they want to achieve what I started with Openmtbmap 3 years ago, namely maps that are really suited and made for outdoor sports like cycling and mountainbiking, they have to make use of Openstreetmap data (google currently doesn't seem to have got it and goes mainly inline with traditional automotive focused design – also with their otherwise excellent map maker which in reality is by now the biggest competitor to OSM). So what once started as an idea to have maps for mountainbiking the first time, now is going more and more commercial.

I do know that this process will go along and that focusing on Garmin devices as best mean for getting good maps for mountainbiking will be over in 2-3 years time. I am and will however try to stay on top of the game and work hard that good maps for mountainbiking stay free as in free beer to everyone (and not only you are free to give your data to OSM or google database and let big uninnovate companies that just react instead of act dominate the scene. I have many more ideas on what can be done, and will give my best to do so.
Just note that in order to continue pushing forward and developing I need your support too. Tell people about Openmtbmap, blog about it, and please also donate to openmtbmap to give me the possibilities to continue this work.

So I would really appreciate if you donate some money for my Christmas presents here: http://openmtbmap.org/support/membership/