9. November 2012 Map Updates – Mac OSX Maps now Worldwide too

(for german newsletter, please follow the heading and look at it online, für die deutsche Version des Newsletters, bitte die Überschrift anklicken, und auf der Website die Sprache auf Deutsch setzen)

Well three weeks passed since the last map update, and quite a few changes over the last weeks. I'm still progging on both maps for Android as well as an online map (I already rented a nice online root server with 32GB RAM and I7 for rendering the maps), but also still adding or changing stuff on the main openmtbmaps/velomaps.

However as 10 days ago I broke my ankle, and ripped out a ligament, it means progress stopped a bit. Damn stupid thing, just jumping down 1m somewhere backwards, ankle folding over and misery there, no spectacular crash or anything like my "normal" injuries… So instead of making the best of the nice autumn weather mtbiking until the snow arrives, I'm out of order concerning sports for at least another 6 weeks.

Mac OSx gmap format maps now available worldwide
But so for changes – today or tomorrow I'll move all Mac OSx downloads to their dedicated download site, this also makes it easier for support as questions regarding mac osx will be found in one place. Main reason however is – that I'm currently finishing up rendering all maps for Mac OSx too. As for the windows maps, I took splitted the contourlines into separate downloads, so for many countries or continents where the contourlines are much bigger than the actual map data, it provides faster updates (you also only need to download the contourlines once, and then update only the maps themselves). To save traffic maybe in general I will in future only update the european country maps weekly, all other maps every two or three weeks? Let's see, it depends a bit on traffic how often I will update.

Other changes

I updated the contourlines for North America too now. They are based on viewfinderpanoramas.org 3" data – which isn't as detailed in some places as the 1" SRTM1 – however in general as it is voidfilled it offers a much better general quality – and also smaller download size. Canada contourlines are now also available for full Canada – and not stopping at 60° North. So if you update the North America maps, don't forget to also download the contourlines again.

I also updated the contourlines for some European countries, but the changes are minimal…

There have been quite a few changes to mkgmap, so some multipolygon errors in comparison to Mapnik are fixed too now. I too updated a bit the address search processing for Germany and fixe some more rather common access rules tagging mistakes. On the Velomap since 2 weeks, the routing on primaries and secondaries is a little bit degraded again, but the changes are rather small.

So that's been it, happy mapping and biking to everyone, I envy you but hope to be back in the outdoors ASAP!