Map Updates 5. October 2011

Well over the last weeks I had quite a lot to do, so I never got around writing the changes to the maps. So here we go. I hope I remember at least 50% of the changes.

First of all, as you may have noticed, Openmtbmap.org is now also available in Italian. Big thank goes to User "Miellino" (you can find him on here, as well as on mtb-forum.it). It's a huge effort translating the whole site, so fat props to his efforts of not only the translation but also the work he does for OSM in Italy. If you meet him up, please buy him a couple of beers (I'll do if I get the chance...).

Then many of you have noticed that the last map update went a bit wrong, and in some countries tiles were missing. That happened as soon as somewhere a double decimal (like 45.54.4) showed up in either elevation or population key. For right now I downgraded the mkgmap version until the bug gets sorted (it's faulty data, but of course mkgmap should not crash on this). Before mkgmap would simply not read in any values with decimal points, so they were dropped. After I identified the revision it popped up, and found out the cause I therefore decided to run a new map update.

The next good step mkgmap has done (rev 2046) is to more or less halve the amount of memory it needs in order to create the address search index, and also it became quicker in compiling as well as solving some more bugs. Besides now if mkgmap crashes on index creation, it does not produce a broken mdr.img file anymore. So the integration of contourlines got much easier now for Basecamp (remember in Mapsource you can show the map, but the contourlines will be mostly invisible). On top as I had to rewrite the "create mapsource installation files with mkgmap.bat" file anyhow, I added the option for everyone to input free RAM, so it should be much quicker and easier now to have maps with integrated contourlines on your PC in Basecamp. (you need about 75-80% of free memory vs the size of all 6*.img files combined -- so in order to create a map of Germany with contourlines about 900MB RAM should be enough vs previously x64 and about 1800MB were needed).

Now for the changes to the maps I just post the summarised changelogs:

Make main roads layout more harmonic (tertiary roads have been a bit too bright yellow) -- This makes the traditional layout in the Velomap as well as Openmtbmap a huge step forward in my eyes. I worked lotta hours on harmonizing all the road colors from motorways down to unclassified roads.

Add some more road is unpaved tags to Velomap (if real condition can only be guessed), plus add tourism=cabin (seems to be a Norwegian/Swedish speciality, but used quite often).

Update style to make it fit for mkgmap rev 2020 (address search being read from style-file from now on)...
Also do some more work on smoothness to tracktype mapping.

Set up a table to more intelligently guess how good a way is to ride if smoothness and tracktype contradict each other. In general for the Velomap the rule is to trust the value which is worse now (before smoothness had preference over tracktype as it is the key that has much higher importance on cycling road conditions/surface_conditions). For the Openmtbmap a more middle way approach has been taken.

Search Windows Server with 8GB RAM // Quadcore for use once weekly about 12-16hours..

I still search a server to create the maps on. So I just repeat from my last newsletter: The server I currently use to build my maps will be down in 1 month. Hence I need a new Windows Server to build my maps. I need at least 8GB RAM/Quadcore for about 12-16 hours for the weekly update (and about 50-100GB of hard disk space) and 10Mbit connection (in/out, but most servers are on 100Mbit anyhow so that shouldn't be a problem - traffic is about 5GB in/ 10GB out for each update) plus about 12 hours monthly for the Europe map updates. If someone could help me out here that would be great (and save me from paying about 50-60€ a month for this). Linux Machine won't work (even though all tools for creating the map run under linux OS too), as I don't like bash or perl and prefer to update the maps using dos batch scripts....

I would create the maps locally, but getting an internet connection with 4Mbit uplink or more (else it takes ages to upload the maps) in Vienna costs more than getting a shared windows server so I cannot create them locally. With 800kbit upload it is no fun, as upload blocks me from working for about 25 hours...