20.03.2021 – New Contour Lines for Europe and some countries

Todays (20.03.2021) Europa map comes with new contourlines - New Lidar based contourlines are also available for the following Countries: Switzerland, France, Iceland, Slovakia, Belgium. And in Germany for the state of Sachsen-Anhalt. So please make sure when updating the Europe map to redownload the new contourlines. Actually the country maps of France, Belgium and Iceland had new contourlines for some months. The country maps of Switzerland, Slovakia, Germany and Sachsen-Anhalt will from today/tomorrow onwards have the new contourlines too. Most of western Europe is now covered with LIDAR based altitude data - about half of central Europa, and very little of Eastern Europe. Outside of Europe it's mainly ALOS World data.

Some other recent updates to the maps have been:

Reworking of peak prominence. 

Fixing Marina to adapt to current tagging standards which contradict the old ones.

Also use mtb:imba if mtb:scale does not exist.

Various small fixes and changes.

 

26 comments to 20.03.2021 – New Contour Lines for Europe and some countries

  • JensTie

    Hallo zusammen,
    benutze begeistert die openmtb-Karten. Bei mir werden allerdings keine Höhenlinien angezeigt. Mein Setting ist folgendes: Garmin Mapsource 6.16.3 auf Windows 10 + Garmin eTrex Vista HCx. Ich installiere die Karten mit der “Classic”-Einstellung und habe dabei die 20m-Höhenlinien ausgewählt/angehakt. Weder Mapsource noch mein eTrex Vista zeigen mir Höhenlinien an. Habe gelesen, dass Mapsource das nicht kann. Ist das korrekt? Kann ich was dagegen tun? Hatte gehofft, dass wenigstens mein eTrex die Höhenlinien nach der Übertragung anzeigt. Auch dort bekomme ich diese nicht angezeigt. Gibt es dafür eine Lösung?
    Viele Grüße
    Jens

    • extremecarver

      Ja Mapsource kann es nicht – Basecamp dagegen schon. Wenn du die Karte sendest musst du die Kacheln per Drag/ziehen auswählen über den kompletten Bereich ziehen den du brauchst – da am Rand nur Höhenlinien ODER Karte sind wenn es nicht der Kartenrand an sich ist – dann sind die Höhenlinien auch am Vista HCx sichtbar. Überprüfe evtl kurz vorher in Basecamp ob sie wirklich angezeigt werden und vorhanden sind.

  • mjacomet

    Hallo zusammen

    Wo finde ich die neuen Lidar-Höhenlinien für die Schweiz?
    Gemäss MD5 sind die vorhandenen vom letzten Oktober.
    https://openmtbmap.org/de/?s2member_file_download=gmapsupp/md5_hashes/contours_switzerland_gmapsupp.7z.txt

    Oder verstehe ich etwas falsch?

    Grüsse aus der Schweiz
    Manuel

  • christouf

    Yes, this would be perfect. This is the way I am using them already: openmtbmap without contour lines + separate .img for contour lines. With QMapShack I set transparency = 50% for contour lines so I can see them but without overloading the map.

    • extremecarver

      okay – I’m rendering contourlines worldwide now – this will maybe take a week or so. Generating the data for mkgmap with phyghtmap is not that fast because phyghtmap is not good at multithreading and it seems 10m takes twice the time of 20m…

      • christouf

        Thanks for your effort. We have time anyway. Mountains will not move that much in 1-2 weeks.

      • christouf

        Was 10 m lines file creation successful ?

        • extremecarver

          well it took about 10 days processing to create the data for mkgmap – but I haven started compiling them yet. I guess it will need another week or so. It’s a huge amount of data. Maybe I will offer Europe only and not whole world.

        • extremecarver

          The 10m contourlines are online for gmapsupp.img format. The osx and windows maps (you cannot integrate them into the normal maps without losing address search) are uploaded but I need 2 more days to link all of them.

          For norway change the gmapsupp.img link to: 10m/windows/windows_contours_norway10m.7z repectively 10m/osx/gmapi_contours_norway10m.7z

          • christouf

            Thanks a lot, it works perfectly. Now contour lines are almost as precise as the ones of maps from french IGN.

            • extremecarver

              they should be the same. I’m just smoothing the a little more to make the maps faster (douglas peucker), save some data. Now I don’t know the DPI of the French IGN 1:25k maps – it will depend on it whether or not my ones or their ones are more precise. Garmin raster is at about 5.4m in central Europe for accuracy – but I only use resolution 23 for contourlines to save data/speed so they are at 10.8m. That’s still better than printed 1:25k maps.

            • extremecarver

              Hi Christouf, I updated the 10m contourlines another time – because in some very steep regions they did not look nice.
              You could give me your opinion on:
              a) https://openmtbmap.org/?s2member_file_download=10m/windows/windows_contours_france10m.7z
              b) https://openmtbmap.org/?s2member_file_download=10ml/windows/windows_contours_france10ml.7z

              Do you think the quite big increase in size for the 10m vs 10ml is worth it for you? Also the 20m contourlines are better now and will be used from the next update or second next onwards. My server needs about 10 days to compile all those contourlines newly.

              • christouf

                I can clearly see a difference between previous 10m edition from last month and those 2 files : more details, very often where there was a straight line before, now we can see an “S” shape. Especially noticeable in small river beds.

                But while I can see slight differences between the 2 new files, I would not say that bigger size “10m” really makes a useful difference.
                So for me “10ml” is good enough.

                • extremecarver

                  okay thanks for your opinion. I think for all countries that do not use external contourlines – I will integrate one version of the 10m contourlines into the installer as a separate download for windows. For OSx it will be integrated in the download itself. For countries with contourlines right now as a separte downlaod – it will stay separated, as it takes too much time to calculate it on each map update. At cliffs and very steep regions the 10m vs the 10ml looks much better – but those places are very rare. Another advantage of the 10m vs 10ml is likely a bit better performance. Because at resolution 23 in the 10m download there are only 20m equidistance. Only at resolution 24 it will be 10m. From resolution 22 they are identical. On the other hand at resolution 24 because of being more detailled the 10m will be slower but this is zoomed in closer so should be less of a hit vs resolution 23.

                  • christouf

                    I was looking for subtle changes in “not that steep” areas.
                    But yes you are right, in “cliffy” areas like N43° 45.187 E007° 08.031 : 10m is clearly better than 10ml.
                    And personnally I do not care about the bigger size of the file. SD cards and HDD are cheap, processors are fast.

                    For server space and traffic this may be another story.

                  • extremecarver

                    do you notice differences on your GPS device with those files in map panning speed? That’s most important because I can not test it on many devices myself.

                  • christouf

                    With both files, panning speed is the same on my Etrex 30x : slow, as always with this device. But this is OK. Usually I avoid panning by zooming out then in.

                  • extremecarver

                    okay – thanks. Well I will decide in a couple of days.

                  • extremecarver

                    oh I have a garmin etrex touch 25, and while that series is not that old, it’s painfully slow. I would have hoped the 30x is faster. And older etrex 30 felt faster than the touch 25 (bought that one on a trip where I managed to forget all of my gps devices at home – and they had not 30 as I would never choose 30 over 25).
                    The Oregon 600 is really fast in comparison to both devices.

  • christouf

    Good news to have now Lidar data instead of SRTM for France.
    It would be great to have 1 line every 10 meters. With SRTM I can understand that it does not really makes sense as it would be only interpolation, but with Lidar for me this is different.

    Today I am using contour lines from opentopomap.org just because there is 1 line every 10 meters ; but this is SRTM-based.

    Do you think that you could add 1 meter every 10 meters for openmtbmaps ? Files will be bigger but also more useful, also for people living in flat countries.

    Thanks in advance

    • extremecarver

      I cannot make different contourlines for flat areas and mountainous areas in one country – so no France will stay at 20m interval. In the alps 10m is IMHO not the way to go, but yes I know it’s useful in flat parts. In basecamp the mousepointer will show you the underlying altitude however based on the DEM more exactly. All countries with max elevations below 1000m only have 10m contourlines in Europe.

      And I don’t know what additional benefit you get with 10m SRTM contourlines at all. The steepness should also be visible with 20m contourlines – and the absolute elevation you can read from tooltip or current elevation if outside. Plus the fact that anywhere actually steep, srtm will be absolute garbage (that’s why I use ALOS World 3d for where there is no LIDAR – and SRTM 1/viewfinderpanoramas 3″ for my maps is only to cover holes/areas not present in ALOS which are very few)

    • extremecarver

      I could make a 10m contourlines additionally for download – but I will not integrate it into the normal maps to replace the 20m interval ones. You would need to know yourself how to exchange them (gmaptool) and you would lose address search then in Basecamp/Mapsource (on your device it would be fine – as you could just exchange them).

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