new source for online topo maps

[Water]

damn man. how is it that there has been online maps like acme mapper and various other incarnations of stuff out there and then you come out with something in the space of a few months that just seems so dang superior? digging it so much!

[mattyj]

Thanks, that's a pretty strong endorsement.

 

I've been working on it as a mapping / planning tool for SAR for a long time. I'd show it to people, they'd go "hmmm . . . interesting" and that's as far as it went - and really, looking back on it, some of the initial versions were pretty poor. I just kept iterating on their feedback until it got to something I'm reasonably happy with. I'm sure the UI could be improved but I haven't been able to do much user testing.

 

The other thing blocking anyone from taking it seriously was a lack of map data. I actually contacted MyTopo to see about licensing an offline copy of their maps, and they weren't interested. I tried building a California map layer on my computer, and learned a lot about open source GIS tools in the process. It started very slow with lots of manual intervention but was pretty well automated by the end. It took about 9 months to go from poking around with GIS tools to a nationwide topo layer.

 

At any rate, the bottom line is that although my last employer got bought out by a bunch of schmucks and I decided to work on this full time for a couple months, it's mostly the result of investing many hundreds of hours in my spare time over the course of a year and a half or more. With all that time invested, I'd really like to see some more SAR teams evaluating the standalone, offline version so that I don't feel like all my efforts in that area are for naught. Send me a PM if interested.

[JoeMack]

I really appreciate your efforts. This is such a great tool. I am loving the slope shading feature. Thank you very much!

[kerwinl]

Matty,

 

Really nice tool! I have been playing with the angle feature a bit here. From what I understand the colors progress from Green --> Yellow -- > Red --> Purple/Blue as the slope angle progresses. Can you give some feed back on what the general range of slope angles those colors fall into?

 

Thanks!

[mattyj]

Read my last post on the previous page (especially the bottom part).

 

Also, it should be visible on the bottom right of your screen (unless you've collapsed that info bar, in which case you'll see a <- arrow). If it's not, let me know what browser you're using and I'll take a look.

 

I'm also open to suggestions on how to change them. I went with 28+ just to be a little conservative, and the color progression was copied from some slope angle maps that the Shasta Avalanche Center produced.

Edited February 25, 2012 by mattyj

[Peter Way]

This is a very cool tool. I appreciate the effort you have put into this. Maps are my bible.

[ZimZam]

Freakin' awesome. Thanks MattyJ. Any plans for an AK version?

[mattyj]

AK: In Sept/Oct, when the USGS finishes their new high-res map scans for that area.

[bstach]

Where can I get maps for Canada?

[ryanb]

I've got some canada map layers on hillmap (see the ak/canada, nrcan, mytopo and arcgisworld for some diffrent options). They aren't up to the standards or loading speed of matt's caltopo layers (which he is kindly letting me use as well) and I'm really hoping he eventually extends his coverage.

 

 

[mattyj]

Right now, the only good options I know of are the nrcan and mytopo layers that ryan mentioned. IMO, with the ak/canada and arcgisworld layers he's pulling in, you're better off using Google Terrain. Nrcan is vector and mytopo is scanned raster files with nasty watermarks.

 

I'm currently working on a layer based on the USGS' "US Topo" aerial-background maps, and expanding the scanned usgs layer to canada is next on the list. I've only looked into it briefly, and I don't know if they have the resolution to support the same sort of quality the US layer has. I also haven't compared the scanned paper maps to the nrcan vector ones; I know in the US, there's a lot that hasn't made it into the usgs vector database yet.

[Water]

bstach: canada has all their topos online for free: http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/topo/map