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Vector Maps based on OpenStreetMap Data.

Completed
Nathan

PLEASE NOTE:

This topic has evolved.

There is now a way to include large area maps with contours.

See the instructions at

http://support.crittermap.com/entries/63032534-Using-Topo-Maps-From-OpenAndroMaps-com

Early adopters wanted to test out the instructions.

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How many of you are interested in Vector Street Maps based on Open Street Map data?

There have been some requests to use vector data maps based on Open Street Map Data. 

The advantage is size. A map of California might fit in less than one gigabyte instead of 60 gigabytes.

Open Street Maps do not generally contain contours, but we could do as some of these others do and include these as a separate layer or plugin.

In the past, in the United States, at least, Open Street Map data didn't always include very many of the trails (known as "walking paths" in most other countries). This is because people in the United States were not as active in contributing to Open Street Map data - as yet.

But this situation has drastically improved, and I've found trails that I don't find on other sources.

In many countries, this combination could be better than what maps people are using now, and would be somewhat like Open Cycle Maps, only smaller in size.

We have had a recent survey on this topic. It is still open:

 https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/527SDJV

As of 5.2.6, you can try some of this out. To do so:

6

Comments

28 comments

Date Votes
  • Rockcreek

    Using OSMand maps I downloaded all of Oregon and California plus the optional contour plugin and the total was about 1 gigabyte.  These maps aren't as good as the various US maps available on BC but they are a  great resource for offline mapping since it doesn't involve the time (and storage) consuming downloading of tiles .Plus it's nice to have  if you wander outside of cell range and haven't stored tiles. It is a compromise since you don't have the trails and some more detailed features but it beats the alternative of having nothing. It would be great to have it available on BCnav.

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  • Andy

    YES, YES, YES!!!!!! Everyone should have this for when you are in the car. This is not for backcountry. This is for getting to the backcountry. The MUCH smaller size means you can carry this with you all the time. Please do this if you can. It also makes your product marketable to people with other needs (business, whatever) that are in areas with lousy cell coverage.

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  • Jon Belcher

    I have loaded tight tiles for my PCT hike and would love to have vector street maps available for hitching into towns for resupply.

    I currently draw a wider tile in town areas where I get off trail and having vector maps of a wide swath the length of the trail would be great and save card space.

     

     

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  • Nathan

    For those who are following this topic, there is a chance to beta test an undocumented feature.

    You can download from one of these links. To open it with BackCountry Navigator, use the More Map Sources button, and at the bottom choose "Mobile Atlas". You can then browse to a file with a .map (mapsforge) extension.   

    Colorado Map.

    Oregon Map

    We plan to enhance these eventually by adding contours and or hillshading, making them much like OpenCycle Maps.

    At the moment, they may have bugs and may not display very fast. We do not know for sure if we can make them display much faster. But you are welcome to try them so we can get some ideas.

     

     

     

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  • Nathan

    Adding another one:

    British Columbia.

    Anyone tried them yet?

     

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  • Andy

    Hello again, I decided to leave another comment after trying the package. I currently use the mapquest open street map quite a bit. It has shaded topography. The atlases you provided didn't not include that. This may be a file size issue, but the shaded topography in the mapquest open street map is really great. I use the mapquest open street map with shading and the arcgis  topo maps the most. Probably 97% of the time those two maps take care of me.  Thanks again. Even if the shading isn't included these packages are wonderful because they are small and easy to use when phone reception goes away. Having the smaller sizes may be better as it would be relatively easy to have the entire us or Canada on the phone. Good stuff. Andy

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  • Nathan

    From what I know so far,

    Contours will increase the size a lot. Don't know how much yet.

    Shading will increase it, possibly even more, depending on how good we want the shading. Shading is a luxury that did not exist with the original paper maps.

    There are two approaches we could take with it:

    Create maps that are specific to a state, province or country.

    • This is the most intuitive and natural.
    • It has disadvantages when you are on a border, because you need to choose the state map.
    • It is not easy to automatically load the map for the correct state under you. Comparing your current location against the squiggly borders of every state you have installed on every frame would be an extremely expensive operation. We don't plan to do it.

    Create maps according to a large grid (maybe 64X64) over the earth's surface.

    • It would not be as easy to select your maps for download.
    • You have a problem similar to quads where you just need a tiny section of what is on the next map. The northern border of the US, for example, almost but not quite lines up on a tile.
    • Maps would have boring names like LX64A or something
    • We could (possibly) load the map you need, and consider all of the earth as one layer. It would still require work on our part.

     

     

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  • Richard Shelquist

    Wow! I just downloaded the 68 MB Colorado vector map... that is AMAZING!! It has all of the local hiking trails, and even has all of the Rocky Mountain National Park trails, and every other National Forest trail that I've ever used.  All in 68  MB! That is amazing. And, the trail maps are more up to date than Accuterra, which often appears to be showing 10 year old trail maps.

    While topo contours would often be handy, and the maps are a bit slow, the accuracy, up-to-date details, and small size make this sample that you have posted a real winner! Thanks Nathan.

     

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  • Altairbejar

    Very good for Spain. Is more useful to have the map in the phone, all Spain on the phone!!  Thanks Nathan.

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  • Rockcreek

    I downloaded the Oregon map and was disappointed. Very little detail. As noted in my earlier post I had downloaded the osmand app and the maps for Oregon and Californian, including contours and shading, was a total of about one gig. And the maps were a lot more detailed, showing forest service areas in green plus more fs rd numbers, creeks ,etc. Would really like to have this kind of detail on bcn since it has more and better tools for hiking.

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  • Nathan

    Thank you for trying it, Rockcreek. We cannot use osmand format, but I do not believe any of those things are limitations of the file format itself.

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  • technocynic

    Thanks for the trial facility.

     

    The Australia map is great on the tablet but far too big to consider putting on my crappy little phone

    Setting it up worked smoothly and when I opened up the map it was initially showing central Sydney with what seemed at a glance to be good detail. I immediately changed the location to the rural area where I live. The general level of detail is not good in this area. The other main issue was that even where detail was available at a high magnification detail, it cut out too early as I zoomed out. eg our regional city is about 90km away, but the highway that gets me there is not shown at the level that included both home and town.  I doubt that it would be very useful for finding quiet back roads that can be more interesting (especially on motorbike) than main highways.

    So big thumbs up for the mechanism. Less for the specific Australia map. That said, I won't be deleting it at this stage, it could still be useful when travelling and out of range. If I was short of space though I would quite possibly delete it as not worth 250MB.

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  • Andy

    Hello, I was looking at this thread and a couple of posts I made don't seem to show up (no worries but thought I would mention it). I am going to Peru in August. I saw the Australian map mentioned so thought I would ask if I can look at peru. Since the phone will only be good to me as a gps in peru it will be important to have all downloaded before I leave and having a base map of the entire country would be great since I don't travel with a set itinerary. Just thought I would ask.

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  • Nathan

    I'm pretty sure we'd have something of Peru before August. Only as good as Open Street Map data there of course. YOu could generate it yourself from Open Street Map data if you are that enterprising.

     

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  • technocynic

    Now that I've had the Australian vector map for a while, I can say that I've found it quite useful a few times. In situations where you may not have phone signal when driving in an unfamiliar rural area, it is great to just pull out the tablet and confirm where you are and that the road you are on really is taking you in the right direction.

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  • Dave P

    Hi Nathan,

    I'm not sure if this is relevant to this topic. If not, I apologize.  I have been doing some editing in OpenStreetMap to trails in my local area, the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. In the App, I can choose the OSM Mapquest layer, but it does not display nearly as well as the OSM Standard layer. Is there any possibility that the OSM standard layer could be an option? While it does not contain any topographic data, the trail information displays much cleaner than the MapQuest version.

    Thanks for a great app!

    Dave

    Using the paid version on a Nexus 4

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  • Andy

    Hi Nathan,

    I recently was out and about in a different part of Colorado. I was very greatful to be able to load the open street map data because I was nowhere near any phone reception. Very helpful!

    Are any states besides Oregon and Colorado available yet (if so how to download). Thanks again for doing these. 

    Andy

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  • Nathan

    The instructions at the very top should lead you to more. We don't have any enhanced ones from us yet, just what Mapsforge has on that site.

     

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  • Andy

    Thanks Nathan. BTW the correct download link for Mapsforge is http://download.mapsforge.org/maps/. Maybe you can  fix the link in the original post and delete this post. Andy

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  • Henry Armitage

    I've taken a good look at the British Columbia maps. Overall, I think you're on the right lines with trying to get closer to Open Cycle Maps. That would be the main bit of feedback that you can act on, the other is a good dose of encouragement and enthusiasm!

    To help a bit, I've done a few compare and contrast maps between the Vector Maps above and Open Cycle Map... Annotating one of them: http://imgur.com/a/SlkU1

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  • Henry Armitage
    My mistake, I compared Open Street Map instead of Open Cycle Map. I'll try to update later.
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  • Paul

    Would it be possible to integrate openandromaps compatibility into BCN along with some sort of theme support, to increase the size of the text displayed for xxhdpi devices? It is quite difficult to read text on xxhdpi devices with the standard theme.

    http://www.openandromaps.org/en/legend/elevate-mountain-hike-theme 

    http://www.openandromaps.org/en/downloads

    The openandromaps map works on BCN, however the contour lines are not shown.

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  • Nathan

    Sorry it has been a while.

    I do believe that the theme support issue can be solved.

    My questions:

    • For those in the US, would you tolerate contour lines in meters?
    • Are people interested in automated functionality to find and download these maps, or would you simply get them from AndroMaps and MapsForge? This would cost extra because it would require server resources of our own.

     

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  • Rockcreek
    Meters wouldn't be ideal but okay since osm is set up this way I believe. The automated feature would be the easiest I assume which would be great but is this the method that would cost? If cheaper, I would be okay with the other methods although I don't have much experience using them.
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  • Henry Armitage
    • Meters or Feet: I'm in Canada so prefer metres (not that I want to wipe out feet/US Customary units etc, but I use metres myself). Keep in mind that a lot of folks can do both.
    • Automated functionality as you've stated is is probably not required.. perhaps it could be offered as an optional paid service but I can't forsee myself paying for it if I'm honest. I would happily get them from OpenAndroMaps. I'll be honest, I do Maps-App-Cheat on BCN and have an occasional forbidden affair with Locus and Orux, and don't find myself paying for vector maps when I can load them myself relatively easily
    • Perhaps a unique point would be an automated way to update maps (this could apply to current raster maps too).
    • I agree on Theme support but would also be happy with a single well thought out theme. OpenStreetMap as it's typically displayed (e.g. on their website) does not show data that's relevant to hiking in it's default form, but OpenCycleMap gets closer and then themes of OSM data make it perfect.
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  • Nathan

    I'm looking for early adopters to test out the instructions at:

    http://support.crittermap.com/entries/63032534-Using-Topo-Maps-From-OpenAndroMaps-com

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  • dempsta

    Hi Nathan, I got as far as installing Washington.map but got stuck choosing a style. Not sure if I download a style under "other" program or not.  I also found a pdf file called "elevate map key" which I am not sure what to do with.  As for screen resolution choices, do I pick the resolution that is just above or just below my device's stated dpi?  Thanks for your help. 

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  • dempsta

    regarding above comment I was able to install all the styles after taking a guess at which file to dl and resolution to dl.  Planning on making donation to OpenAndroMaps. Thanks all, KP

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