Free Maps - Photo/topo/profiles Of Tracks,wpts,etc

[+twilliams]

Thought this deserved it's own topic with an example or two - there have been one or two references to it deep within other threads in the past 90 days.

 

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/

Note: You will need to upload the SVG package (small) from Adobe for Internet Explorer

 

GPS Visualizer is a pretty cool site which works with uploading files (supports a slew of different GPS data output).

 

My example is an greatly reduced (for 56krs) image of the type of output this site can produce. I've set it for 3-pixel tracks colorized by US elevation, faded photo and topo backgrounds, and a profile underneath. It was produced directly from two data files (the site can upload like 10 different files for each map) one was output from MapSource: a .txt file export of GPS tracks on a recent cache trip. One file was .loc file output of local waypoints produced by GSAK (though again, many many different filetypes can be uploaded).

 

Here are links to the full sized JPGs produced from the SVG files (the site does the conversion for you if you want).

Will Rodgers Track over Photo

Will Rodgers Track over TopoMap

Labelled and Colorized Profiles of 2 cache trips

 

There are so many variables you can play with to change the results I really suggest checking it out to see if it works for you.

 

So what about it? Anyway want to share neat ways of using this site?

 

-t-

[gpsvisualizer]

And if anyone has questions or feature requests, please let me know...

Edited November 10, 2004 by adamschneider

[+twilliams]

And if anyone has questions or feature requests, please let me know...

 

Now that you mention it, could we please pick the color scale that gets used for colorizing the tracks? Even if I could just set three colors (top mid bottom) and have it blend between it'd be great.

 

-t-

[gpsvisualizer]

Now that you mention it,  could we please pick the color scale that gets used for colorizing the tracks?  Even if I could just set three colors (top mid bottom) and have it blend between it'd be great.

I'll put it on the list, but that's a pretty involved feature request! (Honestly, I'm not even 100% sure if I'd know how to do it -- that is, move smoothly from one arbitrary color to another.)

[appletree]

This site and program look very interesting, but there are no instructions about how to use it. I have tracks and waypoints saved as Garmin mapsource files. I could not find anything about how to go from a mapsource file to a map.

[+twilliams]

Now that you mention it,  could we please pick the color scale that gets used for colorizing the tracks?  Even if I could just set three colors (top mid bottom) and have it blend between it'd be great.

I'll put it on the list, but that's a pretty involved feature request! (Honestly, I'm not even 100% sure if I'd know how to do it -- that is, move smoothly from one arbitrary color to another.)

 

Well I guess I won't go into bicubic tensor splines - but I might send you some psuedo-code so you can see how easy it could be. If I ever get some time.

 

However, for the first, absolutely easiest implementation just blending through two colors of RGB or HSV designation can be with linear interpolation. Ignore the rest if you already know this.

Basically just drawing a straight line between the two endpoints. I don't know what language you're using but lets say;

 

for the red component of an rgb triplet has a low R1 and high R2 value.

 

Then let's say you're range is altitude between A1 low and A2 high

 

The red value at any altitude could be simply computed like this

 

Red(altitude) = R1 + (R2-R1) * ((altitude-A1)/(A2-A1))

 

same for G, B - or do it with H,S,V... and of course it doesn't matter whether the range is altitude or slope or whatever.

[+twilliams]

This site and program look very interesting, but there are no instructions about how to use it. I have tracks and waypoints saved as Garmin mapsource files. I could not find anything about how to go from a mapsource file to a map.

With MapSource I use File->Export... and save a tab delimited text file.

Works for tracks, waypoints, whatever is in MapSource at the time.

 

I like being able to save out a file with just waypoints from GSAK, and tracks from MapSource and use this site to combine the two over a map.

 

There may be better ways.

[+Marky]

I never really liked the way the text got bigger when you zoomed in. It seems to take too much work to get it looking the way you want. I bet it pegs the webserver processor if a few people are hitting on it. That's why I like my TerraServer solution, it is relatively friendly to my webserver.

 

--Marky

[nchmura]

This site and program look very interesting, but there are no instructions about how to use it. I have tracks and waypoints saved as Garmin mapsource files. I could not find anything about how to go from a mapsource file to a map.

For converting formats, check out the gpsbabel software at http://www.gpsbabel.org/ or even an online version http://wayhoo.com/index/a/gpsbabel/

 

Indispenable! And i would recommend converting the GPX format Its universal (kinda)!

[gpsvisualizer]

I never really liked the way the text got bigger when you zoomed in.

That's because you're not telling GPS Visualizer to zoom in, you're just changing the view in the SVG Viewer plug-in. I never claimed it to be a replacement for fancy off-line software.

[+twilliams]

I never really liked the way the text got bigger when you zoomed in.

That's because you're not telling GPS Visualizer to zoom in, you're just changing the view in the SVG Viewer plug-in. I never claimed it to be a replacement for fancy off-line software.

 

But I don't get it... Its easy to tell the GPSVisualizer to zoom in, it want's to keep the settings window open by default anyway, so why not just change a setting or three and regen the map? What am I missing?

 

-t-

Edited November 12, 2004 by twilliams

[gpsvisualizer]

But I don't get it... Its easy to tell the GPSVisualizer to zoom in, it want's to keep the settings window open by default anyway, so why not just change a setting or three and regen the map? What am I missing?

Well, even with a re-generated map, you can't really tell GPS Visualizer to "Zoom In" the way he probably wants. With GPSV's settings, you can make the whole map bigger, but you can't just show a small area in greater detail.

 

Allowing true zooming is the kind of thing that might conceivably be possible if GPS Visualizer were my full-time job and someone was paying me gobs of money to work on it. As it is, though... no.

[+gontofe]

Can't get it to work with FireFox though!

[gpsvisualizer]

Can't get it to work with FireFox though!

Did you try downloading the latest beta version of the SVG Viewer plug-in? v6 should work with Firefox on Windows. (The non-beta version, v3, works fine on Mac OS Firefox.)

[nchmura]

Can't get it to work with FireFox though!

Firefox has trouble with the adobe svg plugin. Though i am not sure about the latest version of firefox.

 

Edit: re post above, good to know. going to have to give it another try!

Edited November 12, 2004 by nchmura

[gpsvisualizer]

Read the GPS Visualizer FAQ for more info about the beta version of SVG Viewer. (You'll probably have to manually copy some files to Firefox's Plug-ins directory.)