Uncategorized – VeloMap.org -Roadbike – Bicycle – Maps based on Openstreetmap

New Contourlines for all Maps – and again – Please Stick to Basecamp 4.6.x

extremecarver — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 16:20:09 +0000

1. Yesterdays/Day before Yesterdays map update of the Europe Map has new contourlines - so especially all OSx users - please do not reuse the old contourlines. For Windows the installer throws an error message anyhow.

It took me a lot of time to iron out bugs in the contourline data, convert it correctly to the needed input formats - fill voids and put it together. The Europe map is now the first to be fully based on Sonnys LIDAR data where available (Italy is new), elsewhere the still pretty excellent ALOS World 30m data - and from 60° northwards voidfilled viewfinderpanoramas 3" data. Yes except for the Alps the Viewfinderpanoramas 3" data used to be the common source for all my contourline maps - it's IMHO crazy how much better the ALOS - and of course LIDAR data is in mountaineous regions. LIDAR data is from laser scanning - of course that will be the best possible to attain, however the ALOS data (downsampled from Alos World 5m data to 30m) is where it's not voidfilled by SRTM1v3.0 really astonishingly good in my eyes. Often flatter forest areas are put 5-10m too high (but SRTM and viewfinderpanoramas also have that problem - if a little less) - but especially in rougher areas the accuracy is pretty good.

I've now also put 10m contourlines instead of 20m interval to all European countries that have no summit over 500m altitude (and to some Germany Bundesländer Maps). Else it's 20m.

This weeks map update will be using the new contourlines for most European countries, and some worldwide countries - however only for maps where the contourlines are not a separate download. Next week map update will then have the new better contourlines for all countries.

Also of course again all contourline maps come with altitude shading and for those countries like Europe continent map where partly contourlines where missing - this should be fixed with the new contourlines.

See below for the Matterhorn - the Matterhorn is pretty much data rubbish in most elevation models - due to it's sticky pointyness, usual cloud cover and glaciers. Thanks to LIDAR data it's really pretty exact (compare that to SRTM1 rubbish in Google earth for fun).

2. Again to stress on Basecamp 4.7.0 - Please do not use it neither on OSx, nor on Windows. It is prone to crashes - and while on Windows MapInstall 4.2.0 which comes with it - will not send maps on Windows, and often crash while sending larger maps on OSx.

On Windows make sure to run both Uninstall and Installation with Administrator rights - and if you have Problems - Uninstall again - and delete all garmin Folders in Program Files / Program Files X86 folders. Your userdata is safe and not affected as that is in your Userprofile / Appdata folder (no need to delete anything here).

On OSx I'm not quite sure how to check correct full uninstallation - but it should be similar.

Europe Map Update – and LIDAR based Contourlines and DEM for Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland

extremecarver — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 08:18:23 +0000

This post will be extended/updated. First as a short notice - right now the contourlines for the Europe map do not fit the Europe continent maps (of last week 17/18.04) - the new Europe maps which will work with the new contourlines including DEM are compiling right now - but as each version needs about 5-6 hours compilation time, and for both VeloMap and OpenMTBMap there are 4 versions - it will take about 50 hours until they are downloadable! So if you want to install the Europe map with contourlines you will need to wait till the 24/25.04 versions will be online. The country maps are not affected.

First the local language OpenMTBMap europe will be compiled, Then the local Language VeloMap - and last the English language Europe maps.

Furthermore - I will update all contourlines again (subtle improvements in general) - but big improvements in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland. Now the DEM and contourlines of those countries is based partly (for Germany and Slovenia) - or mainly for Austria, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland on LIDAR based altitude data. That means the precision is much much higher - this is mainly true for very rugged areas - as shallow/flat areas are already very good quality. Especially peaks/ridges or canyons are now much better represented and show more accurate height.

First the new contourlines will be shown in the Europe map, and on the next map updates they will also arrive to the country maps.

That also means again that on Thursday/Friday some maps will not fit the newer v4. contourlines.

Some Examples of the better quality:

River New:

River Old - notice how the river is mal aligned

Summit New vs Summit Old - notice that the Vordere Brandjochspitze is much better centered - and the Hintere Brandjochspitze I would guess is badly placed in OSM...

English vs Local Language Maps

extremecarver — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 15:28:50 +0000

(Im Newsletter für Deutsch bitte runterscrollen)

Over the last 2 months I invested a load of time to optimize the language / codepage handling of the OpenMTBMaps and VeloMaps.

I had originally implemented a very complicated system trying to make any map also usable for non native speakers of the local language - or people not able to read e.g. arabic or kyrillic. In the end this was a rather big mess even though it kinda worked for many countries.

Now I've changed this - there are local language maps - which are in local language and local script - as well as maps in english for any country that does not primarily use latin script.

Also all continent maps (except Antarctica and North America which are anyhow english speaking) are now available in English or local Language. South-America/Central America english maps will be available for download starting tomorrow.

The theory of how it should work is laid out below - if you find things not working drop a comment. Especially if you find OSM keys which are not implemented yet and would help in improving the map translations.

Map Updates:

Maps that are not available in English - will be updated weekly as before. All maps which are also available in English language - will be updated biweekly alternating between update in English in week 1, and update in local language in week 2 and so forth.

Who needs Unicode maps - a reminder:

Garmin blocked reading in free unicode maps about 2 years ago in their newest devices. However you can look around in the grey areas of the internet and you will find firmwares for basically all those devices unblocking the devices not reading in free unicode maps. This is a small part of the firmware taken out. If you use those changed firmwares only to display free unicode maps - it should be legal at least in European Union. It would not be legal to use those firmwares in order to display "pirated" Garmin original maps. In general of course for countries where latin is not primarily used unicode maps will be superior!

Please note: I will not help you in finding such firmwared. You can use google to find out more about this.

Both Unicode and Non Unicode are available in local and English:

Unicode local language maps: These maps use local language and local script - additionally for POI search for cities usually it's possible to use English as well. So the city Moscow in Russia will display as Москва however you can find it in the POI search also by searching for Moscow (and actually also by German Moskau). The address search will only work in local language - so you need to type: Москва as city in address search. In POI search Москва, Moscow or Moskau is all possible.

Unicode english language maps: These maps use English as label whenever possible (meaning in OSM database). If no English translation is available the maps tries to use English transcription from OSM database. If also no transcription exists - the map will show local language names.

POI search is possible in English, local Language and German language. Adress search is possible in English whenever English exists in OSM - else in local language.

Moscow will be used as a city for address search. POI search Moscow, Moskau or Москва is findable.

Non Unicode local language maps: These maps use local codepage (excpet for Chinese and Japanese where Garmin does not offer a non unicode codepage that can display the characters) and local naming. POI search is possible in English, German and local language.

Moscow in address search will be found under Moscow only. In POI search it can be found under Moscow, Moskau or Москва (as kyrillic codepage supports enough character to spell moscow also in latin)

Non Unicode english maps: These maps are in latin only. Maps uses English wherever available in OSM, if not then Transcription from OSM, if also not available a machine transcription is used - which is a bit faulty however!

Address Search is only possible in latin script - and often not working as you cannot guess the automatic transcription used for a streetname. As city names in OSM tend to exist also in English or proper transcription address search for a city or POI search usually works still okay. POI search in local script is not possible.

Moscow can be found under Moscow or Moskau - but not Москва

All Windows Downloads are now code signed

extremecarver — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 11:26:14 +0000

Since Yesterday all Winodws (.exe) downloads are now code signed. Lately Windows has increased their security measures for Internet Explorer and Edge quite a lot (Smartscreen) and it became difficult to open/run any of the maps if downloaded by Edge or IE. Similar to Nortons Reputation system (which is even worse rubbish) Windows only trusts downloads which are downloaded very very often. (like 10.000 times in a month) - this resulted in basically only the mtbgermany and velogermany map to be saved without security warnings. Now such a mechanism is not smart at all. The only way to overcome this is to buy a code signing certificate (not that easy actually with the background checks) and sign all downloads. This makes primarily sense if downloads can be done from several servers - and that way you can check the downloads content has not been changed (if you would open up e.g. Firefox download and check if the certificate is from Mozilla - because smartscreen could still be easily fooled by just changing the download and putting a different security certificate). Additional advantage is that if the download is incomplete/corrupt you would also get a warning (could be simply done by checking the MD5 hash too).

While in principal it would be good that Windows request signed downloads - the problem is that they only allow very few certificate vendors (Symantec, Comodo, Digicert/Globalsign and partly StartSSL) - and well not unsurprisingly all of these companies but Comodo and StartSSL are partly owned by Microsoft and the certificates far too expensive for the effort it costs to grant/publish them. There are no certivicates like Cacert or letsencrypt from open initiatives which are accepted. That's the main reason why I did not code sign the downloads already earlier. But well - pressure got too big so now all .exe downloads are code signed with a comodo cert. Oh - BTW the Mac OSx downloads are not code signed - because it's impossible to code sign .7z files.

Also I removed gmt.exe from the installer - in order to pass better with virus scannners. It will now be downloaded automatically if needed for the batch (.bat) files.

Besides some other improvements I found a bug in my styles that caused some islands to be flooded. This is now also solved. There will be more noticeable changes in the next few months. I'm working hard on a new hiking layout (maybe this is gonna be a completely new map besides the OpenMTBMap and VeloMap - maybe only a layout. I'm still testing a lot). Also I'm thinking about changing the domain from OpenMTBMap.org to mtbmap.com. mtbmap.com would for sure be easier to remember for people not so much knowing about openstreetmap.org - but I'm wary of changing the domain and name so long established. The hiking maps - if separately available would move to outdoormaps.com (which I originally thought of as new name - before luckily getting mtbmap.com for very cheap). Of course if the hiking map will be separately available - it will be a free download for all premium members on VeloMap and mtbmap.com/OpenMTBMap.org.

Wishing you all lots of fun with the maps - Felix

Compatibility with new Garmin devices and Unicode Maps

extremecarver — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:52:40 +0000

Last week I changed all maps of countries which do not use Latin as main script to Unicode. Before this was not the case for the Europe, Asia and Africa continent map. On the other hand all unicode maps - are now also available the respective main script of the country. This even seems to work quite well for countries like China which has no alphabet at all. All modern devices - should be quite fine displaying them. Mapsource sometimes shows garbled text however - as will very very old GPS devices - which unluckily also don't support unicode. So I'm sorry - but Garmin devices that are pre ~2006 will only work with maps from countries with Latin script now (e.g. Vista C, or GPS Maps 60C, I'm not certain about Vista Cx or GPS Maps 60Cx - I think they support unicode maps). I don't think there are many people using them still anyhow.

I will still put more effort in reworking the naming depending on language in the next couple of weeks. All non Unicode maps are available to download via the Non Unicode tab on the respective download pages. Only a couple of countries (Sri-Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, Cambodia) have no proper non unicode script support - and will be therefore either Unicode or a latin - which is not too useful.

You will need to download the Non Unicode Version if you have one of the following devices:

Edge 520,820,1000
GPS Maps 64 series
Etrex 20x / 30x (not "etrex 30")
Etrex Touch series
Some recent Nuvi devices - as well as some super old devices that do not support Unicode. (E.g. Garmin Vista C, GPS Maps 60 C)
Updated: Basically all devices first sold in 2016 or newer - e.g.
Oregon 700/750
Epix
Many Zumo devices

If you have other modern or semi-modern devices like any Oregon, any Dakota, etrex Vista/Legend HCx or etrex 20, etrex 30, or GPS Maps 62, any edge but edge 1000, then of course you do not need non unicode maps. Stick to the normal Unicode (or for latin countries - latin maps).

This is due to a firmware bug that Garmin introduced as part of their efforts to cut down on people "pirating" their maps. However by doing that they also cut down on Unicode maps produced by mkgmap or even some of their old (legitimate) maps which are not running anymore on these devices. You will know that you need to use the Non Unicode map if on boot your GPS device tells you to "unlock maps". Why is the Europe Map in Unicode? Well for example in Greece and some Eastern Europe countries the script is Cyrillic not latin - and only Unicode maps can contain both scripts in one map. So the non unicode map will not correctly show labels in such countries. Use the country non unicode map instead. They are always in the predominant script of the country.

Note1: if you install the non Unicode version of a map - you will overwrite the Unicode map. You can only have either or installed.

Note2: The contourlines are identical for openmtbmap/velomap and unicode or non unicode. You only need to download them once. On updates it's enough to re-download and reinstall the map installer.

Besides I've added again quite a few new countries - especially in Asia - so that you do not need to get the continent map for these countries anymore.

Meet you at Lago di Garda

extremecarver — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 20:30:01 +0000

(note - german translation on the website as always)

Well - this time the news are not much. Over the last weeks I've been mainly bugged down by various administration tasks and only updated little things on the maps.

E.g. today I went through all of the plugins of this website and tried to replace all those that were not updated anymore - sometimes quite tedious to find proper replacements...

So actually I'm happy that summer is over - and for me now the quiter period of the year (till February) is starting...

Therefore I will be cycling 5 days at Lago di Garda starting Friday Morning till Wednesday.. Would be happy to meet up with some people - also maybe some Italians living in Trento? I know you've been mapping mtb trails around your area from my last trip. I'm open for anything from S1 to S5 (only condition singletrails downhill - but does not need to be very difficult).

If I'm riding alone I'll be outfitted with my etrex 30 on the right hand side of the handlebar, and my Oregon 600 on the left hand side - to try out map visibility, little tweaks, future changes and so on... Cannot always do this on my hometrails..

Also for the first time in my biking career - I bought a nice shiny bike, instead of assembling components onto used frames.. (well not new, it was a testbike so I got a hefty discount - but top of the line and nearly everything as new).

Here's a little scary video of my 3rd day on the new bike - still need some time to get used to it for the really crazy section where I'm spotting and didn't ride myself (next time I hope I can get my brain to say yes to it....)

best quality (download or playback in modern browser with very fast internet connection only):

short_little_italy.mp4

(better quality - needs clicking in the bottom to change from 720P to 1080P)

http://videos.mtb-news.de/38125

(lowest quality but most popular host)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyfoIVMMOPg

Just to note - at Lago di Garda I will also ride much easier stuff...

Map Updates – Recap 2…

extremecarver — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 15:30:38 +0000

Hallo Everyone, let's continue the news recap and also inform you about latest changes.

First off all there are new contourlines for Denmark, Norway and Finland and Sweden. They are fully based on viewfinderpanoramas.org 1" data - so very high quality. However for Sweden only the 50km bordering Norway are actually excellent quality. The rest is based on 3" data.

So good news for your next trip to Scandinavia. Hopefully soon viewfinderpanoramas.org will update the data for the Alps too - then I will of course also update the contourlines in the Alps.

Also I went through OpenMTBMap and VeloMap websites and made sure no more broken image links are present anymore. So the map legend and the screenshots are updated (lesson for me - never upload any images to image hosters - or expect them to be deleted after a couple of years).

I'm thinking of upgrading the layout of the websites end of this year - but still some time to go.

Lots of work on removing obsolete fixme=incomplete arrows in the maps. Now it should really only be used if a highway is not fully entered in OSM database and also some more stringent requirements when fixme=continue or noexit=no are shown with arrows in the maps.

Again more work on transliteration.

Highway=unclassified was shown with highway=residential color in resolution 23. Fixed for both OpenMTBMap and VeloMap

Here's a screenshot of North Norway with the new contourlines (well to be frank - you won't notice on the overview- but if you zoom in then the higher quality is quite obvious).

Recap of older Changes

fix bug on unclassifieds roads that are part of mtb route and shown as track...

Another big change - especially important for well developed countries is that there is now a new layout for unpaved primary/secondary/tertiary/unclassified/residential roads. I will still optimize this a bit in the future though. However since 3 weeks it should be clear to anyone if for example a tertiary road is not paved.

I still think that the OSM key smoothness is a much better tag to indicate road condition for cycling than tracktype. Of course I convert the values to tracktype - trying to make sure that a grade1 is always paved, a grade2 is a compacted surface (e.g. good condition gravel) and so on. However I mainly relied on smoothness if available to do so. Badly though I must say I noticed much more errors on smoothness values than on tracktype values. Therefore I now treat both keys as same important - and use them much stronger for errorchecking.

Also I reworked the surface key in order to better classify tracks and trails - inocorporating many new values

OSM changed the way forests and wood are described. I therefore uncluded the new keys Leaf_cycle and Leaf_type in order to classify wood/forest/scrub. I keep on using the standard european map layout with mixed, deciduous and coniferous only though. Also for a long time natural=wood without wood=.... was omitted in resolution 21 in the maps. Fixed this.

Lots of countries got improved address search by incorporating the local rules better.

Service=high_speed for highspeed trains (plus rework of other keys that identify high speed railway lines), and better identification of big rivers/canals.

Rework of naming of peaks and summits.

All maps now have integrated contours - also Asia. So for any country (on windows) the installer will automatically install the contourlines. Long time this was not true for Asia.

Many many more fixes and changes were done. OSM is constantly evolving, and so are tagging practices. I try my best to constantly reflect this.

Oh - and I noted I haven't been mtbiking much lately. Will need to do much more. Maybe something similar to this trip report I stumpled on (also with OpenMTBMaps of course):

https://www.mtb-news.de/forum/t/solo-alpencross-2014-in-suedtirol.716888/

Finally some VeloMap News again ….

extremecarver — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 16:29:35 +0000

Well I must say, I'm sorry but I have been really lazy about posting news of the maps. I always thought - let's implement this feature - then post a big long news article - and well I never got to do that...

So let's split it up into several news posts summarizing the changes over the last year.. Lets start with a list of added Countries and continent maps over the last 14 months:

New Countries where you can cycle to and get the right maps

Antarctica - well there is not much coverage in OSM here - but it was the last missing continent. Of course with contourlines

and Greenland.

Asia - contourlines are now integrated into the installer. Otherwise there is a lot of new Asian countries which I recommend instead because it's a huge download (especially the contourlines at around 9GB)..

French Dom Tom:

Guadeloupe
Guyane
Martinique
Mayotte
Reunion

in Africa: Cameroon, Sudan

in Asia: Bangladesh, Jordan, Lebanon, Russia-asian-part, Sri-lanka, Syria, Bangladesh, Jordan, Lebanon, Russia-asian-part, Sri-lanka, Syria

in Australia-oceania: Fiji

Other Big Changes Part 1 - Internationalization and Unicode:

Since about 1 months all maps of countries that are not by default using latin script - are in Unicode. This means that a map can have e.g. both cyrillic script and latin script. Before often in such countries there were many characters showing as "?" Questionmark or just a box. After doing a lot of work on this - I have now the maps if available in OSM bilingual. If you search for a city - you can search by the english name, or by the local name. Only in the address search you will need to use the local name for searching an address. In general if an english (or sometimes French, German, Durch, Spanish, Italian, Danish) name is available in OSM database - then the name will be: English name (local name). E.g. Běijīng (北京市). In countries where I assume translation is not necessary (e.g. European countries using latin script) - only cities are translated as a second point. So you can search for Munich as well as for München in the city search. For address search of your you need the local name - so use München.

I hope that in future I can have all maps in non latin script using countries also transliterated like international name, if no international name avalaible then transliterated (local name).

There is one catch however - old GPS units - like Vista HCx or GPSMaps 60 series - cannot show unicode maps properly. They will only show the international names if available. That's why I hope especially to get a transliteration in any case at least for city names (let's see about street names) in the coming months. But currently this is not possible.

More updates of what has changed, in the next few days...

11. May Map Updates – New Overview Map

extremecarver — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:30:11 +0000

Well finally after many years of empty overview maps, since a few weeks (as written in my last posts) mkgmap was able to write simple overviewmaps. So much faster zooming/panning when zoomed out fast in Mapsource, Basecamp, QLandkarteGT. From todays map update onwards, the overview map now has several layers. This makes the orientation when zoomed out far, still a lot better.

Therefore I also update the Europe map again, because on large area maps, this is even more important. However not only is it faster now on the desktop - but also on the GPS the basemap will become visible earlier, making zooming out work much faster (before I always had to compromise between speed on GPS, vs speed on Desktop, not anymore). Therefore however again I had to add some types to the .typ-file (0x11f04, 0x11f05, 0x10f0a).

Besides the work on the overview map, I will start to work on a worldwide basemap. The problem is that currently some Garmin GPS come with a routeable basemap, in some cases this destructs the routing of detailed maps, like OpenMTBMaps and VeloMaps. I will try to create a good basemap, that can go in combination with VeloMaps/OpenMTBMap showing the most important map features there are (rivers, lakes, sea, huge cities, borders, motorways, maybe some major railways...).

Fixed bug that Ireland and Northern Ireland was not updated over the last 3 weeks.

Further changes:

add bridge=culvert and bridge=boardwalk.

fix some more bugs related to autorouting in VeloMap/OpenMTBMap

and some more little bugfixes...

the new overview map at 150km zoomed out, Detail level High. Very fast...

Some further work on the overview map – and Peru as a new country

extremecarver — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:51:54 +0000

Well lets make the newsletter a bit shorter this time but keep it more uptodate. First of all, if you downloaded Fridays maps, there was a bug in the overviewmap content to be seen at all resolutions in Basecamp. (the bug didn't affect the map view on the GPS devices, nor in Mapsource or Qlandkarte GT). This got fixed if you downloaded the maps on Saturday or later. So if you wonder about straight motorways appearing twice - there a gone again now. However a nice feature - of the background changing colour slightly depending on the resolution is gone now. Also the typfiles needed to be changed again (0x4b is now again the background).

For Mac OSx downloads, I renamed the downloads from COUNTRY.gmap.7z to COUNTRY_macosx.7z. This is only the name of the packed download. However if you did make a mistake and extracted the content not using "extract here" but "extract to "COUNTRY.gmap" the problem of macosx making automatically a kinda broken gmap installation package out of it is solved now. So if you unpack now to "COUNTRY_macosx" - then it will be recognized as a standard folder, which you can access normally and not recognized as a package.

Since Geofabrik is offering a Peru country extract, Peru is available for download too now - so the most touristic countries in South America now all got their own country extract - less need for the full South America continent map download.

Also in my last newsletter, I forgot to mention that the full Asia continent contourlines are updated now, to a good quality standard. They are still too large to be integrated into the maps, but if you really need them, and know how to use them, they are good quality too now. Also the Himalaya contours extract is updated, covering a larger region than before - and slightly better quality.

Next Thursday I fly for 5 weeks to Santiago de Chile. Twould be nice to go mountainbiking there (though I will need to rent a mountainbike), so if anyone OpenMTBMap user lives in or aroung Santiago, I'ld be happy to hear from you. I won't go there for holidays though, I'll be working from a co-working space, and try to push Openstreetmap / OpenMTBMap and bicycle/mtb information there a bit.

Famous Machu Picchu in Peru - still some mapping to be done: