ChristianK

USA+CDN now with 1″ Contourlines

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Viewfinderpanoramas.org has released high resolution 1″ elevation data for North America.
This means that for the USA and Canada a new OpenAndroMaps map set with more accurate contour lines is now available.

The file sizes have of course increased but the added value of information for hikers and cyclists outweighs this by far.
Especially ditches and ridges can be estimated much better with the 30m grid of the 1″ data than with the previous 90m grid of the 3″ elevation data.

The following maps were split to keep file sizes in reasonable limits:

BritishColumbia complete > BC/North + BC/South
UtahColorado > Utah + Colorado
CarolinaGeorgiaFlorida > CarolinaGeorgia + Florida

 

Best regards, Christian

/1 Comment/by
ChristianK

Locus: too much Elevate Themes in Themeswitcher

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Hi, we recently changed the scipted delivery of the Elevate/Elements Theme while installing the maps from this website.

Up to now the Elevate Theme was downloaded, unzipped and installed to [internalMemory]/Locus/mapsVector/_themes/elevate/
From now on the Theme is downloaded and the zip file copied to [internalMemory]/Locus/mapsVector/_themes/ AND it is not unzipped couse Locus can handle the Theme as zip much faster than a bunch of scattered grapfics.

Reason: Android11 is dead slow while reading lots of graphics but can handle them fine if inside a zip-file.
Noone knows why they have changed this, but – yeah….

So: if you already have the Elevate Theme as unzipped version in [internalMemory]/Locus/mapsVector/_themes/elevate/
AND
Install the new, faster, zipped Android 11 Elevate Theme you have:

TWO Elevate and TWO Elements Themes in your Locus Themeswitcher.
Nice, indeed – and I cant solve this by scripting cause I can’t delete files on your divices.

However: Its easy to solve this problem:
Install a FileManager like the Totalcommander https://play.google.com/store/search?q=totalcommander&c=apps , go to [internalMemory]/Locus/mapsVector/_themes/ and completely delete the “Elevate” folder.

Edit: With new Android Versions it’s possible that the theme is in the PrivateAppFolder, or wherever ……

 

Have a nice summer
Christian

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ChristianK

New Render-PC in operation, new V5-Beta-Maps

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Many thanks to all the donors who
made the new equipment possible

The new rendermachine is running since this morning and is currently being fed with the latest Planet-File. The aim is to put new maps under the Christmas tree for our community. At the same time, these maps are being completely renovated.

Test maps and a beta version of the new Elevate redertheme are available here:

https://www.openandromaps.org/oam-forums/topic/elevate-updates-and-test-versions-news/page/5/#post-45699

Whats new, in a nutshell:

  • The MTB routes are now rendered independently and by category (like the cycle routes) – this means that supra-regional MTB routes such as in the UK or the Granittrail in the Waldviertel are highlighted prominently.
  • Overlaps between bike and MTB routes are now neatly resolved
  • Short names of MTB/bike/hike routes are now separated, this is only now possible with the fast rendermachine and Mapsforge V5
  • The connections between route nodes (NL) are now rendered later at higher zoom levels for better overview
  • Dozens of OSMC hiking symbols are added
  • etc..
/0 Comments/by
ChristianK

Excel becomes LibreOffice-Calc at OAM

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Many people might ask themselves: “Why Excel for an OSM map project?
Well, with OAM there is a stock of around 270 maps to manage with the most diverse settings.

For example, map symbols for petrol stations and drinking water sources in urban areas appear only at much higher zoom levels than in Scandinavia – for this, there is also the ELEMENTS theme by Tobias, which takes this into account. This means that different tag mappings have to be created and assigned to individual maps.
But also such trivial things as map centres, languages, fineness of elevation data, allocation to render queues (load balancing) have to be managed. Corresponding start-up programmes for each individual production step such as conversion of file formats, creation of boundary polys, elevation data, sea areas, inheritance of bike/MTB/hike routes etc,etc. – belong to !automated! production.

Last but not least, the web pages must be regenerated after each update.

This is impossible to do manually, so far Excel-VBA programmes in combination with PERL scripts have done most of the hard work.

 

For about 10 days now, I have been sitting in front of the computer every free minute and porting VBA to Starbasic. Porting means cleaning up 9 years of organically grown programmes and simply rewriting them, leaving out my beloved PERL for pure administration jobs.
In addition, a flexible folder structure was implemented to allow porting to other machines and effective load balancing/caching.

 

With the switch to a free office package and the cleaning up of the programmes, it is now much easier for my co-authors to familiarise themselves with map production in OpenAndroMaps. 

 

The first maps rolled out today from the LibreCalc generated start scripts, the automated creation of the download pages will be addressed next week.

 

New rendering machine: Thank you very much for your donations – most of the parts for the PC have arrived and are awaiting assembly, which will be started after the next map update if there are no unexpected problems with the software port.
For me this is a great reassurance as it means that the test computer will go to @Michael and thus 10 years of accumulated knowledge about vector maps will be preserved.

 

There will be more detailed information about the new render machine.
Here in a nutshell: AMD Ryzen 5600G, 128GB RAM, ASUS MB, 2TB 970evo Plus as standard drive, 1TB Toshiba SSD for the planet extracts and height data, NOCTUA fans, new semi-passive power supply, as well as various used parts from the spare and new fans for the old case.
Should my time run out, this computer will also go to @Michael.

best wishes and stay healthy
Christian

 

/1 Comment/by
ChristianK

New System für Test and Development

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Dear OAM community,

Summer is slowly giving way to a colorful autumn and I have a new test system on my desk.
The old “system”, an ancient Lenovo T410 from the stone age has really become too small, even for testing purposes, and often goes into thermal emergency shutdown.
So I bought a used ASrock Deskmini which was used as a game server.
With a super-efficient Intel i3-8100T and 64gb of (new) RAM as well as some older spare parts plus a few new parts, a quite performant system was created, which is also quite environmentally friendly and quiet.
The 500€ that this system cost (260€ only the RAM) came mostly from reserves of your donations.

What is currently happening is the conversion of all scripts to Windows10 and here to a large extent to WSL, the integrated Linux environment of WIN10 which, believe it or not, is actually quite mature. Now finally the, often buggy and specially adapted, Windows versions of Phyghtmap, osmconvert, osmfilter and especially everything based on GDAL/Python – can run native and always UpToDate in the Linux shell of Win10.
The effort for the conversion is unfortunately considerable, Python2 scripts e.g. do not run any more and must be rewritten, Windows has also naturally again some new bugs.

A word to the users in the forum: I have made myself a bit rare in the forum, unfortunately my resources are limited due to my health. To say it clearly: My arteries are unfortunately quite dense.

Therefore, as soon as the conversion to Win10/WSL is completed, the production system will be updated to a new motherboard + an AMD RYZEN + 128gb RAM and the development system will be transferred to the production machine.
Unfortunately we still need about 1200€ – so if you have some money left over from your christmas bonus it would help us a lot ;-) .

The development computer will be handed over to @Michael who has been developing the OAM world maps for years and as an old IT-professional has the best prerequisites.
Michael will familiarize himself with the (by no means trivial) creation of the OAM maps and, in the long run, will also take over this task.

Health and nice autumn tours
Christian and the small team of OpenAndroMaps

/1 Comment/by
ChristianK

More maps with 10m Contourlines

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The elevation data for Europe are now very accurate in many areas thanks to flight laser scanning.
Wherever these data are freely available, @Sonny collects them, checks them and interweaves them with Jonathan de Ferranti‘s Viewfinder panoramic elevation data in the areas not yet scanned.

The result is a constantly growing set of elevation data, the best that could be achieved without paying licence fees at the moment.
The accuracy is good enough to make sense for contour lines at 10 meters vertical distance. (which was definitely not the case so far).

To make a long story short:
The following maps are now available with 10m contour lines (more will follow):

Alps, Alps_East, Alps_West, Pyrenees, Austria, CanaryIslands, Corse, Czech_Republic, Great_Britain, UK_Scotland, Ireland, Madeira, Mallorca_Ibiza, Malta, Sardegna, Sicilia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, UK_Wales, UK_LakeDistrict, UK_IsleOfMan, UK_Shetlands

Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria

 

 

New and updated Maps:

The Alps-West now also includes the neighbouring Rhone Valley.
New map: BalticStates (Estonia, Latvi, Lithuania as complete map)

/1 Comment/by
ChristianK

New Country and State-Borders

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More and more boundaries are grouped in relations and thus cannot be reliably processed by the MapsForgeWriter. In the meantime this is like a TikTokChallenge = who manages to create as many completely unnecessary relations as possible. At the islands of the Canary Islands and Madeira, every beach on even the smalest islands is occupied by countless border relations – these have to be filtered out with great effort.
That’s why I have now written this relation resolution from scratch for

boundary=administrative and Admin_Level=1 to 4
Means: national borders and federal states.
…and try to filter out the nonsense relations…

Extreme improvements were made for maps of South America, here even national borders were missing.

/0 Comments/by
ChristianK

The naming of MAP’s and POI’s are changing

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Dear OpenAndroMaps community.

The naming of the OAM maps changes as follows:

1.) From:

  • [name]_ML.map (= the map file itself)
  • [name]_ML.poi (= the POI file for Oruxmaps)

Please delete these files !

2.) To:

  • [name]_oam.osm.map (= the map file itself, appears in the Locus MapManager as [Name Oam])
  • [name]_oam.osm.db (= the POI file for Locus)
  • [name]_oam.osm.poi (= the POI file for Oruxmaps)

As you can see, the long awaited POI files for Locus are now added.
This feature is currently in BETA Test.
If you want to partizipate in the BETA-Test please sign up for the forum (please, use a_real_ EMail Address):
https://www.openandromaps.org/oam-forums/topic/poi-nutzbarkeit-der-dateien-mit-locus/page/7
(mixed German/English)

Please install the maps as before, the POI files will be copied automatically to your mobile device.

If you want to try out the new POIs for Locus you should have a look here,
LOCUS Manual

A clear word: The quality of the original locus poi database is not reached, e.g. the offline location search is missing. If you need this feature you have to purchase the corresponding map in the LocusShop (its cheap) and use the included POI database with the OAM maps (as many users did this in the past)

A video tutorial will follow as soon as the bugs are eliminated.

/2 Comments/by
Tobias

Elevate: Locus special version deprecated

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As Locus has a very good mapsforge support for V4 maps since version 3.38 and doesn’t need a special file structure also, a special Locus version of the map style files isn’t necessary anymore.

Elevate LE, which is necessary for the legacy V3 maps, is still available as separate download on the Elevate page.

Double Elements: as Elevate now has a new clean file structure, with quick install the old Elements file remains in the theme folder and can still be chosen with the map style choser (in addition to the new version).

This can be solved easily:

  • The simplest way (installations from 03/10/19): just press long on the old Elements icon with the black sun and choose delete (as in the screenshot below)
  • For installations between 30/09/19 and 02/10/19: delete both Elements installation by two long presses on the desert symbols, and install Elevate again via quick install
  • Delete with a file explorer all not needed files in the directory “/Locus/mapsVector/_themes/” on the internal SD card (or which custom theme directory was chosen in Locus); all files and folders with “ele” in the name except the folder “Elevate”; if you delete too much, just use quick install again

 

/4 Comments/by
ChristianK

Last update for the old “V3” Maps

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For most of you there are no changes ’cause 95% of OpenAndroMaps users already use the multilingual maps.

As already announced some time ago, we are now finally switching to the multilingual maps and drop support for the old V3-Maps. These have been around since 2015/16 and I think that 3 years is sufficient to say goodbye to old specifications and open new resources for new developments.

The development of the Mapsforge vector library is progressing and we would like to share with you the advantages and new features. We are working on a new version of the OpenAndroMaps which will be enhanced and modernized especially in the field of cycle- MTB- and hiking routes.

For this it is necessary to drop old Balast.

The 270 V3 maps will be updated in the next 3 weeks and will be available for download by January 2020.
Of course, the download pages will also be adapted accordingly. For now the separate download button for the POIs will be kept – although the POIs are included in the ZIP archives of the maps.

EndOfLife V3-Karten

Best regards

Team of OpenAndroMaps

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