OK… first of all I have to introduce the man behind this amazing creation.
None other than Mr. Bill Snead. I was fortunate enough to get to hike (and double-turtle) with Bill on our WCT trip last year.
Bill currently works at Microsoft and is a very talented developer. While he may blow off his creation as "no big deal", I'm blown away every time I use it and am excited to see it stable enough that he's willing to share it with others.
So what is this "creation" I speak of?
Bill took the Windows Live mapping engine and overlayed on it, USGS trail maps.
Yeah yeah, big deal… Google has been doing this for a while, right?
Bill one-upped them.
The Windows Live guys didn't just stop at building a simple GPS satellite view mapping service, they integrated with the Microsoft Flight Simulator Engine which allows you to get very detailed 3-D style views of supported terrain.
Bill's mapping data has altitude information that allows for an incredible 3-D experience when viewing hiking trails and terrain.
Remember the topo-style pictures in my recent post about Little Annapurna? This is the tool I used to take those snapshots.
It now supports both FireFox and Internet Explorer (Windows Only, no Mac), and you can check it out for yourself at:
http://www.midstation.com/topo/
Usage Hints:
– Make sure you put the map in "3D mode" and download the necessary plugins.
– Hold down the CTRL key and LEFT mouse button and move the mouse around the rotate the image.
– Use the mouse-wheel to zoom in/out.
– Hold down the SHIFT key and LEFT mouse button and move the mouse around the pan the image.
– Depending on how "Zoomed-in" you are, different scale maps will load, over the topography.
IMHO – the results are staggering. Find your favourite trail and zoom right in and follow the contours and enjoy.
Great job Bill!
I’ve been waiting patiently for you to release this information, Brett!!!
How is this different from the what the delorme program did 6-7 years ago and what the add on NGS Topo can do? Is it the fact that it is web based and maybe free?
Kirk – a fair question! I have not seen those software packages – but beleive they are desktop software.
What’s exciting to me about Bill’s site is the potential. Imagine if he put some ‘community’ aspects around it – so hikers like you and I could contribute trail GPS data, photo taken at the time we were there, trail notes and information. Think Wikipedia for hiking data. Or trails.com without having to pay. I think an open platform for the hiking community would be a very very interesting thing.
If it does not cause you undue hardship and take too many hours away from your loved ones [two-legged, four-legged, and/or legless], please, please, please make available for those of us who are Mac-addicted [we can only drink so much coffee @ our 12-step meetings].
Thank you for creating this “backpacker’s dream” — it’s superb!
Thomas
Hey Thomas – Getting this to work on the Mac is unfortunatley in Microsofts hands. The application uses the Windows Live “Virtual Earth 3D” engine – and it currently does not appear to support Macs. I’m not sure what MSFT’s plans are for that. I’ll try and find out. For now, you’re stuck w/XP on Parallels I’m afraid.
> For now, you’re stuck w/XP on Parallels I’m afraid.
That is assuming you have a Macbook PRO with a quality video card. I opted for the Macbook when I bought my new laptop and I can’t run the 3D aspects of this site. I’m still waiting to get in front of a sexy machine with the graphics capability to really check this out.