BackCountry Navigator Forum

BackCountry Navigator uses Topo Maps and Aerial Photos from TerraServer USA.

Frequently, we have requests to use other maps, either to cover places outside the US, or to use a type of map that is not available in the program.   

So far, we have found out a few things.  BackCountry Navigator is well suited for displaying raster maps, but they would need to be calibrated and tiled.

The Pocket PC doesn't have much image processing power, compared to your desktop device. It does rather well with the Terraserver maps because they are imported in small tiles. To perform as well. large images should be broken up into small pieces for display. This would probably require a desktop utility.

To aid in our planning, members can post on the following:

• Sources of maps for other regions of the world
• Format of images and calibration information that people would plan to use
• How they have typically calibrated maps (ie picking points, etc)

An admission, I currently use Outdoor Navigator but...If I did not have it already installed I would us BN.(I have tested it the trial version of BN) Outdoor Navigator is no longer being made and I have recommended Backcountry Navigator as a low cost mapping software. Not only is it low cost but it is user friendly.
One of the best things about Backcountry Navigator is that the user doesn't  have to go through the converting, calibrating,and tiling  mess only to have the map be off by a couple hundred feet. With BN the  map shows up accurately and simply.
Back Country Navigator will serve many people's needs quite well. (If BN had the tracking option some other mapping software programs would dissapear.)

Another thought is that if you could have a PC (desktop) application that allows us to graphically edit a .BMD file--it would have sooo many uses!

For example, I was at Disneyland the other day and I pulled up BN and thought "wouldn't it be neat if this graphic had all the rides?"  with a desktop app, I could manually annotate the aerials with notes and stuff, then put the .BMD back onto the IPAQ for travel.  That would be sweet.

Of course it would be better to be able to manually annotate on the pocket PC, but I realize that with the meager computing power, it might be beyond the capability.

Yes I very much agree that a PC based editing tool is needed, it would be very cool if I could download a map of a 20 by 20 mile area and cut parts out on the PC and dump the useful stuff onto my PDA.  Memory cards are cheap so that is not really a issue to me.  Another problem I have encounred is that My PDA disconnects from my PC when I download large files at one shot, which is another reason I would like to download to the PC then dump it to my SD card. 

And a breadcrumb feature would be killer. 

Overall the software is very cool I just need to find a solution to downloading large files.  I bike a lot and sometimes the trail is 60 plus miles long so having a edited map would be a must.

If you get all that working you will have the entire market to yourself.

Keep up the great work this is amazing.

As far as maps it would be nice to have Canada.  Living up in PNW, camping in Canada sometimes, it would be nice to have Backcountry.  By the way, I love this program and the ease of map loading.  The tracking feature would be great!  Right now I just use a lot of waypoints. ::)

We haven't found a good source of public domain maps in Canada yet.

We have a person looking into NASA landsat images. This is not quite the resolution you would get in the US, but it covers a lot of the world to a 1:15m resolution.

ExpertGPS displays & downloads the TerraServer Topo & Aerial maps & stores them on my laptop which I then take on my trips.  A viewer that could access & export sections of those downloaded maps to BN would be great.

Thx for a great product!

Dean

I love the way the terra server maps are loaded- but unfortunately the maps are fairly old version of topo.  Would be great to see the ability to pull topo maps directly from the usgs national map viewer... http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm   

Any idea of a timeline on Canadian maps for use in BCN?

It is interesting to see the differences in mapping. Roads for example, National Road Dataset Labels, New Hampshire Road, and the USGS Raster Graphics (Topo Maps). The NH Roads (BTS) were way off in place, while Census and Topo were closest - the Census layer mostly just updating thetopo correctly.

I think it going to be tough for topos, although another similar (same data) with raster downloads is http://seamless.usgs.gov  but I think there's a ways to go in what is available and accuracy, no matter what you choose. Certainly in my neighborhood.

Andy

Two things are in our favor now. We have a desktop version started and I've found some sources of free Canadian maps in Geotiff format.

We still need to decipher the geotiff format and break up the 50 meg images. So I believe it is still several months away.
 

How is development coming on this?  This would be an awesome addtion to an already great piece of software.  I have an awful lot of trouble downloading maps on my phone while I'm out - GPRS signal too weak, etc.

I really hope this idea hasn't died!!  :)

Here are some links to Canadian maps that I found.  Some have already been posted in this thread.

Canadian Maps:
ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/canmatrix/50k_300dpi/  --I think these are tiffs
ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/canmatrix/250k_300dpi/
http://toporama.cits.rncan.gc.ca/

US maps:
http://home.pacbell.net/lgalvin/drgnotes.htm --links to maps for each state.
http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/download.htm

Tons of map info:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/

Is there anything else we can do to keep this moving along?  Dig deeper for more maps?  Beta test?

Matt

It hasn't died, but it hasn't gotten the dedicated time it needs. 

But there are some very promising oportunities in Canada and other maps. Most promising are some tiled internet sources. There is plenty of work to be done to decipher them and let BCN can take full advantage of them.

I would like to have the ability to import the files from TerraFetcher. The ability to cache files locally and then import those I want for a given trip would be awesome.

Although it doesn't do exactly what you describe, have you tried BackCountry Navigator Desktop yet?

I'll give you honest feedback. I really like BCN, but there are some architecture deficiencies. Features are nice, but only after you have a sound architecture. BCN is the best I've used on my Pocket PC; good, not great...yet. In short, you need to make your map manipulation/building/downloading/viewing: simple, efficient, and flexible first. Let me explain.

BCN Desktop is a port. I don't want a port. I want powerful tools that are easy to use and make it easier to get the information to my PDA. I want to be able to cache large amounts of data to use at my whim (I have 3TB of unused storage at the moment). I want to download based on various boundaries, not just lat/lon. I.e. I want to download my whole county or even state. I want to change the map at will and not have to re-download.

Take a look at TerraFetcher/USAPhotoMap (both are free). Imagine a tool that integrates these two, adds an easy way to create a subset of the cached maps/photos for PDA download. I would settle for a way to import a folder containing TerraFetcher files.

The PDA side needs a few changes too. It is too easy to get lost on a blank map screen. Add a snap too feature that will center you on the map. Add a base map option. If I have to, I'll buy the base map from whomever you support. Also, the single integrated map idea doesn't work so well as maps climb into the hundreds of MB or even a few GB. My PDA can hold up to 49GB of internal data (all internal expansion slots filled). I want all the topo for entire states. Also, aerial 1m of my whole state. I did the calculation, it is only about 20-25GB. A more efficient scheme should make this possible. Done right, the speed of the map being displayed shouldn't change as the total map size increases. After all, I am only viewing a small section at a time, don't bother with the rest. Smaller files like TerraFetcher and a good index might work really well for this problem.

I like the software. It is the best I've used, but some basic architecture changes I think would go a long way. After that add features (like military grid, etc.).

Very interesting subject, lots of related areas that I've wondered about but don't know how things currently work.

To start with, I thought that USGS was a partner in TerraServer, and that they were providing updated maps as they issued them. Is that not true? What year is the cutoff date (most recent year of maps included, with newer maps not included)?

On the aerial photo side, I thought we were waiting for them (TerraServer) to expand the coverage area of the more detailed series - is that still in the works?

To reinforce some of the earlier comments, yes the ability to annotate existing map images and then save them in our database for future use would be very valuable, possibly even more so than the abiliy to import from other sources. However, as someone else mentioned, currently I just use a lot of waypoints in those situations, and that works adequately (as long as I stay organized).

In regard to source of maps we'd like to import, my first preference would be a way to incorporate some of the paper maps I have, thus I guess just a generic image import capability. I have some highly detailed maps that I've drawn from blown up tracings of USGS maps and then added local knowledge - putting these on my handheld with tracking features activated would be awesome. I've never used a map calibration program so I don't know the alternatives, but it would be pretty easy to specifc gps coordinates for several points on the maps.

Second import source, if possible, would be Google Earth. They have detailed aerial photos for many of the nearby areas that I'm interested in. I'm a low-level subscriber there and currently I get some of the benefit by after-the-fact loading the tracks recorded in BCN. I kinda suspect that it won't be possible to download their info without big payments, and it's not worth big payments.

Third, if possible, would be updated road info. Here again I could benefit from an explanation of how the current world works. I've seen some pretty puny computing devices that claim to have complete US road data, and I've heard bits and pieces about a comprehensive database maintained by some source. It would be fabulous if we could choose to have that road data overlaid on whatever map data we have selected for viewing. Do the sources want to charge too much for this info, or is it too difficult given the PCs processing limitations to include this info?

Still and all, with all that said, the current BCN setup is already 90+% there for my purposes (wilderness canoeing and exploring; other offroad exploring in jeep; road driving for touristy purposes). More would be gravy and would be welcome, but thanks so much for what you've already provided.