a) Layout in the maps is defined via a .typ file. In this typfile there are two ways to define how streets should render. One is by setting two colours, one for the line and one for the border. And the other is by using two colours and creating a simple bitmap (32x32px). Likely to increase contrast or whatever Garmin decided to render the border in 4x the width that is defined in the .typfile. This doesn't affect most of their modern maps as they only used a line color without border - but in many older maps Garmin also uses a border colour. Now it sounds like the obvious solution to just switch to bitmap instead of line/border - but the problem is that most garmin devices render bitmap lines different and it looks worse. As I believe that about half of my users use the openmtbmap/velomaps with Garmin edge devices I decided to remove the borders and render most streets [...]]]> Garmin recently released a very buggy new firmware for edge 1040, 840 and 540. There are two huge problems with this new firmware (21.x) concerning map rendering. All maps published June 02 or later are therefore adapted.

a) Layout in the maps is defined via a .typ file. In this typfile there are two ways to define how streets should render. One is by setting two colours, one for the line and one for the border. And the other is by using two colours and creating a simple bitmap (32x32px). Likely to increase contrast or whatever Garmin decided to render the border in 4x the width that is defined in the .typfile. This doesn't affect most of their modern maps as they only used a line color without border - but in many older maps Garmin also uses a border colour. Now it sounds like the obvious solution to just switch to bitmap instead of line/border - but the problem is that most garmin devices render bitmap lines different and it looks worse. As I believe that about half of my users use the openmtbmap/velomaps with Garmin edge devices I decided to remove the borders and render most streets in single colour only. Before most roads hat a grey/black border. The alternative to use bitmap lines instead I felt is worse. 

b) the 21.x firmware devices do not respect the settings regarding labels correctly. Nothing I can fix here. You can chose however unter map layout to not show labels for certain categories.

I spent a lot of time changing all the different typfiles but I would still recommend you to not update. Rolling back is possible by putting an older GUPDTATE.GCD firmware file into the /garmin folder - however this fully resets the device so is quite annoying. You can prevent updates of garmin edge gps devices by placing a dummy GUPDATE.GCD file into the /garmin folder (rename a text file with no content but a blank/space to this). I don't know if other garmin devices will also roll out in future with this broken fimware. It had been reported to garmin on their beta firmware but they didn't fix it.

I had previously decided to remove the "Thin" layout from the OpenMTBMaps to save my time adapting it when I change things to the layout. After several requests I have now re introduced the Thin layout for the OpenMTBMaps and also added a thin layout to the VeloMap. It is 1px thinner than the classic/velo (legacy) layout. I think it's only useful for GPSMap 60/62/64/65 devices with low resolution displays - all other garmin devices have higher DPI. As sometimes people ask about which layout to chose - I add an explanation again here (and in other places in help files/website):

The new layout selector in the Windows installer with additional Thin layout

Basically the layouts differ on use case, line width and colour of roads. "Legacy" typfiles use the higher contrast blue/green/red/yellow street differentiation - while "modern" layouts use a lower contrast red-yellow road differentiation. The philosophy behind this is that on legacy typfiles you know exactly what kind of classification a street has, while the modern layout there is a more fluid approach from motorways to small roads that subconciously tells you the road class. Google maps is a prime example of modern type of layouts - while typical German road maps are the inspiration for the legacy layout.  Modern layouts give you a better overview when looking at the map on a big screen/display as it's easier for the brain to class importance in an instant  and looks nicer/calmer - while legacy layout gives a more exact classification but needs more time to process the information and looks less nice. The width of the layout should be chosen according to the DPI of your device and preferences. As most currently sold garmin devices (except smartwatches) are optimal in my eyes for the Wide layouts - special layouts like, winter, hiking, easy or topo are only available in wide style.

Which .typ file should I choose (OpenMTBMap) - Sorted from Thin to Extra Wide?

Thin - optimized for GPSMap 60/62/64/65 (2px small roads/trails/tracks)
*mthn --- Thin layout - like Classic legacy but even thinner lines. For low resolution Garmin GPS devices like GPSMaps series.

Medium width - - optimized for Vista/Legend/edge_705 (3px small roads/trails/tracks)
*clas --- Classic series - red/yellow streets - rather thin for lower DPI Garmin devices
*cllg --- Classic Legacy - Like above optimized for Vista/Legend/edge_705 series - blue-green-red-yellow streets

Wide - optimized for Oregon/Colorado/edge x30/edge x40/GPSMap 66/67 and more modern devices. (4px small roads/trails/tracks)
*wide --- high contrast layout, like classic but with white forest and wider streets/lines - red-yellow streets
*wdlg --- same as above - but blue-green-red-yellow streets

*easy --- Simple Layout with (nearly) no additional info over traditional topo maps. Same width as Classic. No add. lines for (mtb:scale(:uphill)/cycleway=*/sac_scale)
*hike --- Similar to easy but fully optimized for hiking.
*wint --- Winter - like hiking layout - but optimized for Winter Sports (does not show mtb/bicycle informations). Shows sledge routes, nordic skiing and skitouring routes.
*topo --- Simple topopgraphical map style - Easy to understand - high contrast.

*trad --- Mapsource/Basecamp/Qlandkarte_GT/Desktop --- General big screen/resolution layout. It is the easiest to understand layout and optimized for big screens (800x600 or bigger). Street colors similar to google maps. Medium contrast - therefore bad for GPS use.

Extra Wide - for 64 colour Display of Fenix watches / watches with MIP Display (5px small roads/trails/tracks)
*fenx --- Fenix - similar to Wide Legacy but optimized for Fenix series 5/6/7 watches which can only show 64 colours

Other recent Updates.

I have once again reworked a bit how to draw tracks and ways with mtb:scale information. I had changed this 2 years ago and now went back a little bit to how it was before hoping it's a better compromise. It's always hard to chose the different colours. In general dark colours are better contrast on Garmin GPS devices MIP displays - but some colours like purple, turqoise, yellow, green or red also stand out well.  However purple usually is used for routes/tracks. while turquoise is used for showing the way you traveled for trackback and if used for roads could be easily confused with water objects. That's why I chose green for ways rated with mtb:scale and for mtb routes. Now brown (used for hiking trails sac_scale) actually has better contrast but green stands out more in the map. That's why I decided to use green for mtb trails and brown for hiking trails. As for colouring mtb trails like skislopes from very easy (green), easy (blue), intermediate (red) to difficult (black) - that would just work out for an overlay - but destroy any other kind of information in the map. Also with different skills of mtbikers the classicication in 4 levels is simply not enough, same goes for hiking classification on difficulty.

New contourlines for Italy and Republic of Cyprus. Since 2 months finally all of Italy is available with contourlines based on LIDAR data - before this was patchy for some regions only with the rest based on satellite DEM data. For Cyprus (just the South) contourlines are now finally also based on LIDAR. That kinda only leaves Portugal, Ireland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and small parts of Romania and Croatia  in the EU without LIDAR based contourlines. And of course quite a lot of bugs or adaptions to OSM keys/terminology I update as always.

The reintroduced Thin Layout - Hofgarten Innsbruck.

]]> https://openmtbmap.org/updates/reintroduction-of-thin-typfile-and-adaptions-for-garmin-edge-x40-firmware-bugs/feed/ 16 https://openmtbmap.org/updates/new-contourlines-for-europe-news/ https://openmtbmap.org/updates/new-contourlines-for-europe-news/#comments Fri, 14 Jul 2023 18:48:38 +0000 https://openmtbmap.org/?p=55323 The next map updates - coming over this weekend will include new contourlines. Actually I updated the contourlines already over the last few months for quite a few countries - but this was only for countries with integrated contourlines. So the next map update of countries like Spain, Norway, Turkey, Europe continent will require an update of the contourlines as well. Note that it can be temporarily for a few hours (up to 16 hours in case of Europe continent map, max 13-14 hours for other maps) that only the new contourlines are online, but the map that belongs to it is not updated yet.

The next Picture shows the coverage of LIDAR DEM sources in my maps after the update (picture by the creator of the DEM files https://sonny.4lima.de/ ). It's the first time for quite a few eastern European countries to have LIDAR DEM data and first update for many parts in Italy as well as other countries. LIDAR DEM sources usually mean that the error in altitude is less than 2-3m even in forest (showing the altitude on the ground, while satellite sourced DEM sources usually have rather the altitude a bit below tree [...]]]> The next map updates - coming over this weekend will include new contourlines. Actually I updated the contourlines already over the last few months for quite a few countries - but this was only for countries with integrated contourlines. So the next map update of countries like Spain, Norway, Turkey, Europe continent will require an update of the contourlines as well. Note that it can be temporarily for a few hours (up to 16 hours in case of Europe continent map, max 13-14 hours for other maps) that only the new contourlines are online, but the map that belongs to it is not updated yet. 

The next Picture shows the coverage of LIDAR DEM sources in my maps after the update (picture by the creator of the DEM files https://sonny.4lima.de/ ). It's the first time for quite a few eastern European countries to have LIDAR DEM data and first update for many parts in Italy as well as other countries. LIDAR DEM sources usually mean that the error in altitude is less than 2-3m even in forest (showing the altitude on the ground, while satellite sourced DEM sources usually have rather the altitude a bit below tree crowns).

Also I changed the 20m equidistance contourlines to show 10m interval up to 50m over sea level. Due to various bugs in the tools used to compile the contourlines - this update took many weeks of work by me as virtually every tool in the toolchain had some bugs that needed to be sorted first.

The other big update was that during the last month I redesigned the layout of the homepage - making it more coherent, exchanging many wordpress plugins that had aged/developped bugs with newer PHP versions - and made a more coherent website layout. I left the overall colour scheme of the website but harmonized many elements, removed many CSS bugs in the theme and some plugins - as well as correct some problems for mobile users. Also finally changed the SSL certificate to Let's Encrypt (I had bought just another 3 year multi domain certificate 3 years ago - as Let's encrypt has no multi domain certificates - and some very old browsers like Internet Explorer on Windows XP were not compatible with SNI - meaning running multiple SSL secured domains from the same IP address using different certificates for each website. However by now there is really no one using those browsers anymore - 3 years ago it was already less than 1% of my visitors and Windws XP is really dead).

Other Updates over the last months were plenty, e.g. updates to OSM usage of valley, railway=halt, adding information=trailblazed and reworked the naming scheme of ways to show a bit more keys/tags concerning road condition (e.g. trail_visibility - shortened as tvVALUE), fixed some access tags, rework of gates, entrances and barriers, improvements to restrooms/toilets, benches, picnik places, remove survey_point (too much clutter) and already last year in October a complete rework of POI visibility on modern Garmin GPS devices according to zoom levels.

Below the Langkofel, Dolomiti in Italy - really close to reality even though it's so steep.

And here a typical comparison between LIDAR data and old quite good quality data - on first look it doesn't appear very different - but the crevease of the river is much more exact with the new data:

vs old contourlines

]]> https://openmtbmap.org/updates/new-contourlines-for-europe-news/feed/ 2 https://openmtbmap.org/updates/autumn-map-updates-12-september-2022/ https://openmtbmap.org/updates/autumn-map-updates-12-september-2022/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2022 22:01:19 +0000 https://openmtbmap.org/?p=54104

Hi Everyone, wishing you a good final to your outdoor season in Europe this year. To make it even better I have done extensive back to back testing with several Garmin GPS devices on my handlebar - trying to improve visibility even more - especially as on the newest Garmin Edge 1040 and Explore 2 the screens did change a bit in their characteristics.

So here is a list of the main changes:

To make your biking and outdoor activities even better - I invested a lot of time - partly together with a graphics designer - to improve the layout of the maps regarding to making them nicer to look at. Previously I had tried to design all elements so that they are easiest to distinguish - that however caused the some not so important things - like the differentiation between industrial or residential quarters to stick out too much - while for most people the main importance is if you are in the nature or in a build up area. It's still easy to distinguish between shopping, industrial or residential quarters - but the different places don't pop out of the screen anymore - leaving better contrast to streets and trails - so things that really matter. I also made buildings much more similar - I think the old differentiation between simple buildings and those with touristic or public usage was not as important as to make them a darker grey. Landfills are now moved to show only at very high detail - they showed too early.

Since 6 months I have not written an update over what changed for OpenMTBMaps and VeloMaps - so here we go. Compared to the last changes the updates were much more subtle to notice - and that's because most of it has been bugfixes on rather rarely happening problems or just updates to OSM keys/values changing.

Visually there have been two main changes - most recently - labels for alpine huts are now again (some Basecamp/GPS device updates changed this) - visual earlier, also for some peaks the labels now show a bit earlier - peaks and alpine huts are still the most important features for orientation in mountainous areas.:

I reworked the naming of hiking, mtb, or cycling routes - now the most important names go first but more route names won't be dropped if a way is part of two cycle routes for example as here - this was actually really hard to get done nicely by priority - so here the Internation Cycle Netwrok MV - Munich to Venice is first in name, followed by the National Cycle network R3 Innradweg - section Tiroler Unterland. I tried to remove tagging errors/pecularities like the [...]]]>

Since 6 months I have not written an update over what changed for OpenMTBMaps and VeloMaps - so here we go. Compared to the last changes the updates were much more subtle to notice - and that's because most of it has been bugfixes on rather rarely happening problems or just updates to OSM keys/values changing.

Visually there have been two main changes - most recently - labels for alpine huts are now again (some Basecamp/GPS device updates changed this) - visual earlier, also for some peaks the labels now show a bit earlier - peaks and alpine huts are still the most important features for orientation in mountainous areas.:

I reworked the naming of hiking, mtb, or cycling routes - now the most important names go first but more route names won't be dropped if a way is part of two cycle routes for example as here - this was actually really hard to get done nicely by priority - so here the Internation Cycle Netwrok MV - Munich to Venice is first in name, followed by the National Cycle network R3 Innradweg - section Tiroler Unterland. I tried to remove tagging errors/pecularities like the R3 ref being doubled here - but it is not possible to get rid of the double naming in any case (problem here is that the ref is R3, and the name incorrectly R3 Innradweg - instead of only Innradweg):

I just recently added Venezuela and Great Britain and Ireland as new countries. The Great Britain and Ireland map includes the channel islands that were removed from the normal Great Britain and Northern Island map before. Also other outlying islands of Great Britain are included in this map removing the need for using the Europe map.

This week I will update the buildings layer for the VeloMaps - so if you integrate the buildings in Basecamp/PC you will need to update the layer too.

Residential areas were not named with the name of the city they belong to. Now it's quicker to see what city an area belongs to if inside a city.

Other fixes are pretty minor - some examples: add ref to name of emergency access points, bridges on highway=footway (not highway=path) that are part of a hiking route but not part of a cycling or mtb route where not routable. As usually highway=path is used this error was very rare where it mattered. Remove ref from streets in Korea as it caused confusion. Various fixed to the create.... scripts. For some weeks the OpenMTBMap gmapsupp.img downloads did not have correctly working address search. Improvements for camp sites / caravan sites and their display due to new osm naming schemes. Some improvmeents on housenumbers and address search, remove some crazy tagging of natural=basin in Slovakia that was not following the tagging standards anywhere else. And many other small fixes.

]]> https://openmtbmap.org/updates/spring-2022-updates-for-OpenMTBMap-and-VeloMap-over-the-last-months/feed/ 0 https://openmtbmap.org/garmin/new-fenix-layout/ https://openmtbmap.org/garmin/new-fenix-layout/#comments Mon, 11 Oct 2021 17:52:54 +0000 https://openmtbmap.org/?p=53838 The past few months most of the work has been done on optimizing the map creation and on updating things on the website and website server. After a broken power supply fan caused the websites to be down for 20 hours in August I decided that I should, after 4.5 years migrate the website to a new server (server hardware is usually good for about 5 years of 24/7 use - then it should be replaced as failures are becoming likely). The broken fan on the PSU was really troublesome as the server provider did not find it first as the server would run just fine in rescue mode - but overheat quickly in real use then shut down. I then decided to also upgrade the map compilation server and optimize a lot of processes (e.g. I noticed that the map compilation was causing way too many writes to the NVME disks and had to optimize many steps and move things to ramdisk away from NVME in order to not prematurely destroy the NVME drives. This excessive writes became apparent with the introduction of the 10m contourlines, and the VeloMap buildings layer).

Also I reworked the whole map creation [...]]]> The past few months most of the work has been done on optimizing the map creation and on updating things on the website and website server. After a broken power supply fan caused the websites to be down for 20 hours in August I decided that I should, after 4.5 years migrate the website to a new server (server hardware is usually good for about 5 years of 24/7 use - then it should be replaced as failures are becoming likely). The broken fan on the PSU was really troublesome as the server provider did not find it first as the server would run just fine in rescue mode - but overheat quickly in real use then shut down. I then decided to also upgrade the map compilation server and optimize a lot of processes (e.g. I noticed that the map compilation was causing way too many writes to the NVME disks and had to optimize many steps and move things to ramdisk away from NVME in order to not prematurely destroy the NVME drives. This excessive writes became apparent with the introduction of the 10m contourlines, and the VeloMap buildings layer).

Also I reworked the whole map creation to create bigger tiles so that you can install larger areas to your devices without suddenly missing an area without any notice because of hitting the 2048 or 4096 tile limit. Devices with 4096 or higher possible tile limit should now be fine with map tiles averaging around 8-10MB (so 4096*8 >> 32GB sd card limit of Garmin devices). I still recommend to only install 6-8GB of maps to a device for speed at boot and search functions (deactivating a map in the GPS device menu does not help with speed of boot or search) but bigger tiles are always a good thing.

Besides countless bugfixes I also worked on a map layout compatible with the 64 colour display of the Fenix 5/6 watches. This was rather complicated as the Fenix watches not only, only have 64 colours - but many of them are hard to distinguish while other colours are so low in contrast that they are hardly visible. I've listened to both user feedback and also got a Fenix 6x to work on it locally. The resulting colours are a bit different from the other maps - and look horrible on Mac/Windows PCs - but work pretty well on the watch itself. Yes the map display on the Fenix cannot compete with dedicated devices - but with the optimized layout it works pretty well to not get lost. Planning a route or a track on the Fenix is pretty cumbersome - but following a route/track downloaded from the net / created in Basecamp works very well now.

Here are some pictures of the map with the new fenix layout - reflecting pretty accurately how the maps look in reality (the sunlight is already a bit low, with stronger sun contrast is better, in shadow contrast is worse - as normal for Garmin transreflective displays):

Notice how the vivid the colors are on the screenshots - other Garmin GPS devices do not have such a huge difference in screenshot vs real life.

So I had to really look for the poppiest of the 64 colors to get a nice rendering. I actually feel the problem is the pretty high DPI of the Fenix watches. they reflect sunlight much worse due to high DPI - with say 60% the resolution things would still be very sharp from normal viewing distance - but with better contrast (Still the Fenix 6x is really good for hiking - for mtbiking I think it is a backup only. The screen is simply too tiny.  For hiking it's great and much better than other smartwatches due to the great battery life - which could not be achieved with OLED display). Also due to the high DPI the Fenix layout now uses the widest lines I've ever used. E.g. contourlines are 2 pixels wide instead of 1.

While many people really like the new layouts introduced in July - others preferred the higher contrast of the old layout style. So I backported some important improvements to the old wide/clas layout and they are now included as wide legacy and clas legacy layout. With the introduction of the Fenix layout and the legacy layout I decided to retire the thin layout - however I optimized the clas and clas legacy layout to work better on some older edge devices which before were used best with the thin layout. I cannot maintain too many layouts so the thin layout had to go. Also I spent many hours optimizing the contrast on the new modern (yellow streets) layout so it's easier to differentiate bigger from smaller roads.

And another big update that is visible to all VeloMap users - I decided to move the buildings into a separate layer for the VeloMap just like the contourlines. Before I had gradually decreased the buildings shown to improve map drawing speed on GPS devices and a better contrast for the rest of the map - but it is hard to satisfy everyone here. Some people want to see buildings, others feel they slow down the map in bigger cities as well as simply not needing them. Now you can chose to display them or not and activate/deactivate them just like the contourlines. I guess that most OpenMTBMap users want buildings - so for the OpenMTBMaps they buildings are not in a separate layer. 

There are quite a few more fixes on the installer - e.g. the size calculation of maps to be installed was wrong for maps with .7z files for inclusion. Or for some months highway=footway in the OpenMTBMap by default was only routable for foot. I had made a mistake there causing this bug some time ago. Natural=stone (France only) and natural=rock, natural=valley, natural=gorge as well was some other new OSM keys are now displayed. Also I worked on optimising other outdoor features like ridges, couloirs and aretes

The batch/bash files had not been fully compatible with 10m contourlines. 

Personally my left knee is creating me big problems and I hope I can soon get stem cell cartilage (ACT) replacement - as I hope not to need a knee replacement not even being 40 years. But my past bad crashes from snowboarding and skiing, amongst 3 ACL replacements and a lot of meniscus removed have rendered my knee unable to do many sports. I hope to return stronger than every before during the last years but this will take quite some time to heal. 

]]> https://openmtbmap.org/garmin/new-fenix-layout/feed/ 47 https://openmtbmap.org/updates/new-wide_easy-layout-for-VeloMap/ https://openmtbmap.org/updates/new-wide_easy-layout-for-VeloMap/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2021 07:14:38 +0000 https://openmtbmap.org/?p=53762 Yesterdays post was about the general improvements to the layout of the OpenMTBMaps and VeloMaps. Todays post is about the new easy layout for the VeloMap (based on wide layout - as most users now have GPS devices where the wide looks better than the classic layout due to higher DPI). The OpenMTBMap had since many years an easy layout - with less detail (though based on classic not wide before the updates). For the VeloMaps - which do not need to show strong differentiation for offroad trails - this was not so much needed. Especially as there existed already the "race" layout - for racing bicycle which is heavily reduced and only shows important information for people using racing bicycles.

However quite a few people never took time or are not interested to know if there is a cycletrack/cycleway running alongside a road. Nor do they want the best contrast or are they interested in knowing if there is a footway or a pedestrian street. Or if some street is considered a service street or a residential street. The easy layout does not show those differences and keeps it simple. The colours of the steets is similar to [...]]]> Yesterdays post was about the general improvements to the layout of the OpenMTBMaps and VeloMaps. Todays post is about the new easy layout for the VeloMap (based on wide layout - as most users now have GPS devices where the wide looks better than the classic layout due to higher DPI). The OpenMTBMap had since many years an easy layout - with less detail (though based on classic not wide before the updates). For the VeloMaps - which do not need to show strong differentiation for offroad trails - this was not so much needed. Especially as there existed already the "race" layout - for racing bicycle which is heavily reduced and only shows important information for people using racing bicycles.

However quite a few people never took time or are not interested to know if there is a cycletrack/cycleway running alongside a road. Nor do they want the best contrast or are they interested in knowing if there is a footway or a pedestrian street. Or if some street is considered a service street or a residential street. The easy layout does not show those differences and keeps it simple. The colours of the steets is similar to google maps - while trying to still maximise contrast on your screen but without changing the colours too much.

It still differentiates long distance cycleroutes from regional/local cycleroutes. Why do I consider this essential? Well if you follow along for example the "EV6" - commonly known as Danube Cycle Path / Rivers Route you don't want to be confused at intersections with many regional cycle routes which route is the EV6 and which is the regional one. Yes I already render the long distance ones thicker - but I still consider that the colour should be different. So International and National cycle routes are shown in blue, while regional ones are shown in black (this is not only applying to the easy layout, but to all VeloMap layouts).

The principle to understanding the map colours is still very easy - streets also for cars are shown in bright colour. Pathes that are either not allowed for cycling - or more suited for mountain bikes only due to bad surface - are shown thinly or in brown colour. Black/dotted black is used for pathes/streets with good surface and usually no / not much cars. Very thin dotted black are used for unknown way quality (often private pathes or access to houses)

So let me show you some Screenhots of old vs new, or just the new easy layout:

First an old screenshot of the VeloMap Austria - Park Schönbrunn in the wide layout.

vs the improved new wide layout - the big differentiation here is that I show national parks and similar now only transparent in green - not overlaying anymore. Plus toned down the buildings and sports places:

and finally the much simpler easy layout. Note that in the top right - the wide layout shows the cyclepath on the Mariahilfer Straße (light blue dots) - which are left out in the easy layout - also of course the different colour scheme for roads:

Some more examples:

A good overview of the street colours in the easy layout for the VeloMap. Motorways and trunk roads are in orange. Primary/Secondary/Tertiary roads are shown in yellow - Primary roads in the most flashy yellow - while tertiary are thinner and in a less bright yellow. The EV6 and EV9 in blue, regional cycle routes in black.

The Danube in Vienna - and the blue EV6 danube cycle path. Sadly I cannot easily influence which lines are shown on top of each other. The garmin map format is not supporting a layering/ordering of lines. So the blue marking for the cyclepath sometimes disappears behind other roads. This is especially happening if in OSM parallel ways are mapped as separate ways - instead of using the cyclelane/cycletrack keys. Zoom in further to avoid confusion.

70m easy - at 70m for most cases it becomes very easy to follow the cycle routes. Also good to see here - the difference in oneway arrows. The ones made up of two triangles besides the road - are only for cars. While the ones consisting of a thinner single arrow are valid for all vehicles including bicycles. Tell me in a comment here if you would prefer I do not show oneway arrows that only apply to cars in the easy layout. I am a bit unsure about it. Do you still want to know this (usually you have to ride much more careful if only cyclists are allowed to go in the opposite direction - and the danger of being in an accident is a lot higher) Or should I leave those arrows out in the easy layout and only show oneway arrows that apply for both cyclists and cars?

]]> https://openmtbmap.org/updates/new-wide_easy-layout-for-VeloMap/feed/ 12 https://openmtbmap.org/updates/OpenMTBMap-new-map-layouts-finally-online-big-improvement-for-easy-and-hiking-layout/ https://openmtbmap.org/updates/OpenMTBMap-new-map-layouts-finally-online-big-improvement-for-easy-and-hiking-layout/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2021 20:36:44 +0000 https://openmtbmap.org/?p=53747 After many weeks of trial and error - and trying out a lot of changes both on desktop and in real life hiking and mtbiking - finally the rework of the map layout is finished. I have made sure to make the map layouts much easier to comprehend, more harmonic to look at - and more congruent in consistency of the colors.

So e.g. before while mtb trails were green, mtb routes were brown. At 500m zoom scale (Basecamp, normal detail) the map had become too cluttered in Europe's densely populated areas. For some polygons there were some problems that they overlapped other areas (e.g. parks) and in general some areas just stuck out way too much even though their importance to hiking or mtbiking was not given (sport fields). I had differentiated building colors too much - and had different shades of grey for government buildings, museums and so on vs normal buildings. While this gave a lot of information - it is not actually needed and make the map a bit harder to read.

I have now reworked all layouts to focus on the essential things - while still providing the awesome level of detail only given [...]]]> After many weeks of trial and error - and trying out a lot of changes both on desktop and in real life hiking and mtbiking - finally the rework of the map layout is finished. I have made sure to make the map layouts much easier to comprehend, more harmonic to look at - and more congruent in consistency of the colors.

So e.g. before while mtb trails were green, mtb routes were brown. At 500m zoom scale (Basecamp, normal detail) the map had become too cluttered in Europe's densely populated areas. For some polygons there were some problems that they overlapped other areas (e.g. parks) and in general some areas just stuck out way too much even though their importance to hiking or mtbiking was not given (sport fields). I had differentiated building colors too much - and had different shades of grey for government buildings, museums and so on vs normal buildings. While this gave a lot of information - it is not actually needed and make the map a bit harder to read.

I have now reworked all layouts to focus on the essential things - while still providing the awesome level of detail only given by OpenMTBMaps for planning your trip. Meaning highly differentiated difficulty for mtbiking or hiking, and much more important information quickly visible. Yes some other maps may on first view still be more pleasing to the eye, but transport way way less information. I worked especially a lot on creating a new easy layout - leaving out information that some people though is too much - like symbols for street parallel cycleways, or mtb:scale:uphill. The easy layout however still features mtb:scale difficulty coloring for mtb trails. If you want to skip that too - use the otherwise very identical hiking layout. I now also included mtb routes into the hiking layout. a) for hikers not liking to be among mtbikers to avoid those ways, b) for mtbikers wanting a more standard topographical map but still see mtb routes (though less prominent than hiking routes).

I will write another post in a few days about the new easy layout for the VeloMap. The VeloMap so far did not have an easy layout - so I created an easy layout (besides the race bicycle layout) for the VeloMap too.

Oh - and as feedburner is shutting down - I have changed the newsletter from feedburner to follow.it service. Sorry for the mass newsletter some weeks ago packing many old newsletters - that was a bug that happened in transition.

Finally in a couple of weeks, I will also publish a layout that is Fenix 5/6  64 colour proof. I still have to do quite some tests on the Fenix layout however - before I can publish that one. It will come for both VeloMap and OpenMTBMap.

And last but not least - I again rendered newly all contourlines - why? Well after the last update I noticed that ALOS world 3d updated their altitude data to a newer version, now with nearly worldwide coverage (instead of stopping at 60° North) and viewfinderpanoramas has uploaded a new Greenland dataset (also largely based on ALOS world 3d plus Arctic DEM). As it's too much of a hassle to look at which countries were affected by this (mainly outside Europe) - I recreated all contourlines. The next map update will feature the new contourlines. New Asia continent 20m contourlines will also be included.

Enough of the talk - here are some before and after screenshots:

Old Wide layout at 500m - vs new wide layout 500m - Notice that there are much less trails and roads shown. They now appear one zoom step closer in at 300m (instead of 700m before). Also notice now the green MTB routes (and red hiking routes). Trails with MTB difficulty information - or part of a hiking or mtb route are now shown up to 700m (instead of 1.5km before). While before most road trails started to be shown at 700m - which is now reduced to 300m)

I've also changed the forest colours a bit (a bit more dominant now).

Old easy layout 500m - the old easy layout had no mtb:scale trail difficulty information.:

new easy layout 500m:

vs the new hiking layout - Hiking routes are now shown dominantly in black, while mtb routes are quite thin in brown. MTB trail difficulty can be looked at by clicking on the trail itself - it's still part of the name.

Bern - old 1500m zoomscale - easy layout

vs new 1500m zoomscale easy layout. Note that for the easy and hiking layout I also made the street colors of important streets/highways more similar to google maps / english style - but trying to still keep them high contrast.  Using google maps colors directly would be to low contrast for Garmin GPS devices. The mtb routes in green are much easier to see now than before - and because the street colours are more homogenous - it's easier to see the cities (well also because I reduced the detail level of what is shown quite a bit here). When I had used that detail level in 2009 it was appropriate - but now with higher DPI monitors and garmin GPS devices displays - it makes sense to reduce the details a bit.

]]> https://openmtbmap.org/updates/OpenMTBMap-new-map-layouts-finally-online-big-improvement-for-easy-and-hiking-layout/feed/ 8 https://openmtbmap.org/updates/30-05-2021-huge-updates-to-OpenMTBMap-and-VeloMap-maps-new-contourlines-and-much-more/ https://openmtbmap.org/updates/30-05-2021-huge-updates-to-OpenMTBMap-and-VeloMap-maps-new-contourlines-and-much-more/#comments Sun, 30 May 2021 16:34:18 +0000 https://openmtbmap.org/?p=53606 Some people may have noticed that there are 10m contourlines as separate maps on the download pages since about 4 weeks. During the process of generating them I noticed quite a few problems in steep areas that should not have been there. So began a long process of improving the contourlines. The problem was that the filters the map compiler runs against any lines were not suited to contourlines. With the help of others mkgmap is now improved a lot in this regard - and kinda resulting from this also normal maps have improved a lot when zoomed out (thanks to Gerd on his never ending improvements to mkgmap). When zooming out - the further you zoom out now - the bigger the improvement.

For all countries and continent maps - except Asia full continent map (will come in 1-2 months - it is a huge work to create them) there are now 20m equidistance contourlines - and 10m equidistance contourlines. On all maps updated from 30. May 2021 you can select 10m or 20m contourlines. The 10m contourliens are now also integrated into the installer. For Mac OSx they are integrated too - and while for windows users [...]]]> Some people may have noticed that there are 10m contourlines as separate maps on the download pages since about 4 weeks. During the process of generating them I noticed quite a few problems in steep areas that should not have been there. So began a long process of improving the contourlines. The problem was that the filters the map compiler runs against any lines were not suited  to contourlines. With the help of others mkgmap is now improved a lot in this regard - and kinda resulting from this also normal maps have improved a lot when zoomed out (thanks to Gerd on his never ending improvements to mkgmap). When zooming out - the further you zoom out now - the bigger the improvement.

For all countries and continent maps - except Asia full continent map (will come in 1-2 months - it is a huge work to create them) there are now 20m equidistance contourlines - and 10m equidistance contourlines. On all maps updated from 30. May 2021 you can select 10m or 20m contourlines. The 10m contourliens are now also integrated into the installer.  For Mac OSx they are integrated too  - and while for windows users the 10m contourlines have to be downloaded separately, for OSx most countries already bundle them in the gmapi Installer.  I had planned to integrate the 10m contourlines on 9 April 2021 for the 12 year anniversary of the OpenMTBMap website - but that work turned out to be way way bigger than anticipated - it is easy to create 2-3 maps, but creating 180 different countries/regions means everything is way more complicated and more bugs have a chance to appear somewhere in the process.

Less visible updates however also important. I have reworked the whole relations (MTB routes, Bicycle Routes, Hiking Routes) integration. Before it was kinda random if several routes were using the same way - which name was given to the way. Now this is ordered from most important to least important routes.  This previously had also caused problems that if say a regional route and a national route shared the same way - and the regional route was handled before the national - when zooming out the national route was not shown. This is now fixed. 

Complete overhaul of the windows installers - I spent about 80 hours optimizing the installer to be faster (yes still a bit slow - as they use lzma instead of lzma2 and do not support multithreaded unpacking of data) and correctly integrate the 10m and 20m contourlines. Also hope they are easier to understand now. There is still some work to be done - concerning if you install separate contourlines only map on both VeloMap and OpenMTBMap installer (with contourlines as separate download) - I will integrate a warning for this in the future.  It is now also possible to only install a separate contourlines only map without installing the map itself but obviously I do not recommend this.  Updating the installers I have often thought about just moving the windows maps to gmapi format - because I then would not need to fuss around with NSIS installers - but there are so many cool things that can be done with NSIS installers, plus the fact the windows format is IMHO still better than the gmapi format (except the windows registry) - that I recommend windows users to stick on using the classic map format. 

Old Contourlines based on Lidar Data:

vs the new 20m contourlines - based on the same data but with improved douglas peucker filtering. Notice how the lines are much better aligned to each other. there is no more one contourline crossing another because they were simplified at different locations. This effect will be everywhere - but because the actual distance difference is low - it will only be really visible in very steep areas like on this region. It is a little bit more exact now - but the main difference is that the rounding to the Garmin GPS device is more coordinated.

vs the new contourlines at 10m equidistance (and resolution 24 instead of 23 to be even more exact - one point is exact to around 2.8m at resolution 24 vs 5.4m at resolution 23 - this uses a lot more data however. I recommend to use 10m contourlines in hilly or flat areas - and 20m in real mountains like the Alps.

As the maps are updated over the next 24 hours - there will still be slight discrepancies and installers of maps with separate contourlines do not match the map. For OpenMTBMap this should happen much less often than for VeloMap maps (only for english language OpenMTBMap maps with separate contourlines). From Tuesday 01. June this should all be fixed. I will also still add some more gmapsupp.img contourline maps for continents or huge countries which are right now not online yet. As I need to create them manually with MapInstall this will still take a week or so. For Asia continent contourlines gmapsupp.img map is not possible - as it breaks the 4048 tiles limit. The windows 10m and 20m Asia contourlines map will still come in 2-3 weeks or so - there was a mistake on the first try an my server needs over 2 weeks computing nonstop to create them.

If there are no problems that I overlooked - I will update the Europe map in 4-5 days. The contourlines are ready for the Europe map - but I want to wait to see if I maybe missed some bug related to the installer that I simply did not notice. Creating the Europe map is always quite an effort - over 40 hours of compile time (due to 8 versions - 4x OpenMTBMap, 4x VeloMap).

Upcoming Improvements over the next few weeks: I started working on the zoom levels - but stopped this to focus on getting the contourlines updated. I will soon pick this up again and plan to move most ways/trails one zoom level down. Openstreetmap is more and more detailled and I feel it is needed to adapt this. I would prefer doing this only for Europa but I cannot maintain two styles differing in this regard at the same time. Most of my users use the maps in Europe and here it is simply better to have some features appearing later.  I already overworked the details when zoomed out further - and think there was a big improvement. The main problem is rivers - I spent hours trying to work around the inconsistencies in river mapping in OSM and making sure important rivers show in lower zoom levels. However the problem being here is that rivers are more and more mapped with relations - and many of those super relations for rivers like the Danube or other major rivers are broken or partly missing. It is better now than 2-3 months ago in my maps - but not perfect. Essentially it would be best to move away from OSM to another more consistent data source for the very far zoomed out regions - but I do not know how to do - nor which data source would be compatible.

Also I am working on a new layout - for people who prefer more of a classic hiking map look. I hope to finish it in 4-5 weeks. I still need some time testing it out in practice on my Edge, Oregon and etrex devices. I still feel there needs to be some adaptions for better contrast - typical paper maps are simply different. However I aim to make it easy to understand for people just used to topographic paper maps. My opinion is still that the color layout I am using right now is way better than the classic maps in readability and possibility to transmit information. All other OSM based maps contain way less information about the quality / usability of ways. But some people are just overwhelmed by it - so I will create that layout for them. 

Unrelated to this - I have overworked both OpenMTBMap and VeloMap websites - and included many tutorial videos. Many things were a bit outdated and I tried to correct most of them. Having so much content also means it takes a lot of time to keep it up to date. Most video tutorials are aimed at beginners - however the route planning videos for example may still contain a few tips and tricks also for regular users. I still feel that written tutorials are better than video tutorials - but because some people prefer seeing video tutorials I created video tutorials for nearly all common desktop related tasks with the OpenMTBMaps and VeloMaps. Somewhere on my roadmap are also videos using GPS devices - but they are more complicated to produce so still need some time. I will also still create a video comparing the different layouts and explaining a bit more about them. However that will have to wait until I have finished the classic topographic layout.

Personally I spent the last 6 months in Taiwan improving my Chinese and just came back 10 days ago to Europe. I plan to go to Taiwan next winter again - but lets see about coronavirus situation there (was the safest country in the world until 3 weeks ago - and while I am not afraid of catching the virus - also due to vaccination - I do not like lockdowns so will only go back if there is no risk of lockdowns anymore. I really hope the coronavirus related problems are over for Europe. This has also cost me many donators but luckily there are still enough people donating to OpenMTBMap or VeloMap to allow me to continue. I will soon for the first time since 2014 I think, increase the prices a bit. People using subscription will not be affected.