11–20 of 39 posts
If you want an online map, MapZen recently produced a really excellent outdoor map style. No contours, but really beautiful relief shading and an emphasis on hiking trails, parks, etc. It's based on open data including OpenStreetmap, SRTM, and a lot of other sources. https://mapzen.com/blog/walkabout/
I'm a map junkie; I grew up in the UK, where we have the Ordnance Survey, who makes some of the best maps in the world. At school we actually got lessons in mapreading and analysis. As a result, whenever I go to another country the first thing I do is to try and find some decent maps of the area. With, you know, contours on them. It can be surprisingly hard. I was so, so glad to find this.
For some reason, I read the title as being 3D printable maps for the entire US. That'll eventually come, I guess.
https://imgur.com/a/fMy19 is the finished product; http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1524543 are the files I generated and used. They aren't truly accurate maps -- they do have the elevation exaggerated to be more visually interesting, but it's consistently scaled. Some people have gone on to print them w/ 3d printers (rumor is they're on the wall at Makerbot now).
I'm a map junkie; I grew up in the UK, where we have the Ordnance Survey, who makes some of the best maps in the world. At school we actually got lessons in mapreading and analysis. As a result, whenever I go to another country the first thing I do is to try and find some decent maps of the area. With, you know, contours on them. It can be surprisingly hard. I was so, so glad to find this.
FYI Bing maps has the UK OS maps down to 1:25,000 - which is awesome!
streetmap.co.uk works everywhere, though, if you can stand the old-school interface:
For some reason, I read the title as being 3D printable maps for the entire US. That'll eventually come, I guess.
For some reason, I read the title as being 3D printable maps for the entire US. That'll eventually come, I guess.
For some reason, I read the title as being 3D printable maps for the entire US. That'll eventually come, I guess.
Hey this is awesome! I'm a little confused about the NatGeo copyright; aren't these USGS maps and therefore not copyrighted? If you want an online map, MapZen recently produced a really excellent outdoor map style. No contours, but really beautiful relief shading and an emphasis on hiking trails, parks, etc. It's based on open data including OpenStreetmap, SRTM, and a lot of other sources. https://mapzen.com/blog/wal…
It probably falls under something akin to fair use. NatGeo is likely using a lot of USGS geo data, but doing additional work on top, adding in trails, making the map nice, etc.
I tried to make my own maps once for my GPS unit, it gave me a new level of respect for mapmakers. It's not terribly hard to take the raw LIDAR survey data and make crude maps, but making a nice polished zoomable map with trails, POI's, etc is laborious.
Hey this is awesome! I'm a little confused about the NatGeo copyright; aren't these USGS maps and therefore not copyrighted? If you want an online map, MapZen recently produced a really excellent outdoor map style. No contours, but really beautiful relief shading and an emphasis on hiking trails, parks, etc. It's based on open data including OpenStreetmap, SRTM, and a lot of other sources. https://mapzen.com/blog/wal…
(I can't get the page to load yet, but own a bunch of NatGeo maps-) It probably falls under something akin to fair use. NatGeo is likely using a lot of USGS geo data, but doing additional work on top, adding in trails, making the map nice, etc. I tried to make my own maps once for my GPS unit, it gave me a new level of respect for mapmakers. It's not terribly hard to take the raw LIDAR survey data and make crude maps…
It was even more laborious before computers were involved in cartography. My first employer was full of old timers who manually carved contour lines and maintained trig stations.