Vidar pointed me to this beautiful map source that — unfortuanetly — is limited to Massachusetts, USA. The map is an interesting montage of several layers and data sources Lars Ahlzen has accomplished.
If you choose the openStreetMap as your background map in TrailRunner and view the area covered by this map server, TrailRunner now uses this source.

Read more about this project:
> What is TopOSM
> TopOSM online viever

Tags: Maps, services, Topographic Maps, openstreetmap

I worked on the optimization for map borders. The problem in prior versions of TrailRunner was that when one map provider had no more maps for a region I should automatically switch to the new map provider. What I now do is that I check for each tile being loaded from what WMS server I should get it from. The screenshot shows a cut between the two Maps sources Rheinland-Pfalz TK25, copyright Landesamt für Vermessung und Geobasisinformation Rheinland-Pfalz (LVermGeo) and Hessen ATKIS 50, copyright Hessisches Landesamt fuer Bodenmanagement und Geoinformation.
The funny thing in this picture is that I thought the left map was originally a scanned paper map and the right map was a digital vector map. That could still be true but as you can see with the word "Kläranlage" in the middle of the maps, the word is perfectly aligned on both sources.
Looks like god even planned the locations for clarification plants when he created the world.

Tags: Maps

I have updated the opencyclemap.org data source, as the openStreemap alternative is now hosted on a faster server.
If you didn’t know yet, the cycle map is based on the very same data as the OpenStreetMap project but uses a specialized map renderer for outdoor activities. At low zoom levels it is intended for overviews of the National Cycle Network; at higher zoom levels it should help with planning which streets to cycle on.

The new maps now display a elevation contours and hill coloring and have cycle lanes marked on streets within cities.

You might want to reload your maps if you want TrailRunner not to display the old cached imagery. You can either use File > Consolidate > Reload Background Maps or remove the whole cache directory from your home directory under yourHome/Library/Application Support/TrailRunner/GeoTiles/openstreetmap.org

> openstreetmap.org
> opencyclemap.org

Tags: Maps, Topographic Maps, community, openstreetmap

TrailRunner 1.8 is out !
Have fun and thanks for your feedback!

> Download


User Interface
Reworked the overall application design to match the current state of the art


Map loading
Although already improved much in 1.7 this now should be it.

Track editor
Selections within the profile chart, route slider, track editor and route description window are now fully synchronized.



Routes vs. Workouts
One of the biggest problems for TrailRunner newbies was, that the differences between a route and a workout / the main document and the diary wasn’t intuitively clear. So I now changed the interface to make both approaches available in the main window.



Download here: http://trailrunnerx.com/download-beta-redirect.html

Tags: MacOS X 10.5 Leopard, Maps, routes, directions, diary

Klaus from GPSies.com wrote another cool trick in his weblog. Meaning you can plan a route in maps.google.com and import the course into TrailRunner. To do so, just follow these steps:
Goto maps.google.com and use the Get Directions tab to plan your course.
Click the Link to this page link.
In the Paste link in email or IM edit field, append &output=kml to the end of the url (with no blank inbetween)



Copy the whole URL and paste it into the address bar. Press the return key.
A kml file will now download. Drag the maps.kml file onto TrailRunner or the main window. The course importer will open.



How cool.

Tags: GoogleMaps, routes, Maps, directions, planning, weblog

Do you also dream of a time when topographic maps are available for free and the quality would almost be better than commercial alternatives? The time has come. Left you see the region where I do most of my "home runs" on google terrain maps and right the same area on openstreetmap.org. What a detail, how nice…

Tags: openstreetmap, Maps

If you live outside the western countries that already offer topographic map services TrailRunner can use, you might want to take a look at the topographic map collection of Perry-Castañeda Library of the University of Texas at Austin. They provide tons of topographic maps created by the US Army. The map above depicts the Ivory Coast in West Africa, a place I've been to years ago.

It would be great if someone could tile these into a common web service format. But until that is done, you can manually add the maps to TrailRunner and calibrate them.

> US Army Map Service Topographic Maps
> Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

Tags: Maps

Today I added a contour layer to background maps. The contour data comes from the same USGS data source as the already known elevation download. But the transparent overlay is something being calculated and provided by Jonathan Stott from www.earthtools.org.
Earthtools is a cool service anyway. Hopefully it will stay free for a long time. As long as it is, enjoy the contours.
The display settings you'll find under Document Settings > Additional Settings > Contour : Show/Hide
The examples above show a region with the contour overlay applied to three background map sources. On the right with satellite imagery and left with openstreetmap.org. As a sidenote I realized that openstreetmap really gets a momentum. I am very pleased for the quality and detail the service now offers. As maps at openstreetmap.org change often, please regularly empty your map cache.
File > Consolidate > Empty Caches
The other news are terrain maps from Google. As you can see in the middle image, also with overlay contours applied.

> www.earthtools.org
> www.openstreetmap.org
> maps.google.com

Tags: Maps

What's new
TrailRunner 1.5 is a heavy rewrite of all core components dealing with maps and geographical coordinate systems. Hopefully resulting in a much simpler user interface but in any case much better for me to maintain as I squirted out some complex crap code that's not needed anymore.
In previous versions of TrailRunner the most complicated thing was to understand what to do next with an empty document in front of you: The solution was calibration and loading of maps. In TrailRunner 1.5, new documents now automatically show a regional background map of an area nearby your current location. That's not patent pending but clever enough to make you feel home. The task following is to zoom in to the exact location and to start creating your personal trail-network.

World View and Resolution Independence
Additionally the map loading process is now simplified and improved for different zoom levels like in GoogleMaps. Before, TrailRunner loaded only the highest resolution maps available, resulting in heavy memory load for overview zoom levels. The new version just loads the resolution you see and the deeper you zoom in, the more detailed maps are reloaded. As caching was vastly improved, zooming in and out will become undisturbing after a short while.
Also the scroll bars have gone. As a document could now cover almost the whole world, scroll bars didn't make sense anymore. To move the working area around, use the hand tool. While using other tools, use the space bar to temporarily access the hand tool.

The working area is now resolution independed. Tracks, way-points and labels now always stay the same visual size even if you zoom down to the ants. Displayed tracks are now visually compressed representations of the original track meaning the more you zoom in, the more detailed the track will be displayed.

Maps and Locations
A new map source was added. OpenStreetMap is an open source initiative where people like you upload their GPS tracks and cartographers create professional grade maps from these. I was having an eye on the effort for almost two years now and this summer seemed to be full of mapping weekends. So use these maps for free and if you are able to, try to contribute to the project. One important thing with OpenStreetMap is that these maps constantly change and as TrailRunner heavily caches imagery, use File > Consolidate > Empty Cache to reload the current visible maps. Visit the OpenStreetMap project page to learn more.

To manually add maps to TrailRunner, just drag images onto the working area and rotate or scale them to the size they perfectly match the background maps. After the map fits well, just add it to the store by moving it to any of the lower layers in document settings.
Dragging new map tiles into the document will now remember the scale and rotation modifications of the previous tile. This makes it much easier if you drag-copy tiles from web applications into your document and have them rotated and resized like the previously selected tile.

Another new feature is the locations pane. You'll find two lists there. The upper one shows all way-points in your document, sorted by distance to the current location. The list below searches an internet database for locations. If you import a GPX file in locations, only the contained way-points and lap-points will be added to the upper list. Both are meant to give you a fast way to navigate around your trail-network or respectively the world.

Important Compatibility Notes
TrailRunner 1.5 will no longer support documents that where calibrated manually. This is due to the fact that the whole manual calibration was crappy and so I removed it. I know that this will cause a lot of trouble to some of you. But on the other hand it caused even more trouble and unsolvable problems to others. Make the world a better place by using the global coordinate system. It's now more straightforward to use.

Because of fundamental changes: DO NOT OPEN DOCUMENTS SAVED IN 1.5 WITH 1.4! Should you need to, always work with copies!

The central data store now only saves personal maps you've imported manually. Background maps loaded from Internet services WILL BE REMOVED and reloaded in the new format. This might take quite long when you first start up with the new version.
The new background maps are cached under Home/Library/Application Support/TrailRunner/GeoTiles. This cache can become very huge. But if you delete stuff from inside there, TrailRunner won't get harmed.

As TrailRunner will remove data from the central data store, you should better make a Backup of it. It's located in Home/Library/Application Support/TrailRunner/GeoBitmaps2.datastore – just duplicate the file and keep the save copy.

Donation Policy Changes
By the official release of TrailRunner 1.5 the fixed donation was increased to 25 Euro (~ 34 USD). That's mainly because I think that the value of the new Release is worth it. Surely, all previous registrations will stay valid.

Tags: Maps

TrailRunner can now download map images from the internet. Main-USA, Hawaii and Alaska have a good quality as they are based on topographic maps from the 60´s. Unfortunately the rest of the world is only covered (yet) with low to mid quality Nasa satellite imagery.
The current implementation is a proof of concept so you might want to try it out and tell me if it is of any use to you. It might make sense if you happen to get a GPX file from somewhere or if you imported some data from your GPS Device and want to look at the geographical region the route is in.
But I expect more map-servers popping up in the near future. There are already some nice ones for Germany but they only support local coordinate projections — to much work to implement a support in TrailRunner yet.
If you have any feedback or some pointers where I could find other servers to include, please drop me a line. For the technically interested, the known services directory can be found in the MapServices.plist inside the Application Package.

And this is how it works for mere mortals: Import any GPX into an empty document or take a calibrated one. Under File > Import you'll find a new menu item to download the map data.

Have fun, patience and a fast internet-connection.

Tags: Maps