I am something of a map geek. I can spend hours poring over maps. Occasionally I’ll even grab a map and actually go outside and use it too. :o
Hence I am extra chuffed with Anquet Maps. For an admittedly large sum of money, you can get the whole country on detailed topo maps, and - here’s the cool bit - turn them into a 3-D landscape. Check out the screenshots on the link.
In fact, that’s not the coolest bit - they now have aerial photo coverage of most of Britain too, so you can drape the photos over the 3-D landscape instead of the map, and “fly” around the whole damn country. It’s like having your own private jet They don’t seem to have updated the screenshots to reflect this though, but it’s mind-bogglingly cool.
Yeah, but, if I’m not mistaken, USGS maps are FREE to the great American taxpayer. We have to pay for our government maps, despite our taxes having been used to draw the damn things in the first place.
USGS maps aren’t free, that I know of. I’ve bought quads at USGS HQ for about 3 USD. Pretty reasonable, though.
TOPO! makes the 3D digital topos for each state in the US, but at 100 USD a pop, I’m not likely to indulge. But I’m the opposite of an early adopter, I’m the guy who waits till it’s at the point-of-purchase display for a buck…
Not as easy as you might think. Your invading hordes could easily be felled by the flu, having been unable to get their flu shots this year.
It’s all a big Limey plot.
Best friends indeed.
I have the National Geographic TOPO! US series (1:100000 scale, covering the whole US, on 17 CDs), which is pretty nice but not quite detailed enough for hiking. I wish their 1:24000 series weren’t so expensive.
Can anyone recommend other mapping programs for US topo maps? DeLorme has a version (Topo USA) that does the 3d projections, but I don’t know what map scale comes on the CD.
I ordered another chunk of maps and they arrived yesterday. Very cool. The Virtual Landscape thing works really well - you can find pictures taken in the hills on Google Images and work out exactly where they were taken by setting the viewpoint on the ground and moving around. They match incredibly well.
Hey An Arky, the US Forest Service publishes awesome maps for about $4.00 a pop. I left mine at work, but there better’n the USGS topo maps. They update 'em about every couple of years or so, and have BLM and Nat’l Forest land colored so you can tell the difference.
I don’t know if they have any for Minnesota, but I’ll check on the way back from work today.
Tripler
Trust me, for $4.00, they’re an absolute steal!
Hmm, maybe I had it wrong, but I thought that the actual map information was free, even if you have to pay for the printed map (which is fair enough). Here in the UK, though, the Ordnace Survey (who make the maps) jump exceedingly hard and fast on any perceived copyright violation. Even people who post hand-drawn sketch maps on their websites get asked (firmly) to take them down if the OS believes that they were based on their maps.
Of course, there are ways to get round this… either by basing your maps on maps older than 50 years, which are out of copyright, or, if you’re really hardcore, walking the paths and roads with a GPS unit and using the tracklogs to create your map…
They don’t seem to have updated the screenshots to reflect this though, but it’s mind-bogglingly cool.
