A new minor version of EOTopo was released today being 2015.1. This update added a data layer that was removed from previous release of EOTopo as it was at the time decided that the 'Shaded Relief' layer would supersede the 'Deformation Areas' layer. A re-evaluation of the 'Deformation Areas' data layer was undertaken and a decision to re-instate this data was made. This update only affects the the 200K series maps and all other scales have retained the 2015 version numbers.
During this update a new import of the ExplorOz
Places data was undertaken and the POI data both on the 200K maps and in the Name Search files is current as at 19 Jan 2015. Additionally on the 200K maps the POI symbol images were reduce in size by approx 20% this recovers some map detail around the POI's whilst maintaining good readability and clarity of the symbols.
See
EOTopo Online &
EOTopo Downloads.
The EOTopo download service was launched today enabling customers to purchase the 200K mapset via download (includes all files contained on the SD/USB plus additional formats such as MMR and TIF). Upgrade purchases can also be obtained via download.
The all new
download page also contains the previously available free files.
To access the downloadable files in the
EOTopo 200K mapset simply purchase the
EOTopo 200K Download from the ExplorOz
Shop. The download links are time limited and tagged to your registered ExplorOz user profile and computer. The window will refresh after the expiry timeout to ensure your links will always work.
A major update to
EOTopo 200K was released today - known as Release 2015.
EOTopo 200K is available on either a micro SD card, or a USB exclusively from the ExplorOz online
shop.
All customers with earlier editions of
EOTopo 200K are able to upgrade to the latest version by using the promo code that will be sent individually by email. As per our Lifetime Upgrade Plan, customers can elect to purchase the latest version of
EOTopo 200K at the discount provided and via the method offered at the time. Currently, the method offered to existing customers to obtain the upgrade to Release 2015 is to purchase a new copy on hard media (SD/USB) via the ExplorOz online
shop (using the supplied promo code to obtain the discount), although we will release a download upgrade option by November 2014.
What's Changed in Release 2015?
* added extensive road name labelling
Australia-wide
* added road distance notations to major sealed and unsealed roads (>1km with +/- 0.5km rounding)
* added greater detail to
Vic High Country* added roads to
Adelaide,
Melbourne,
Sydney,
Perth,
Darwin,
Brisbane* major road realignments around
Brisbane,
Adelaide* added 5600 Camps/Accommodation POIs symbols to the map. Free camps (green tent icon), camps with fee (red tent icon), caravan parks (blue caravan icon), hotel/resorts (brown H icon).
* added over 1500 Point of Interest features to the map
Australia wide. These are indicated with a camera icon.
* added 64 Roadhouses to the map. Indicated with a black R symbol.
* added the latest Native Title Register (dated 2014) to show boundaries and names of determined aboriginal land.
* removed many legacy data features & added newer data from ExplorOz
Places database - these are all names & positions for Camps/Accommodation features, all
Population features (Capital City, Suburb, Town, Place Name, Aboriginal Community, Station/
Homestead), all Recreation/Point of Interest features, all Service/Quarantine features, all Infrastructure/UHF repeaters, and Infrastructure/P-Bay features, all
Geography - Bay, Inlet, Cove, Beach, Cape, Headland, Point, Mountain, Peak,
Hill, Pass, Gap, Island features, and all Heritage/Shipwreck features.
* modified colour & styling of all text labels to improve readability
* modified colour & styling of road lines
EOTopo Online
EOTopo online is now also showing Release 2015 mapping. As previously,
EOTopo online is a very different product to EOTopo200K as it is a vector-mapping system that allows map zooming with a wide range of map scales.
EOTopo online is a free use product and requires an internet connection. See the
EOTopo online tab for more details.
So what happened to 2014.1 - well we released two maps with this label being the new downloadable 2.5M & 1M scale maps. There was an issue with the Non-Perennial lakes and some other labels. We already had 200 downloads so it was decided to that 2014.1 needed to be updated to 2014.2 to ensure no confusion about which is the correct map. If you downloaded these and they say 2014.1 in the upper left information panel then please come back and download the 2014.2 versions.
As mentioned there are now downloads available of EOTopo maps in ECW, OZF, TIF & MMF. These are available on the EOTopo page. A 2.5M map is freely available to everyone, the 1M map is for existing
EOTopo 200K customers - these maps have been released at 2014.2 with the updates mentioned below included.
2014.2 Updates:
Unsealed Roads: These layers have been fully re-labelled, priority, size, style and placement in order to ensure the best readability and ability to place as many labels on the map as possible. The new labels are done in black text and do not use the FOLLOW placement model - they use AUTO ANGLE placement. Priority adjusted to 8. This was updated and tested looking at the Mt Baw Baw area of the
Vic High Country. So to see the results of this action zoom into this area on the map - use the Search system and look for 'Baw Baw'.
Airport Labels: The label min scale was set to 150K thus the Airport labels were not output on the 200K product. This min has been adjusted to 250K and the font set to wrap on space character with max-length 10.
Dam Walls: Name label added to output. Name field adjusted to Title case.
Seas: Added Ocean name labels at zoom scales less than 3M.
Lakes, Waterbody and Watercourses: Adjust the label priority to 3 to make it overwrite Reserve labels when there is a name available.
Lakes: Non-Perennial lakes were not appearing correctly on the map. This has been fully rectified.
Added label to MarineHazardPoints and MarineHazardAreas for Offshore Rocks that have a name.
Railways: Added abandoned lines and corrected label issues with name and gauge information.
Roads Update:
4681 LINE item updates/additions have been made to the base roads data of 460363 LINE items. These updates have been applied as per the update
grid image below:
![EOTopo Roads Update 2014]()
EOTopo Roads Update 2014
squares have been checked to 1:200K scale, Red have been checked and updated to 1:50K scale or better, Clear are yet to be checked, The Green lines are the actual roads that have been updated.
The main bulk of the updates has been main road realignments and additions in the capital cities. These updates have been sourced from
user treks, emailed updates, stored data, online map and satellite sources.
The size of the text field for Textnote has been increased in roads to ensure all labels fit. Long labels have been re-worded. The Textnote field contains data such as restrictions, walk track follows, and other on-road notations.
Walking Tracks: A whole new
Heysen trail route has been added based on the latest alignments. The base data was missing many sections of this trail, so the entire trail was replaced with new data. The source level accuracy of this added data is better than 1:10K. Adjusted font size max and line width for all Walking Tracks to ensure easier identification and ability to follow all lines.
Vertical Obstructions: Layer set to Title case. Updated output to ensure NAME and feature type will be displayed for elements that have a name. Affects: Tower, Lookout, Chimney, Mast, Wind Turbine & Silo. Removed duplicate titles from Textnote field to ensure no items are called "Black Mountain Tower Tower", for example.
Adjusted font size max for cleared lines. There was no max value so it was possible for fonts to get too large when viewed in
EOTopo Online at 1:54K scale.
200K Product: The whole country and each of the state images now includes a full legend with scalebar.
This is a major update and therefore a new version of
EOTopo 200K has been created. The latest version is now 2014. All stock in our warehouse is being switched over to 2014 and orders for the product will be held till the new 2014 stock arrives in the warehouse, which is expected 5th December.
As of today, 1st December, all customers will receive the latest version.
2013.3 Under the Lifetime Upgrade Policy, customers who have previously purchased the 2013.3 release will be able to access the new version if desired. Details will be sent to directly to those customers.
We have an excellent process running now in terms of the updates. We are rationalising the user supplied data from UserTreks and verifying the accuracy of these routes. We are building a really accurate view of this data and overlaying this on the main mapping product and we are able to adjust the road network with a really high level of accuracy. Before the roads data is updated we validate the data against the existing roads network, cross check it with Satellite and street level data and then apply updates.
We have a new update key and are able to track the progress across the team. Here is a snap shot of the update work this week.
![EOTopo 2013.5 Progress]()
EOTopo 2013.5 Progress
The key is as follows:
Red: All road data validated to 50K including all known names and alignments
Orange: All primary road data validated to 200K
Green: Road network updated but not validated to
Orange level
No Colour: Well these have not been done as yet
So as you can see the whole of VIC is updated and this includes things link Eastlink, Mornington &
Geelong Bypasses, the list is actually huge in VIC they have built a lot of roads.
I am loading this new road database and several other layer updates to the server tonight and will start a flush of the tiles but this is not going to affect the release number - really it is a backup measure for me to ensure work to date is backup up on the web servers.
The 2013.5 release is scheduled to go online still on the 1st Dec.
Enjoy
David
As promised the task of road data updates has started and these minor updates (well the task is major but the result is sort of minor) are being released into the online product as they are competed. There are a great number of updates needed before the next major release of the 200K product but work is under-way.
All road names converted to title case.
Database fields rationalised to remove unwanted GeoScience fields.
Added new updated date field.
Set-up correct GIS environment to support road data management.
Converted the ExplorOzTile.map file to support new data select fields and naming changes.
Roads Updates
WA: Full re-alignment
Forrest Hwy, Kwinana Fwy (North & South), Indian Ocean Drive and supporting nearby roads, minor realignments in the
Perth City area.
NSW: Full re-alignment Pacific Hwy,
Sydney to
Brisbane including all new 2013 dual carriageway adjustments. Supporting side roads and minor regional city adjustments to support major update to Pacific Hwy.
These updates are now visible in the
EOTopo Online system.
NOTE: Your browser caching may not push update all tiles to your browser as there is a 7 day cache setting so if you have recently used the Online system and looked at a certain area you may not get the latest tiles. You can clear your browser cache if you really want to see the latest tiles.
![EOTopo 2013.3 Sample]()
EOTopo 2013.3 Sample
Another few solid weeks on EOTopo and we have now released the latest update to the online map server system. In this update we have finalised the Geoscience data layers and installed all available layer into the product. One thing we found was the the standard filters applied to produce the NatMap products made some attributes and features not visible on the Topo maps. We have addressed this and updated the filters to support our production 200K series output desire. So you are in fact getting more data on the EOTopo than was shown in the Natmap Topo products.
We also increased the slopeshade display percentage for this release to make the relief really stand out.
We have also published a legend for the maps and this is available from the
EOTopo Online page or if you want to have a look now see the
EOTopo 200K Legend.
The tiles server is building the tiles on demand at the moment so some mapping tile displays may appear to be slow. If they are slow it is because you are the first to request the display in a certain area so in the background our map server will build the map and deliver the image to your computer (this takes about 10-15secs). Once it has built these tiles they are cached on our server system so that subsequent people who want the same tile will just get the image directly from cache.
Hope you enjoy the latest updates to
EOTopo Online, all ExplorOz map displays will be implementing these updates automatically.
![EOTopo 2013.2 Carins]()
EOTopo 2013.2 Carins
Well it did not take long to roll from 2013.1 to 2013.2 What has changed? Well a lot has happened in the last 48 hours, including the loss of my master development copy of everything I have done for the last 12 years (thanks Skydrive I will never use you again). I was able to recover from several backup sources and as it stands I believe I am 95% back to current.
In terms of EOTopo however, I when I was testing the 2013.1 release I did not notice for several days that the palette table I was using (this is a colour reduction template to bring the images down in size and colour complexity) was the old one from the last tile set. This made the fancy new
hill and slope shading look average. So decided to make a new template this morning and the result is back to awesome.
Whist I was rebuilding the template I decided to have another look at road labels as I was not happy with the labels as they were too hard to read. So in 2013.2 we have all new road labels using a different font, outline colour and size.
These are the main updates to the system and as at 12pm AEST 11th Oct the tiles are being rebuilt in the tile server - so for the next few days these tiles will be built progressively as people request areas of the map that have not yet been opened. If you see a pause in tile delivery this is most likely what is going on and it should complete the tile delivery within a few seconds so please wait it will reduce the load on the tile building programs.
Anyway hope you like the latest and most awesome release of EOTopo. TO view the full set in the new full screen viewer go to
EOTopo Full ScreenThe online mapping server now supports the latest version of EOTopo. This new map set integrates the latest topographic map data for the whole of
Australia with DEM Shaded Relief and ExplorOz data to produce the latest series of online topographic maps available for
Australia.
Release 2013.1 includes the full unfiltered GeoScience S3 Topo 250K data, SRTM DEM data and ExplorOz
places data. This new topographic map set has been designed to scale best at 1:200,000 and is customised to render on electronic devices. Additionally the maps have been set-up for the best possible rendition of road data to suit on & off road based travellers.
Paper specific data has been removed such as
grid lines, map indexes and graticule's to keep the maps clean and free of elements that are not needed for maps used in digital devices
The addition of altitude colour, slope &
hill shaded relief is a first in Australian online topographic mapping and provides a 3D look to a 2D map.
The ExplorOz Treks road network has also been added to the map set to provide the latest updated road network for ExplorOz supported treks. The treks data is supported via a dashed purple line. UHF repeaters and several other
Places data layers have been integrated to ensure the positional data is as accurate and updated as possible.
Additionally the ExplorOz tile server that renders the data to the Internet has been updated to support the latest methods of tile generation via the production of tile grids on request. The tile grids are a 5 x 5 tile image that is then cut into the 25 separate 256x256 standard tiles. This method ensures the best possible label layout and a consistent colour blend across a range of tiles.
If you want to have a good look at the latest map set check out
EOTopo Full Screen. This now replaces the base map layer shown in ExplorOz
Places (and also ExplorOz
Trek Notes,
User Treks,
EOTrackMe,
Shop, and all mapping outputs) in topo view.
