Bushwalk Australia

For those who care, the Spatial Services team have restored the quality of the topo map tiles in the NSW Topgraphic Map Web Service.

Prior to Dec 2017, they used to be quite good, and then a change degraded the quality of all but the highest zoom level (16).

Now the tiles also look better at lower zoom levels, which makes it easier when zoomed out using services like SIX Maps and https://maps.ozultimate.com

Enjoy.

This is fantastic news. It is so much easier to read again. Thanks for the update Tom.

Hurray!

Thanks Tom, as a fairly frequent user of SIX Maps and your customisation that's great news.

Excellent news!

Some of the tiles still need tidying though, like the area north of Mt Hay in the Blueys. Looks rubbish on the higher zoom levels.

But I'm grateful this service is available at all. I think us in NSW are quite spoilt compared to the other states!

Is it just me, or has this improvement not yet filtered through to six maps?

Tyreless wrote:Is it just me, or has this improvement not yet filtered through to six maps?

Possibly - I have to admit I just checked maps.ozultimate and assumed that SIX Maps was using the same dataset. But you're right, SIX Maps still looks crap.

I'll drop them a note. I've been trying to get this fixed for a couple of years, so I was happy Spatial Services could sort it out.

mandragara wrote:Some of the tiles still need tidying though, like the area north of Mt Hay in the Blueys. Looks rubbish on the higher zoom levels.

Do you have examples? It looks fine to me (or is it the SIX Maps issue above)?

mandragara wrote:But I'm grateful this service is available at all. I think us in NSW are quite spoilt compared to the other states!

Ever heard of ListMap?

north-north-west wrote:

mandragara wrote:But I'm grateful this service is available at all. I think us in NSW are quite spoilt compared to the other states!

Ever heard of ListMap?

Definitely spoilt in Tasmania.... https://maps.thelist.tas.gov.au/listmap/app/list/map

This makes me happier than many a Christmas present has..

Haven't used ListMap but Tassie has a pretty good set of web map services.

Here's a version of maps.ozultimate for Tassie.
https://maps.ozultimate.com/archive/tas/

But NSW has 2m DEMs across the major bushwalking areas ... <drool>

Tyreless wrote:Is it just me, or has this improvement not yet filtered through to six maps?

I had a scrounge through the Javascript and they appear to come from different sources.

Tom,

Thanks for the update. Maps look much better.

Starlights and Nattai Rd are missing from these maps (pretty sure SIX maps topo layer was missing these in the early days as well). Do you know who to contact about this?

Cheers,
Michael.

tom_brennan wrote:But NSW has 2m DEMs across the major bushwalking areas ... <drool>

I will grant you that one. We have 1 meter DEM's across lots of the state but alas not the SW or many other iconic remote walking areas

tastrax wrote:I will grant you that one. We have 1 meter DEM's across lots of the state but alas not the SW or many other iconic remote walking areas

Had to rephrase my post after checking ELVIS and seeing that Tas actually had the best 1m DEM coverage

michael_p wrote:Starlights and Nattai Rd are missing from these maps (pretty sure SIX maps topo layer was missing these in the early days as well). Do you know who to contact about this?

Starlights isn't in any Spatial Services data as far as I can tell. Nattai Rd is in their database (sort of! There's a chunk missing!), so I can ask my contact why it's missing from the topo map.

A friend and I went to visit SS in Bathurst a few years ago (2016/17?). There had been a period prior to this when many NP tracks had disappeared from maps, and that was one of the things we wanted to discuss. I think it was partly due to a freezing of relationships between NPWS and SS. Things had subsequently thawed. SS gets their NP tracks mainly from NPWS, and at the time were re-entering/updating them, but it wasn't a priority (priority is things relating to roads and water). That's why a lot of tracks still seem to stop at the NP boundary. Check Mt Wilson (Wollangambe) for examples of this.

tom_brennan wrote:Starlights isn't in any Spatial Services data as far as I can tell. Nattai Rd is in their database (sort of! There's a chunk missing!), so I can ask my contact why it's missing from the topo map.

Thanks tom. Really appreciate your efforts in developing your mapping website it's very handy.

tom_brennan wrote:

mandragara wrote:Some of the tiles still need tidying though, like the area north of Mt Hay in the Blueys. Looks rubbish on the higher zoom levels.

Do you have examples? It looks fine to me (or is it the SIX Maps issue above)?

If you zoom in on, say, Zobel Gully (the one near the Grose) in Imagery mode, the tiles on the highest zoom level are blocky and useless. The older tiles they had used to be a lot clearer on those higher zoom levels.

I use that mode to try and estimate what the off-track walking speed of a route will be, based on how dense the vegetation looks. I know the topo maps have a basic colour scheme for that, but it's lacking in granularity. Not being able to do that meant I spent an extra hour in the dark last weekend!

north-north-west wrote:

mandragara wrote:But I'm grateful this service is available at all. I think us in NSW are quite spoilt compared to the other states!

Ever heard of ListMap?

Neat! No I had not!

mandragara wrote:

tom_brennan wrote:

mandragara wrote:Some of the tiles still need tidying though, like the area north of Mt Hay in the Blueys. Looks rubbish on the higher zoom levels.

Do you have examples? It looks fine to me (or is it the SIX Maps issue above)?

If you zoom in on, say, Zobel Gully (the one near the Grose) in Imagery mode, the tiles on the highest zoom level are blocky and useless. The older tiles they had used to be a lot clearer on those higher zoom levels.

This update only relates to the Topo Map Web Service.

The Imagery Web Service is a different service. It gets updated sporadically.

Some of the newer imagery is a darker colour and more affected by shadow. The latter is a flying time issue, while the former is probably a processing choice. I prefer the old lighter imagery, but unfortunately you don't get to choose.

QTopo Is pretty handy for QLD;
https://qtopo.information.qld.gov.au/