While idly looking through a CTC magazine I came across a
screenshot of a mapping program showing a section of an
Ordnance Survey map with a GPS track overlaid on it. This
got me thinking that this would be an extremely useful thing
to do; at the moment I haven't any way of using the GPS with
a proper map.
After having a look around it seems there are three main
programs that do this kind of thing; 'OziExplorer'
(oziexplorer.comoziexplorer.comOpen ↗), 'Anquet Mapping'
(anquet.co.ukanquet.co.ukOpen ↗) and 'TrackLogs'
(tracklogs.co.uktracklogs.co.ukOpen ↗).
I found a thread 'GPS for unicycling?'
(tinyurl.com3cj4cOpen ↗) which mentions the Anquet and
TrackLogs programs, but OziExplorer I discovered from the
uk.rec.walking newsgroup.
TrackLogs appears to have better GPS integration than
Anquet, being built in from the start rather than tacked on
to an existing program; however the map area that comes
with TrackLogs seems rather small. In my case the Anquet
program would come with a map of the entire south west,
whereas TrackLogs would come with a smaller area of
Somerset, Dorset and a small bit of North Devon, so would
be much less useful.
These two both come with smaller scale maps of the entire
UK; Anquet at
1:250,000 and TrackLogs at 1:1,000,000. This could be very
useful for longer car journeys.
OziExplorer I found later, which does not come with any map
data but allows you to use images of maps, such as scanned
maps, and calibrate them so routes can be overlaid upon it.
This strikes me as being much cheaper in the long run; I
already have OS maps for the areas I'm interested in, it
seems silly to effectively buy them again on CD rather than
dead trees.
Because of this, however, OziExplorer does not do anything
with altitude. While this would be okay for car journeys, I
find the altitude is a very interesting part of the results
from a muni ride.
Currently I'm leaning towards OziExplorer, mainly because of
being able to use your own maps, and sticking to my own
program to sate my urges for funky 3D visualisations of
where I've been.
Does anyone use, or have any experience with, any of these?
Any opinions would be appreciated!
Phil
--
phil - ex-studenty type
"Cattle Prods solve most of life's little problems."
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