Windows maps download tool for MapThis! by in7ane

**A Fn NOOB** · August 28th, 2006, 23:06

[quote=in7ane]

Regarding the free BaseMap from Garmin, thanks for the suggestion, but it seems to be in a proprietary format (and probably vector). I would be interested in getting NASA World Wind working first.

I figured it was worth a look since its fair game for anyone to use. I read something recently about a concept being implemented; an open-source mapping project where people send in their tracks and it goes into a database. I think at Sourceforge.

**fokia** · August 29th, 2006, 11:33

Great work! keep improving...

**joeschmoe.lyt** · August 29th, 2006, 17:43

First of all, let me say: Deniska, if you don't win that contest (is it over yet?) I pledge to paypal you $20. Isn't NeoFlash a profiting company? corporation=corruption
I can load up the globalmap.zip and use my GPSlim 236 just fine. However, I can't figure out this custom map thing. Which one is better? This windows dl'er or the msn/local.live? I tried one of the gmdl versions, but the map wouldn't ever finish loading within mapthis!...zipped or unzipped. (It finished loading on the ms0 fine, though the unzipped folder was very slow to transfer!)I formatted my ms0 to fat32, I've read all these threads.
Here's what I got:
Map of 472 x 825 at 6 to 0
zipped to 390 MB
~21000 files

Totally unrelated to that dump, I got the error: "Something's not quite right with this map" when I used the hand to "drag" the map around then tried to save it. I found that using the arrows to shift the map (east in my case) a predetermined (rather large!) amount did not result in this error.
Maybe I just need to try the 2.5

**deniska** · August 29th, 2006, 20:29

Originally Posted by joeschmoe.lyt

First of all, let me say: Deniska, if you don't win that contest (is it over yet?) I pledge to paypal you $20. Isn't NeoFlash a profiting company? corporation=corruption
I can load up the globalmap.zip and use my GPSlim 236 just fine. However, I can't figure out this custom map thing. Which one is better? This windows dl'er or the msn/local.live? I tried one of the gmdl versions, but the map wouldn't ever finish loading within mapthis!...zipped or unzipped. (It finished loading on the ms0 fine, though the unzipped folder was very slow to transfer!)I formatted my ms0 to fat32, I've read all these threads.
Here's what I got:
Map of 472 x 825 at 6 to 0
zipped to 390 MB
~21000 files

Totally unrelated to that dump, I got the error: "Something's not quite right with this map" when I used the hand to "drag" the map around then tried to save it. I found that using the arrows to shift the map (east in my case) a predetermined (rather large!) amount did not result in this error.
Maybe I just need to try the 2.5

Thanks for your support and appreciation...

Trying to download the dallas map ;-)?
Ok, try to do this:
1) Get the latest gmdl25.zip file...
2) Locate your area and select adavanced mode.
3)Make sure your settings are as on the attached screenshot & test the preview (go with msn street maps - they seem to be the fastest to d/l)
4)don't zip the file - it would take forefer to open with MapThis. - Just drop the directory in to maps - yes it will take some time :-)

(your new map should have 21845 files in it)

If this doesn't work for some reason, try a smaller map first (zoom in a bit closer)
Also you may want to re-format your MS, to make sure there are no bad sectors, etc..

**joeschmoe.lyt** · August 29th, 2006, 22:06

I hate to spam and ask a noob question, but...this will do hybrids right? Without taking a super long time to load into mapthis!? The ladies sure do love my unit. Well, they will when I convince the dumb ones that they are looking down on top of themselves in the screen, as I point to any old red car in the picture.

**kAraCHo** · August 30th, 2006, 00:34

Hi!

I had a Problem getting the Directions to work (Always got 0 Poi's again

)... It seems that you always get 0 Pois when the start and end location are not specific enough, and in Ger seem to be many locations which are too unspecific

.

The webpage directions.ashx returns something like a selection list in that case, which doesn't even contain the string "new VE_RouteInstruction"...

I added a few lines after the first WebClient.download... which looks for the String "new VE_Location", if that's in there, the downloaded page is the "selection list", then i take the lat and lon values from the first entrys for "start" and "end" and download a new page with lat and lon values only...

....
string page = client.DownloadString(url);

if (page.IndexOf("new VE_Location") != -1)
{
int posnewVELocation = page.IndexOf("new VE_Location");
int startlatfrom = page.IndexOf("',", posnewVELocation)+2;
int endlatfrom = page.IndexOf(",", startlatfrom);
Decimal latfrom = Decimal.Parse(page.Substring(startlatfrom, endlatfrom -startlatfrom), NumberFormatInfo.InvariantInfo);

int startlonfrom = page.IndexOf(",", endlatfrom) + 1;
int endlonfrom = page.IndexOf(")", startlonfrom);
Decimal lonfrom = Decimal.Parse(page.Substring(startlonfrom, endlonfrom - startlonfrom), NumberFormatInfo.InvariantInfo);

int posVEDir = page.IndexOf("VE_Directions.Disambiguate", endlonfrom);

posnewVELocation = page.IndexOf("new VE_Location", posVEDir);
int startlatto = page.IndexOf("',", posnewVELocation) + 2;
int endlatto = page.IndexOf(",", startlatto);
Decimal latto = Decimal.Parse(page.Substring(startlatto, endlatto - startlatto), NumberFormatInfo.InvariantInfo);

int startlonto = page.IndexOf(",", endlatto) + 1;
int endlonto = page.IndexOf(")", startlonto);
Decimal lonto = Decimal.Parse(page.Substring(startlonto, endlonto - startlonto), NumberFormatInfo.InvariantInfo);

url = "http://local.live.com/directions.ashx?startlat=" + latfrom.ToString().Replace(",", ".") + "&startlon=" + lonfrom.ToString().Replace(",", ".") + "&endlat=" + latto.ToString().Replace(",", ".") + "&endlon=" + lonto.ToString().Replace(",", ".") + "&units=" + dirDist.Text.Substring(0, 1);
if (dirShortest.Checked)
url = url + "&type=s";

page = client.DownloadString(url); // i=2 does nothing but seems to be required, can be any number, r=true ensures no adds(?)

}

...please excuse the ugly code, also i didn't test that well, but it seems to work for me

...

**joeschmoe.lyt** · August 30th, 2006, 03:31

This thing kicks arse! v2.5 was smooth as butter! Just for the record, I went with a 5 to 0 zoom and split the city into quadrants. I used your directions, but I clicked "get numbers" because this map is different...piece of cake, and beautiful hybrids, no lags!
I'm finally going to register over there now just so I can vote for you.
In7ane, I hereby vote for you too...for...kicking arse!
Psst, has anyone noticed a particular value here? Think ps3 vs. a $1000 blu-ray player.
Manually upgrading to v0.2: a 0 byte gps.txt file keeps reappearing in my mapthis folder. When I try to copy over the 53 KB gps.txt file from v0.2 It errors: file is corrupted or unreadable. Is this important? Another file keeps appearing: stdout.txt. My pc tells me this file is corrupt and I should run checkdisk.
Furthermore, the maps I left in the "maps" folder don't show up in the program.

**deniska** · August 30th, 2006, 05:01

Make sure your maps start with "_" ... the file chooser ignores everything else in the maps folder..
If they already do - the whole folder is probably corrupted... you'll need to format the MS...

The unreadable files are the signs of MS corruption..
You can live w/o new gps.tx - it's there just to demo the waypoint thing...
One way to go around it is to try to re-name those files to something else and then copy the new ones..

Eventually I would recoment re-format the memory stick though...
Sorry, this is still a beta version so stuff can happen... ;-)