Vector based maps???

[MrPTrog]

First I would like to thank Deniska & in7ane for their fine work. Either program would be useless without the other.

I would also like to thank every one who posted answers to noob question and even created flash movies explaining how to do the little thing needed to get this fine program running. I had never extracted files from my flash memory before. To anyone who has, it is so obvious as to not need mentioning. But a little digging in these forums found all my answers.

With your help I have .5 running with a 500meg map of my local area. SWEET. My PSP-290 takes about 30 sec to get a fix and I am driving with full GPS goodness.

So let me get to my Question. How hard would it be to switch over to GPSS based vector maps generated on the fly?

1. Data is freely available for most countries.
2. Map of the Entire country in the space of a Raster based state map.
3. Should be easier to generate on the fly directions and routing.

Google maps and those like it make their money off off people visiting the sites linked off of their maps. I spent 5 hours downloading over 232,000 tiles, twice. (I messed it up the first time.)
This leeching is very easy to detect once it is noticed. My fear is that once the map sites see what is going on, they will start blocking requests from one IP address after the first hundred or so in order to curtail this behaviour.

Robin seems to list most of the important considerations about vector mapping on his site. Check it out. He even has demo software to try out.
http://www.gpss.tripoduk.com/vector.htm

Thanks for everything!
MrPTrog

[Codaz]

This software isn't open-source, so i don't think it can be ported to a new map source for mapthis.

Also, the softwre is written for pocket PC, and since it requires more cpu power i don't think the PSP can handle that.

Thanks anyway for your link. Hopefully Mapthis author Deniska will come back on this.

[Codaz]

Deniska and others:

This is the most detailed you could get from this program after a LOT of work. So no geodata or something.

The maps are 10 years old and only the UK is updated frequently.

The program works REALLY slow even on my 3gz pc. I think this is because it constantly tries to lock up with a GPS receiver.

Maybe we can rip the sounds of the program. But they are REALLY funny. Dutch citynames are pronounced as if they are in Pakistan or something haha.

[MrPTrog]

I should have explained my thought process better.
Yes, the GPSS maps are proprietary. I was wondering if the Map data can be extrapolated from the TIGER data. This is what they seem to have done with GPSS.
Again, I am not a programmer, but I think a program could be written to extrapolate the necessary data from the TIGER files. one could create a vector map that is infinitely scalable. My hypothetical program would allow the user to select the area of a country that they want to create a map for, then it would go into the TIGER data and create the needed vector data.
Maybe there is a better source of legal to share vector data.
Marine Electronic Navigation Charts (ENC) are freely available from NOAA for the USA. http://chartmaker.ncd.noaa.gov/MCD/enc/whatis.htm
This page explains what they are and has a link to download at the top under the Light house banner.
These are very detailed vector maps that are very small file sizes. The cool thing is that they are an international standard, So a PSP viewer for these should work for any ENC's world wide.
I have been looking for a freeware sourced vector map for road systems. So far I have come up with nothing.

[MrPTrog]

I Found this Site.
http://bpgeo.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm
It does everything I was asking for.
After you select the area and click the radio buttons for the features you want, it extracts those layers into polygons for you and emails you when your data is available.
To bad I don't know how to push those polygons around a PSP screen