8 replies to this topic

[dsl]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who got this announcement in the inbox today. I'm not affiliated with this project, just thought I would post the link.

http://www.arcgis.co...d5250b3241691b6

This is a really nicely made cartographic product. I recommend looking at it, and viewing the presentation. It shows the potential web based maps have at being beautiful maps as well as handy tools. Although, some of the hillshade looks kind of computer generated to me if you know what I mean.

Cheers,
David

[Charles Syrett]

Very interesting. From a cursory few minutes' glance, doing spot checks in various places, I'd say the places where this really shines are the large cities, where they've acquired some excellent (though outdated) data sets. Toronto, for example, shows house outlines (with porches in a distinguishing spec), addresses, property lines, and – get this – half metre contours! Smaller cities don't fare nearly as well; you're still better off with Google or OSM. And don't even bother with small towns and rural areas. Think MapQuest, 10 years ago.

The contouring is interesting, though. In Toronto, I spotted a bridge that was contoured as an embankment. Too bad about the trains that slam into that one!

Still, it holds great promise. Let's see what it looks like in a few more years!

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

[Dennis McClendon]

Charles, from what I can see the two highest-magnification layers default to ArcGIS Online's Topographic Basemap. That seems to be heavily reliant on data shared by local governments. If you look around a few cities you'll see oddities such as building footprints and intermediate contours ending at municipal limits or arbitrary "vicinity" boundaries. Here's one south of my hometown (Texarkana, Texas) that follows no known boundary:

[Charles Syrett]

I've never actually seen their online topo basemap, but yes, after some more exploring I found similar cutoffs at the boundary of Toronto. And all the bridges appear as embankments, from what I can tell. Presumably this is just what happens when contouring is done automatically from elevation data alone, without editing.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Charles, from what I can see the two highest-magnification layers default to ArcGIS Online's Topographic Basemap. That seems to be heavily reliant on data shared by local governments. If you look around a few cities you'll see oddities such as building footprints and intermediate contours ending at municipal limits or arbitrary "vicinity" boundaries.

[Esther Mandeno]

All my projects are in remote areas and I have not been impressed. (shrugs)

[P.Raposo]

I quite like the treatment at the Azores (where I'm from originally ). Doesn't zoom in very far there with the National Geographic layer, but as far as it goes, beautiful colors and relief shading. And the sans serif fonts in general are really nice. Thanks for sharing dsl.

[rudy]

The contouring is interesting, though. In Toronto, I spotted a bridge that was contoured as an embankment. Too bad about the trains that slam into that one!

Full disclosure here: I am the production manager for the Canadian section of the Esri topographic base map.

I didn't work on the the National Geographic map but it appears it is derived from the same data that we are using to create the topographic base map. In the case of Toronto - yes, the data starts and ends at the city boundary - we are still working on getting other municipalities on board (although we do have Brampton onboard). The City of Toronto provides elevation data like that - so the bridges appear to be embankments. We have a small team working on processing the data into the topographic map and we do some manual editing of the data but we try to keep it to a minimum, if only because a ) it's not our data and b ) we have the entire country to look after. Yes, those bridges should not be embankments and ideally the contours should be edited to reflect that. Perhaps in the next update . . . .

[Hans van der Maarel]

Detailed coverage outside of North America is pretty much nonexistent, at least in the places I checked (South America, Africa and Australia), but it does make for a very nice general overview map. I wish I had realized this before mosaicking a few dozen OSM tiles together in Global Mapper... This simply looks better and performs faster.

[mapfax]

The ESRI National Geographic Map is an impressive initial effort. Of course, I eagerly looked at a few sites, and drilling down through the layers worked well for the most part. The Mercator, or Mercator-like, cylindrical projection looks a bit old fashioned. I would recommend a world projection that is less distorted. I noticed that the city of Saguenay (Quebec, Canada) is misspelled as Sagueny, and there is overlapping type in various layers around Montreal. However, my biggest concern is with the northern boundary of Kosovo, which appears truncated (in Serbia's favor). Many can remember how a digital map (Google) contributed to a border conflict between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Again, overall this is impressive, fast, and easy to use.
David