TOPO!GPS, TOPO!, and TrailSmart Products from Wildflower
A preliminary review by Bill
Straka (more extensive review to follow later) - 5 January 1999
Wildflower has been producing scanned topographic maps on CDROM,
first for
the Mac, and these days primarily for PCs, for a number of
years. The
basic maps are from the US Geological Survey (USGS) for the
most part,
with some from the US Forest Service (USFS). TOPO! is a series
of CDROMs
that contain scanned maps of contiguous 7.5 min quads (plus
larger area
overview maps), the US Placenames gazetteer, Digital Elevation
Models, and
other data. TOPO!GPS is the basic TOPO! software with GPSR
linking
capability and comes in several forms - downloadable from
Wildflower's
website, in a separate CDROM that included overall United
States maps (48
contiguous states) down to the USGS US Highway maps, and included
in the
TrailSmart package. TrailSmart is the TOPO!GPS engine packaged
with
scanned the National Geographic Society's Trails Illustrated
maps of
national parks (15 in the first one issued). One advantage
of Wildflower's
products is that Wildflower makes extensive use of actual
users in the
field. That is, they use the experiences of their own staff
and others who
actually do a lot of backpacking, hiking, mountaineering,
and other
outdoor activities. For example, they have worked actively
with the BADGER
project (Bay Area Digital GeoReferencing), in the San Francisco
Bay Area,
and with groups using GPSRs to overlay updated trails onto
USGS
topographic maps in the East Bay Regional Parks District and
MidPeninsula
Regional Parks District.
Each of the TOPO! series CDROMs consists of a set of adjacent
maps at 5
levels of scale and magnification. Level 1 is a 1:250,000
overview. Level
2 is the USGS 1:100,000 series, while level 3 is generally
from the inch
to a mile series. Levels 4 and 5 are 7.5 min quads (1:24,000),
with level
5 being a 1:12,000 magnification of the 1:24,000 map. The
quality on the
screen is, obviously, dependent on your graphic card and display.
As
anyone familiar with PCs knows, not all the graphics cards
are compatible
with one another and some depart significantly from generally
accepted
standards. Wildflower has done an excellent job of matching
the most
widely used of the advanced graphics cards, as well as the
more standard
of the "standards." However, like any graphics-intensive software,
some
display cards and monitors, and certain printers, do require
some playing
around to get the best results. One major-name printer that
I am aware of
sends information back to Windows that does not accurately
represent the
printable area or available in-printer memory and can result
in Windows
freezing up. This can be cured by adjusting the margins in
printer
settings.
TOPO! packages cover about two dozen regions that include some
of the most
popular recreational areas for hikers, backpackers, climbers,
backcountry
skiers, mountain bikers, and other users of topographic maps.
These
regions are mostly concentrated in the eastern and western
parts of the US
- Northeast, Southeast, Pacific Northwest, and Southwest (including
California, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah). Because the areas
are contiguous
for the most part, urban areas are included as well (San Francisco
Bay
area, Los Angeles area, Tahoe area including Reno, etc.).
TOPO!GPS is the version of the TOPO! program with an interface
to a large
number of GPSR, including Eagle/Lowrance, Garmin, and Magellan,
with a
number of models from each, plus a generic NMEA interface
for real time
tracking for any receiver putting out the more standard NMEA
sentences
that contain position information. In addition, up and downloads
of
information are available for many models of the 3 named receivers,
including waypoints, routes, tracks, and trackpoints, although
not all
receivers can accept uploads of tracks per se. The GPS version
is
available as a download of the core software from the Wildflower
web site,
on a CDROM with USA maps, and in the TrailSmart package. TOPO!GPS
USA
(Wildflower was using the Topo!USA name long before Delorme's
package with
a similar name) has 6 levels of magnification, from a relief
map of the US
to levels 5 and 6 being the USGS US Highway map. In addition,
Levels 7
through 9 are a "white map" mode (clear screen with only the
waypoints and
routes) that is used to examine the relationship of waypoints
and routes
in detail without the distraction of the map background.
TrailSmart is the result of a cooperative effort between
Wildflower and
the National Geographic Society. National Geographic took
over Trails
Illustrated a couple of years ago. Trails Illustrated is very
familiar to
outdoors types for their plastic maps of national parks. These
maps are
basically USGS topo maps of the park regions with updated
trail and other
data. Wildflower has scanned these and gathered them together
into groups
on CDROM. The first of these covers 15 of the most-visited
parks, such as
Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon. At maximum scale
(which some
people think of as magnification or "zoom", scanned topographic
maps from
the USGS 7.5 min series supplement some of the Trails Illustrated
maps.
Using TOPO! products is quite natural to someone familiar with
topographic
maps and a modest degree of familiarity with PCs (the Mac
versions have
basically been dropped for lack of sales and the large requirement
of time
and effort to produce software for the Mac interface ñ
there is little or
no profit in specialized niche products on the Mac platform).
The language
and paradigm used are those of the experienced land navigator,
used to
travelling in the woods and cross country. (If you are not
reasonably
proficient at land navigation, there are several good books
available).
Switching from a view of one scale to another is rapid (at
least on my 300
MHz Pentium II AGP, with 24x CDROM), either by centering the
magnifying
glass with the plus (minus with shift key) and left-clicking
the mouse, or
by right-clicking and selecting the magnification level. Shifting
the
screen view can be done from the centering icon on the main
screen (the
current map window) or one of the two auxiliary overview windows
(showing
the overall region and the current quad in overviews). The
current
position of the cursor is shown in a box at the lower right
(lat/lon plus
altitude or UTM including altitude) selectable for NAD83 or
NAD27. Grids
can be overlaid on the screen at the user's choice of spacing
(even a 1 m
UTM grid on the 1:100,000 map if you would like to obscure
the entire map
with grid lines). The grid is overlaid on the print as well.
Great circle ("straight line") distances can be determined
by selecting
the compass tool (nice pun there, since the functions of a
divider as a
compass and a magnetic compass are both served). You place
the anchor on
the first point with the first mouse click, then move the
cursor to the
second point (or points). The distance (choose your units)
and bearing in
degrees (true or magnetic, sorry no radians or grads) are
shown. If you
click on the second point, a line is drawn, which can be turned
into a
vertical profile. This profile can be used to determine visibilities
between 2 points (for use by photographers or ham radio operators
trying
to determine lines of sight).
The pencil and ruler tool is used for drawing routes to be
followed, for
example trails to be hiked, much as you would use a pencil
and ruler (or
map scale) on a paper map. Drawing with a mouse is awkward
at best, but
trail drawing in TOPO! has become somewhat easier in the past
couple of
years, thanks to a more sophisticated cursor tracking function
and the
addition of an optional "hotspot" large magnification window
that was
requested by a number of people even back at the original
Mac version. The
"hotspot" apparently does not work with some graphics boards
that depart
from standard graphics formats, but works extremely well with
my graphics
boards. The trail drawn can be selected with the right mouse
button and
functions like a profile generation or GPS route generation
selected. You
can also change the characteristics of the path indication
(color, line
thickness, solid or dashed, or delete the path). Profile generation
from a
drawn trail is much like the line of sight profile, except
that the
profile is along the path. This is useful to determine steepness
of the
path and altitude gain and loss (total calculated automatically
and
displayed with the profile window). Clicking at a given point
on the
profile will show where the point is on the ground and vice
versa. The
generated profile is shown in a window at the bottom of the
main map
window (or selectable full screen).
Selecting GPS route generation brings up a window that allows
selection of
how to space the points evenly or fitting the path as closely
as possible,
and how many points, as well as asking for a naming prefix.
You should
think about how many points you request, based on how many
points and how
closely spaced they can be in a route on your particular GPSR.
You should
also be aware that TOPO!GPS includes the altitude, which is
stored on some
GPSR, but not others (Garmin, for example does not store altitudes,
while
Magellan does). The GPS points (waypoints or uploaded track
points) are
shown in a window at the bottom of the map screen (which can
be hidden).
They can be edited extensively - name, position, and so on.
Routes are
shown as folders with a copy of the waypoints. Routes can
be edited by
copying, inserting, deleting, dragging, and so on in the waypoint
window.
Other route and waypoint editing can be done graphically on
the map view
using the GPS waypoint tool. GPS information can be stored
and recovered
in a TOPO! formatted file (.tpg), as a file formatted for
your GPSR, or as
a text file. The text file can be imported into a spreadsheet
program for
further manipulation, then later exported for use in your
GPSR or TOPO!.
TOPO! also can import text files in a wide variety of formats,
using a
"wizard" to help in parsing the file (lat before or after
lon? Deg min sec
or ddd.ddd or ddd mm.mmm, or whatever, names included or omitted,
etc.)
The altitude and profile brings up a topic that is at once
a great
strength and the major flaw in TOPO!, TOPO!GPS, and TrailSmart.
The
underlying data is from the USGS for the most part. This means,
on the one
hand, that the maps and other data are among the most complete
and
accurate to be found anywhere in the world (having experience
with even
trying to get topo maps of some third world countries, I can
definitely
attest to how much better USGS data are). On the other hand,
this means
that some maps are quite old. The elevation data displayed
for the cursor
position is interpolated from a DEM (Digital Elevation Model)
database
that is not the same spacing of grid in different areas. The
US Highway
map has some strange discrepancies as well (I have the paper
copies of a
couple sections, so it isn't Wildflower's scanning of the
maps that is the
problem). As an example, the road between Hollister, California,
and
Pinnacles National Monument is shown on the wrong side of
the river on the
US Highway map, although it is correct on the 7.5 min topo
included in the
SFBay CDROM (Big Sur section). The gazetteer, which is the
US Place Names
database, also has some omissions and inclusions, which seem
inconsistent
with one another. But the complaint is directed toward the
USGS, not
Wildflower, or maybe Congress for spending budget on things
other than
areas which are ultimately much more important.
Another flaw that is somewhat annoying is in the NMEA standard,
and that
is that the timestamp on a waypoint is the time of transfer,
rather than
the time of creation. Thus, downloading a waypoint list, adding
to it
without editing existing waypoints, then uploading to the
GPSR changes the
time stamp in the GPSR (Delorme's SA5 and 6 do this, too,
since it is
NMEA, not the software). You can, however, upload only selected
waypoints
and/or routes, thus preserving your existing waypoints.
Printing and using the maps can be done using a number of options.
I will
be providing a sample map with a GPS route for Joe and Jack
to post in
1999. The map can be printed in high quality (dependent on
your printer
and some selectable options). On a good color printer, the
appearance is
very close to a USGS map. A laser printer produces a map very
similar to a
gray scale photocopy of a topo sheet. A screen capture (export)
can be in
several graphic formats and can then be inserted into other
software (word
processor, for example). You can further manipulate things
in a draw or
paint program, like Corel PhotoPaint or CorelDraw. You are
more likely to
encounter limitations of your printer than of TOPO!'s printing
functions.
On my printers (laser and color ink jet) the print times for
8.5x11
1:24,000 scale maps are about a minute from mouse click to
paper in hand.
In a future addition, I will expand on the discussion of features,
of
which there are many, many more. These features will be obvious
and
intuitive to the experienced land navigator, and easy to find.
In beta
testing since early in the summer of 1998, I did not have
a manual or help
files, yet found it very easy. But here are some operations
I have carried
out:
Transferring GPSR data to and from TOPO!GPS - this is very
easy and fairly
intuitive, if you know your GPSR. There are a few problems
due to some
peculiarities of individual makes and models of GPSR, but
I found use of
Magellan ColorTrak and 4000XL-12 and Garmin 12XL to be straightforward,
with limitations due only to the units themselves. You initialize
for the
particular GPSR and port connection, checking to see that
name lengths,
baud rate, and datum are correct (they always were for several
GPSR I have
information for).
Creating a trail route and a driving route in TOPO!, then transferring
to
the GPSR - very straightforward, and quite accurate except
for long
highway routes requiring the US Highway maps in TOPO!GPS USA.
There the
limitations of the USGS maps came into focus. I did a route
from the SF
Bay area to Riverside, Calif and return, and actually found
the TOPO!
route to be as accurate as Delorme's SA5. However, SA5 decided
the route
automatically, while TOPO! required a hand-drawn route. But
keep in mind
that TOPO! uses scanned maps, rather than the vector maps
of SA5/6, and is
not intended for automated route planning. At the same time,
I didn't have
the pain of trying to force SA5 to avoid or go via certain
roads and
didn't have the weird quirk of Delorme's products (SA5, SA6,
and MapNGo)
of picking strange routings that can't really be forced to
go away. The
other night I tried to get SA6 to plan a driving route from
SF Bay area to
a Salt Lake area destination, telling it to do an overnight
stop at the
Peppermill in Wendover and avoid the major construction in
the central
part of SLC. SA6 kept insisting on routing me through the
construction
regardless of vias and avoids. I finally went to TOPO!GPS
USA, drew the
route, told it to put in GPSR waypoints and route, and upload
that perfect
route, exactly what I wanted. Score a Big One for Wildflower!
I have planned and drawn a number of hiking routes on the Rim
of the Bay
peaks (a hiking series of 6 routes in the SF Bay area that
go to high
points like Mt. Tam, Mt. Diablo, and so on), plus hiking trails
in
Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and the Santa Cruz Mountains. The
printed maps
work very well, of course, as you would expect USGS maps to
work. But I
can print them on waterproof paper (several brands are available),
with a
finer coordinate grid, which makes it easier to use with the
GPSR. And I
have the route easily planned and loaded into the GPSR. When
I return
home, I can easily download the actual track into TOPO!GPS
for study (if I
have my son's laptop, I can do that back at the car before
departing - now
if you want to hike along the trail, GPS in hand and laptop
in front of
your face....). I have actually used this to map some trails
in the Santa
Cruz Mountains that have been rerouted and are incorrect on
the USGS topos
(the Black Mountain trail from Rhus Ridge Road is a prime
example).
Driving routes I have planned and tracks I have downloaded
to TOPO!GPS
include SF Bay area to Yosemite, SF Bay area to Alta, Utah,
and SF Bay
area to Bakersfield, Needles, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Denver,
Laramie,
Salt Lake City, Reno, and back to SF Bay, as well as the Riverside
trip
and local trips within the SF Bay area. The most track points
I have
gotten on an automatic spacing was 1091, which plotted within
100 feet of
the road at worst, even on the 2000+ miles to and from Colorado
and 1600
miles to and from Alta. I have also downloaded tracks taken
from the
window of a couple of commercial airline companies. I can't
judge the
accuracy of these, obviously, but the tracks looked good in
the plots. The
judgment of accuracy was done on the 7.5 min quads where I
had coverage of
the TOPO! CDROMs. An interesting comparison was between the
TOPO! Yosemite
area and TrailSmart Yosemite National Park - since the underlying
maps are
from slightly different sources. They matched very well.
There is a bug that Wildflower is working on that shows as
a strange
wraparound for downloaded tracks that extend for very
long distances
(such as the SF-Yos trip). In this case, the track shows correctly
on the
USA map and TrailSmart Yosemite National Park map (truncates
at the map
edge on the limited view), but shows a strange wraparound
problem on the
SFBay and Yosemite region maps. The track proceeds correctly
within the
map, but at the boundary, instead of truncating, the track
shows a leap
across the map and detail from the other end of the track.
A similar
problem showed up for routes in an early beta version and
was cured, so I
am confident that this one will be cured in the next couple
of weeks. Most
users will remain unaware of the problem unless they take
a long trip and
keep a track that extends over several hundred miles of terrain.
If you want to use a computerized highly accurate topographic
map, and
your area is covered, TOPO! is certainly the product I would
recommend.
Delorme's TOPOUSA is very inaccurate in its terrain representation,
at
least in the western US, although its roads are more up to
date than the
USGS maps. Other topographic mapping products I have examined
have
limitations as well, not the least of which is that some are
not oriented
to the knowledgable and skilled map user (in one case, I wondered
whether
the producers had ever used a map in the field at all). While
the ones
which accept scanned maps can cover areas not included by
Wildflower, you
have to have a high quality scanner to get a high quality
map
(obviously!). Using DRGs involves a large cost (especially
in the
TVA-covered areas), plus knowing exactly which area you want,
and many of
the products accepting DRGs do not stitch adjacent sheets.
There are a
couple other products which come close, but for the most part,
their
coverage of areas of interest to the backpacker and climber
are more
limited.