making trails visible at higher level

[newwood]

So on a garmin GPS trails only become visible once you get down to level 2 (3km).  Is there any simple way of making them available at a higher level (say 3) and enhancing the lines to something more visible short of revising them using GPSMapedit (I managed that for Montana but for some reason only got the western half of the state)?

newwood

[EraSeek]

You can zoom in, which I suppose is what you mean by "level", or you can increase your map detail in your GPS's menu from, say "Normal" to "Most"  and you'll see it sooner (more zoomed out).

[newwood]

Yes, I already had that cranked up to the max, but it's still not showing up until I'm zoomed in fairly close.  I imagine there is a balance between having all this detail shown vs faster redraws, but I like having the detail show up on a small scale map, rather than having to zoom in to large scale before I can see it.  I can't believe it's just me (but hey--who knows?).

newwood

[Moun10Bike]

I've responded to newwood in email, but I'm including that response here in order to share the info with others and get additional feedback and suggestions.

I do have the trails set to display only up to zoom level 2, but that is still greater than what other mapsets (such as Garmin's City Navigator) render for anything below the arterial level of roads.  In other words, I have trails showing when zoomed out to 0.5 mile in Mapsource when set to "Medium" density while roads disappear from City Navigator at 0.3 mile.  It seemed like a reasonable value, giving people the ability to see large stretches of trail but at the same time not making the trails display when the user might be wanting to zoom out to only see major roads.

Are you seeing some other behavior on your Legend?  What specific model is it (original or recent Hx model)?  What sort of usage/level of display are you wanting to see?  Could you send me a screenshot of what it looks like on your unit?

Regarding display of the trails on your eTrex, you could always try fiddling with the type file to get just the effect you want.  I've attached the type file I use for "low res" units.  You could edit it and recompile to something more to your liking using cGPSmapper.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

[newwood]

So trails disappear when at scale of 0.5 mi when detail is set to "normal" and appear at the next zoom increment where scale is 0.3 mi.

Trails disappear when scale is at 2mi when detail is set to "most" and appear at the next zoom level when scale is 1.2 mi.

That seems consistent with what I would expect for display up to zoom level 2.

My approach may be different than the general user, but I like being able to see a large geographical area (small scale map) and have the trails appear when I'm hunting for someplace to go hiking.  It's painful to have to zoom in to a very small area and then hunt around to see if there are trails in the area.  Admittedly, having trails turned on at level 3 will clutter up things, but it's a simple enough option to either turn down the level of detail, or simply deselect the trail map so they don't appear if I am simply looking for roads (just as I'll usually turn off the topo maps so I don't see all the topography).

I suspect this is subject to personal preference, but it's really handy to be able to see the distribution of trails at small scale.

I'm using the etrex HCX.

I've avoided TYP files thus far since I can usually define a line as something that shows up fairly well on the etrex (e.g. I usually use "international boundary" 0x001e for my trails as this shows up quite well).  I find that the Montana Trails map available GPSfiledepo has a nice definition for trails that show up as red dashed lines, but I have no clue as to how to decompile their TYP file to see how they managed that nifty trick (although this was addressed in a recent forum discussion on gpsfiledepot by Coggin about redline trails appended below ).  Perhaps I need to delve into that unless you elect to change the color (I'm not lazy, I'm just not very adept).

Jack

from Coggin at http://forums.gpsfiledepot.com/index.php/topic,392.0.html

The process requires one to redefine the TYP for Trails/Walkways 0x16

There are a couple of programs that will do this, the demo of MapWel will and is what I use: http://www.mapwel.eu/down.htm

Also genTYP: http://cypherman1.googlepages.com/genTYP will do this.

Custom Type files are detailed in the cGPSmapper manual starting on page 72.

Here's an example of redefining a trail to a green color:

Code:

[_line]
Type=0x0016
UseOrientation=N
Xpm="32 1 4 1"
"= c #00FF00"
"  c #000000"
"3 c #007F00"
"4 c #000000"
"    ============    ============"
;12345678901234567890123456789012
string1=0x04,Trail
[end]

[Moun10Bike]

My approach may be different than the general user, but I like being able to see a large geographical area (small scale map) and have the trails appear when I'm hunting for someplace to go hiking.  It's painful to have to zoom in to a very small area and then hunt around to see if there are trails in the area.

I'd argue that what you are doing is different from the general user.  When hunting for a place to hike, I would recommend using Mapsource on the computer; the GPS screen is just not the best option for that due to its size.

With Mapsource set to highest, I can see a roughly 20 x 20 mile square piece of real estate, which is about 5 times the entire area of the Issaquah Alps.  I can see a similar region on my Oregon with the map detail bumped up.  I just can't see the need to display greater volumes than this, but that's just me.  I'd love to see if others feel differently, and if so I can adjust the zoom levels.

I'm hesitant to adjust the type styles since we went through a process last year of getting the two different sets into a form that the majority of people liked.  Changes now might disrupt the visibility for a portion of users.

[newwood]

Yup, I understand your reluctance to modify something that works for most users.  But that gets back to my original question: If you _were_ going to do the modification, can you give me the executive summary of how you would do it (particularly the settings in GPSmapedit for cgpsmapper--assuming that's how you did it).
newwood

[Moun10Bike]

Zoom levels are defined in the map file (.mp) settings.  See section 4.4 of the cGPSmapper documentation.  You would need to extract the trail data in the Northwest Trails image files (.img) and import the data into a map file with your chosen zoom levels, then recompile.  Note that the background map (the stuff you see in Mapsource that doesn't load to the GPS) has different levels from the detailed maps (the actual GPS map data) and the two cannot have overlapping zoom levels, so if you adjust the zoom levels on the trail data you will have to adjust the levels on any background map that you create.  (If I did this for Northwest Trails, the data I display in the background - roads, parks, lakes, etc. - would have to become be bumped to a lower and less accurate resolution.)

Sorry I don't have an easier answer for you; zoom levels are one of those things that are integral to the whole process and changes to them result in a lot of manual work.

[Moun10Bike]

newwood, you mentioned liking the way the trails in the Montana Trails mapset available on GPSFileDepot look on your eTrex.  You may want to try installing the "low res" version of Northwest Trails, since the type style in that is identical to the one used by yogazoo in MT Trails (he borrowed my type file).

I see that yogazoo unfortunately did not know to change the product ID for Montana Trails when using my type file, so MT Trails has the same code ("100CE.TYP") that Northwest Trails does.  This could create issues if both mapsets are loaded to the same GPS at the same time.

[Moun10Bike]

I decided to experiment with making the trails visible at lower zoom levels and have posted a beta of build 1.44 at http://www.switchbacks.com/Maps/downloads/NW_Trails_v1.44a.zip.  If you get a chance, please download and provide feedback on your impressions.  Thanks!

[newwood]

Beta 1.44 works great.  So a few notes:
 
Using Mapsource 6.15.6 with resolution at medium the trails are not visible at level 20km but are at 15.  With res at lowest, trails are not vis at 5km but are at 3.  With res at highest, not vis at 70km but are at 50km.

In contrast, on the Garmin etrex venture HCX with detail at "least" some trails start showing up at even the most smallest scale map (500 mi).  These seem to be black traces and include a few named trails "cowichan valley, rock candy east, and harriman".  Red trails show up at scale of 200 mi (with detail at "normal" red trails will show up at scale of 500 mi too).

So there is a surprising (to me) discontinuity between the levels at which MapSource and the GPSr render detail.

As expected, GPSr screen redraw times are increased with small scale maps so that's a clear trade off for people who use this version.

I should probably give this a try specifying the "high res" type set when installing too--just to see if there is a difference, but indeed as you said, the "low res" type set shows up like the montana trails.

So I'm a very happy camper with this version!  Thanks!

[andreh]

I thought I would just drop this in here in case someone may look in the future:

I could not see the trails on my Garmin Oregon 450 unless I maxed zoomed in (20FT).  I worked with the site admin (Jon) and we finally nailed it.  I had t do a "master" reset on the Garmin, the soft reset found in the GUI was not good enough.  After the Master Reset, everything worked as it should.