Papa Bear
New member
This will be of interest to those developing and/or using custom topographic maps in Google maps. I'm not sure if anyone (but me) on this forum develops Google Maps using the API, but the new map type for Canada will doubtless migrate to services such as Acme over time.
This is a new WMS service from NR Canada that provides a vector graphic service for Canada based on the 1:50,000 series of maps.
I have been part of a discussion on the Google Maps API Developers forum. See this thread: Google Maps API Developer's Forum thread
This is vastly superior to the old service based on raster based tiles from scanned images of the maps.
I have a sample map using the new service here: Marble Mountain map
If you bring up this map, a USGS based topo of Marble Mountain, on the Canadian border in Maine should appear.
If you use the map type selector in the upper right, beside seeing the usual map types, you can select either "CanRas" (the old raster service) or "CanVec" (the new vector service). "CanVec" looks quite good, especially compared to the raster based maps. Place names, roads, etc. all maintain readability as the topography scales in and out. If you zoom out you will soon see Mont Megantic and the towns in this part of Quebec. Zooming in and out will give a good sense of the quality.
The only drawback is that it only supports zoom levels 11-18. The old service (and most map types) go out much farther, to 7 or 8. The new service will take you out to about 3 miles to the inch (on my screen; YMMV). This should be adequate for most hiking uses, you just won't see a whole county or province.
For those interested in the code, it's in this file: JS Script
The code for the custom map types is based on code originally written by Jef Poskanzer of Acme Mapper, modified by Mark Pelletier of the GSAK forum which in turn was modified my me.
This is a new WMS service from NR Canada that provides a vector graphic service for Canada based on the 1:50,000 series of maps.
I have been part of a discussion on the Google Maps API Developers forum. See this thread: Google Maps API Developer's Forum thread
This is vastly superior to the old service based on raster based tiles from scanned images of the maps.
I have a sample map using the new service here: Marble Mountain map
If you bring up this map, a USGS based topo of Marble Mountain, on the Canadian border in Maine should appear.
If you use the map type selector in the upper right, beside seeing the usual map types, you can select either "CanRas" (the old raster service) or "CanVec" (the new vector service). "CanVec" looks quite good, especially compared to the raster based maps. Place names, roads, etc. all maintain readability as the topography scales in and out. If you zoom out you will soon see Mont Megantic and the towns in this part of Quebec. Zooming in and out will give a good sense of the quality.
The only drawback is that it only supports zoom levels 11-18. The old service (and most map types) go out much farther, to 7 or 8. The new service will take you out to about 3 miles to the inch (on my screen; YMMV). This should be adequate for most hiking uses, you just won't see a whole county or province.
For those interested in the code, it's in this file: JS Script
The code for the custom map types is based on code originally written by Jef Poskanzer of Acme Mapper, modified by Mark Pelletier of the GSAK forum which in turn was modified my me.
