Topofusion and kmz files for the Oregon/Colorado/Dakota

I happen to be one of the beta testers for Topofusion and a few days ago, I had requested  from Scott Morris, the brain behind Topofusion to check out is kmz file export would be possible in Topofusion (TF). I got my answer yesterday night with a new beta version ot TF Pro that can do exactly that. Topofusion offers you WYSIWYG, what you see is what you get on your Oregon/Colorado/Dakota.

Anything on TF's screen can be sent to the Oregon, topo map, aerial, color aerial etc. Even custom maps, and TF really shines here as the georeferencing is simpler and much faster than Google Earth and if you downloaded the mapping tiles ahead of time, you don't even need internet access to georeference a user map.


What more, I made these maps using a 6-megapixel picture taken with a camera I use for SAR. When on a search, I hate having to play with cameras settings or with jpg file that need to be shrinked etc. It is all easy to do but these are details that distract me from my main task. Once the user map is georeferenced in TF, the screen display is 1274 pixels wide by 853 in height sending out a kmz files of 106-140KB.

Also, I enlarge the screen display on TF and made three kmz files, the UTM grid helped tremendously in making sure I don't have huge overlapping areas or worse, holes in my coverage.


Once on my Oregon, the three files are there on screen, and I can scroll seamlessly from one area to the other.

Thank you Scott, for coming up with so far the best and easiest way of sending maps to the Oregon!

Raster pictures on my Oregon

A couple of days ago, we had a search in Highland Forest Park, NY. Stryder, my dog never got out of the truck, as the victim was found by the Sheriff's department trailing bloodhound, but since I had the time, I started making a raster map of the park fr my Oregon. I quickly took a couple of digital pictures of the park's trail map, two maps, one for snowshoeing trails and the other for x-country ski trails (they are getting ready for winter fun).

I did not change the camera's settings (6 megapixel camera) when I took the pictures. That gave me files of about +/-2.5Mb. Georeferencing with Google Earth was ok, but I really prefer the quick method that Topofusion has, just click on 3 points on the layer and the base map/aerial. Much simpler, quick and easy. I talked to Scott of Topofusion about making kmz layers with TF, especially as if I download the maps prior to leaving home, I can then use TF even without internet access.

The screen dump below is of the 2.5 Mb file

This screen dump is with a jpg taken at 2 megapixels resolution giving a kmz file of +/-950Kb. The map is a 24K topo map in both these pictures.

This last picture is the same as above the only change being the map, this time it is the Garmin Topo 2008.

I noticed that the re-draw of the screen is faster with the smaller kmz files, but still the 2.5 Mb files were quite usable. That means that if I have to do some hasty work and don't reset the camera back to 2 megapixels, the results are not going to bite me back. Actually the lesser trails show better on the larger files and since I would be moving at pedestrian speed, screen redraw speed is of lesser importance and it is more important to me to better see the secondary trails too. I also have ample room on my 8GB uSD card.

Another lesson learned is that when you have two kmz files of the same area, only one shows on screen. I have not managed to find out the reason why  one has precedence. The only solutions I see for now are either move one file off my uSD card (needing a computer -which I have in my truck) or putting them on two different uSD cards (and try not to lose/misplace those - good luck).