This object is in archive! 

Maps of Catalunya Spain

Christopher Knight shared this question 7 years ago
Answered

The best topo maps of the Catalunya region of Spain are those produced by Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya (ICGC). Try zooming in here for example http://www.icc.cat/appdownloads/


The ICGC has apps for both Android and IOS which use this mapping but the apps are very basic and limited in what they can do. A better bet is the Android app Backcountry Navigator, which can download the mapping. However, I should much prefer to use Locus and therefore wonder if it's possible for the powers that be to include the ICGC maps as a downloadable option?

Replies (13)

photo
1

If they provide the tiles for free, you would have to find out the access URL rules and extend your providers.xml for Locus, similar to below.


<provider id="10023" type="0" visible="true" background="-1">

<name>Google</name>

<mode>Terrain</mode>

<url><![CDATA[http://mt{s}.google.com/vt/lyrs=t&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}]]></url>;

<serverPart>0;1</serverPart>

<zoomPart>{z}-8</zoomPart>

<zoomMin>8</zoomMin>

<zoomMax>23</zoomMax>

<tileSize>256</tileSize>

<countries>World</countries>

<attribution><![CDATA[(c)2015 Google - Map data]]></attribution>

<extraHeader><![CDATA[User-Agent#Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:37.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/37.0]]></extraHeader>

<extraHeader><![CDATA[Referer#http://www.google.com/maps/]]></extraHeader>;

<usage>road,city</usage>

</provider>

photo
1

Great finding - and it flies in Locus ?

photo
1

Hello Christopher,

thank you for interesting info. Map looks quite interesting. We consider if would be possible to add these maps into Locus in official way.


However would you please consider/compare the CNIG Spain map that are available in Menu > Locus Store > Europe > Spain. CNIG map does not contains such detailed scales but it should be also good Topo map


BTW: it seems that it's possible to download custom area in geoTiff format. If you want to play with it you can convert geoTiff to Locus sqlitedb format manually using Mapc2mapc format. Please see how to: http://www.the-thorns.org.uk/mapping/help/locus.html


Thank you

Best regards

Petr

photo
1

Thank you all for your comments. The technical ones look a bit too complex for me but give me encouragement.


Petr, I should love to see these maps added "officially". I have tried the CNIG map but as you say the detailed scale is not available. Also I have found that there are occasionally significant differences in what the maps show for some trails between the maps, especially as you look at the more detailed maps.


I shall have a look at the geoTiff option.


Regards,

Chris.

photo
1

Hello Christppher

i know WMS maps are not downloadable with locus, but online viewing its possible

add following link to WMS tab

http://geoserveis.icc.cat/icc_mapesmultibase/noutm/wms/service

navigate with a offline vectormap to this area, next activate WMS map with following settings


i found two strange behaviors, perhaps Petr or menion know a solution

- if i center this WMS map, it center N0 E0 southwest africa, so dont use it

- if in background a rastermap e.g. "SQL world" is loaded, wms map didn´t work, on higher ZL map is shifted from real position

9ed64aa2bd8a325788b52a80778f119d

photo
1

Hello balloni,

"center to" fixed ... in this case, it should be "Map coverage not defined" message.

About map calibration ... suggest to use difference CRC projection, like 3857 if available.

photo
1

Hello menion

thanks for fixing "center to"


it doesn´t matter witch CRS i set, see screencast with CRS3857

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fl8f0qnclv3rpfm/WMS.mp4?dl=0

photo
1

balloni55, thank you for your explanation of the WMS version of this map. It will be helpful in some circumstances but my principal need is for an offline map as the areas in which I wish to travel generally have no phone service.


Regards, Chris

photo
3

Hello Christopher

after searching i found another mapsource for this map ;-)

attached you find two xml files:

- ICC Catalonia, work inside Locus with installed "Map Tweak" max. download 10000 tiles a day

- ICC-Catalonia_Mobac, for use on PC to create large "RMaps SQLite" offline maps with Mobac at once

one small disadvantage to the WMS map, ZL19 is not available


Have fun

Wolfgang

photo
1

Wolfgang,

Many thanks indeed for these. I have managed to get both working and now have the maps in Locus.


Regards,

Chris.

photo
1

Hi,


Thanks everybody, I am currently creating an offline map with MOBAC and apparently is working fine.*


I want to confirm that ICGC maps are better than CNIG's, at both high and low zoom levels. ICGC are specially much better at toponomy, where CNIG has a lot of mistakes, even Catalan misspellings (see comparison at zoom level 15 below).


IMHO ICGC maps could also be provided in Locus and recommended by default for Catalonia. Note than ICGC resources have a very permissive license, CC BY 4.0: http://www.icgc.cat/Ajuda/Avis-legal


ICGC resources:

http://www.icgc.cat/Innovacio/Recursos-per-a-desenvolupadors/Tessel-les-vector-i-estils-per-fer-mapes-lleugers-i-apps

http://www.icgc.cat/Innovacio/Recursos-per-a-desenvolupadors/WMS-i-WMTS


ICGC vs CNIG at zoom level 15 (some of these names of places can be checked at https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llista_de_monuments_de_Santa_Coloma_de_Queralt)

3aab9d007a90efeeb7caa53d204ffbef


ae9ab280e58eb78a55d3b0c556463891


*Only problem I see is that downloading zoom levels > 14 is going to create a huge file. I guess images could be optimized to save 30%-50%. Offtopic: What would be a recommended format for Locus that still keeps images as separate files? (so they could be optimized with tools such as mozjpeg or pngquant). I found http://forum.locusmap.eu/index.php?topic=53.0 but I am a bit confused with so many different formats.

photo
1

Hi pere,

if you are using MOBAC, it can do the compression job for you directly: in the main window, left control pane, Layer settings: custom tile processing. JPEG70 has a very nice compression, and still good results for higher zoom levels.

For ZL 8 you better stay with 90%+

Cheers

Michael

photo
1

Hi Michael,

Thanks, I already saw that, but I thought this compression would not be competitive with modern libraries such as mozjpeg.

This map source is using PNG, so I tried to recompress the images with mobac to PNG-4 and PNG-8. PNG4 did not work at all (image was terrible), and in PNG-8 sizes went from 76KB to 41.3KB, which is not bad. The images looked very similar, with just a few colors changed a little bit.

But using pngquant I was able to reduce the size to 18.5KB, degrading the quality just a little bit further:

Original (76KB)

e62db61d7be7997b90c7b65270254048

.

mobac PNG-8 (41.3KB)

66ed3985d6f36316286fec3d4c425796

.

pngquant --quality=50-60 (18.5KB)

0c3ad7a3d8c10c1c22ed206409f2921d

That was just a single sample, similar ratios happened with the other images. I think it makes sense to run an independent process later with external libraries

photo
1

I've been playing with default JPEG compression and I see that is giving very good results:


Mobac JPEG 70% (13.6 KB)

d5e73a8b4d02f97f402a818ea615b396

.

mozjpeg (12.3 KB)

convert original.png original.ppm

jpeg-recompress -m smallfry --ppm original.ppm jpegrecompress.jpg

7ccfd5d2692dee488beaa2153ec83240


Second image (mozjpeg) looks nicer and is smaller, but I think I'm going to do it the easier way for now. Thanks!

photo
1

Ahhh, interesting.

Then I propose this: use MOBAC and create Maverick or AndNav format, which is a set of png files organized in a folder tree.

Then apply your compression to each of those files. Needs some scripting. Then use MOBAC again to recompile the changed tile files into sqlitedb or MBtiles or ...

Cheers

Michael

photo
1

Did not read your follow on post. If jpeg70 does the job for you in one go, then of course it is easier.

Replies have been locked on this page!