Automated altitude palette

PawelS shared this idea 7 years ago
Gathering feedback

The idea is that colour resolution of given palette could be used fully in areas with a different min max height without need of manually adjusting ranges. To do this Locus should have a form to set minimum and maximum values for given palette. It would be good if it had prefilled values based on displayed area.


An ideal would be fully automated like:

http://fr-fr.topographic-map.com/places/France-27/

If such full automation would be power consuming there should be an option to switch on/off autoupdating after change of displayed area.


This is continuation of http://help.locusmap.eu/topic/altitude-map

Replies (10)

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Please vote for this feature ^^

There are much more possibilities with color palettes than we expected. With color palettes it is possible to create altitude lines (contour lines) on the fly for maps which do not have contour lines


It it possible to quick and easy recognise where are hills and where are valleys (and how deep or high are they). When you want reach a destination it is sometimes easier to take a longer route without a hill/valley than the shortest way to the position.

And my new additional idea is: If the color palette is dynamically created relative to you current elevation you can very easy see which is the easiest way to your destination. (f.e. green color means elevation similar to your current elevation, blending to red color for elevation which is higher or lower)


Best regards and a happy new year

Jarny


PS: In the old original topic for color maps: http://help.locusmap.eu/topic/altitude-map#comment-33746 there are 2 screenshots which shows an example of a simple dynamic color palette for my home area. With the choosen range of (300m - 880m) it is the best palette to differ the altitudes in my area. It also shows the contourlines only created by the color palette. This will give you an quick impression of this feature.

And sorry for my bad english.

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+1 fantastic idea Jarny for planning heavily laden cycle tour, choosing optimum route to minimize steep/ hard climbs

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+1

I would also love to have this feature!

It would make it possible to get a more detailed impression of the topology of an area, especially in regions with relatively small altitude differences (for example low mountain ranges)

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Wow, never seen such a site before which is able do dynamically change its color scheme, thanks for the link.

Well for locus: maybe a nice feature too, right now we have to first test which of the 5 default themes is suitable for the current map area. And in rather flat regions, even profile "lowlands" can't illustrate variations in the area well.

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But also has a disadvantage. You do not know exactly whether it is very steep or less steep. I have fixed values for the top (e.g. 15) and for the bottom (e.g. minus 15) and I know exactly when it shows dark red it is very hard for me uphill. I want to avoid this color if possible.

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Indeed nice, but without a legend you do not understand what you see :-(

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In fact, as a hiker, I am more concerned about slope than elevation. Maybe this idea could also apply to the slope coloring mode of tracks.

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I played around with colored elevation in Locus and programmed a python script to create custom elevation color maps.

The best idea was to color each elevation band differently so that the elevation lines look like contour lines at the same time.

I use such color maps to quickly spot shallow mountain crossings and optimize my router accordingly, view the terrain and it's elevation at the same time and see the slope depending on how small/wide the elevation band is ‒ all with one overlay.

My intention here is only to document and give curious people a starting point and show what's possible.

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Awesome, that''s cool!! How do I use your script In Locus?

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You can run it directly in the browser under the given URL, just have to log in your google account. You can't run it in Locus.
The output is the content of the .cmap file that Locus uses for elevation coloring.

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Sorry, I'm newbie. Where is the URL? You say the script can't run in Locus, but your screenshots above are with Locus.

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Extreme awesome idea which I never saw before. I'm also interested in the URL ;-)

What elevation data are you using and whats the area you're creating your overlay for?

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The python script to create custom elevation color maps is linked in my 1st post. Personally on my phone I am using your @Sonny elevation data ‒ great job! I am only creating a .cpt file, which serves as an elevation color map, defining which color Locus should apply on which altitude. Here's the offical Locus documentation: Custom Elevation Coloring.

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Now I got it. Thank you Martin for sharing with us! It is very impressive!

And I wish Sonny could make LIDAR elevation data available for South America (Brazil) ;-)

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I would love to see a dynamic height coloring!

With an aditional legend as a colorbar with min and max value shown at the end of the bar, it would be able to estimate heights and slopes.

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Regarding opacity (one issue in original topic https://help.locusmap.eu/topic/altitude-map ):


It would be nice to have a setting in this feature here to override the hardcoded transparence setting in Locus. Probably this can be a general setting for shading (hint to @menion 😉).

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