Madpom > 2015/08/26 10:08

Airphotos and hi-res, up-to-date topo50 maps are now working (again!)

The original (2009) maps are still the default - as they are faster loading / more reliable. But you can use the new 'layers' button to select the LINZ-hosted latest topo50 maps and airphotos. These can be zoomed far closer than the default maps, down to scale of about 1:200. However, they can be very slow loading at times from the LINZ servers - be warned.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Matt

Madpom > 2015/08/25 09:50

I've had to remove the use of LINZ hi-res topomaps and airphotos. When I enabled them they were fast and responsive, but I've noticed that at times they've become unusably slow to load. Whether this is because of general overload on the LINZ servers, or because they are throttling the bandwidth my site can use, I'm not sure. I will abandon the use of LINZ-hosted maps for now.

But, coming soon, I will:
1) Allow the user to switch from the default (current) mapset to the LINZ airpohotos/maps with the caveat that performance will be slow.
2) Build an up-to-date snapshot of the LINZ topomaps and host it myself.

Madpom > 2015/08/25 09:27

I've switched the default maps used on this site over to those provided by LINZ. These go to much higher resolutions than I can host, will always show the latest most up-to-date map, and also have the detailed airphotos that you may have seen on WAMS.

There are two disadvantages, however:
1) They only show topo50 maps, so are not readable when you zoom out.
2) Unfortunately, LINZ use a really strange sequence of resolutions which do not scale linearly and are different from those used in my historical topomaps. As all maps need to use the same resolutions this means I've had to disable the historical topomaps on this site. I'll work on a way of letting users switch between the two mapsets, but until that happens you can still browse historical topomaps at:

http://mapspast.org.nz

Comments & feedback very welcome - particularly which map you'd prefer as the default: the 'latest' or the sequence of different-scaled maps that are always readable.