[big_yamato]

Good find Yamato

Looked at using GIS data and associated programs before, but not comfortable with it. The projection format from some sources is Clarke1866 which needs manipulation if you are using DEM/SRTM data which uses WGS 84. In other words if you mix maps made with GIS and maps made with DEMs/SRTM you may need to stretch/modify the maps in one to fit the other.

Well, the program lacks accurate scaling methods like microDEM has but i found the 4-5x magnification when saving image file give me just about the right size with the map_c's dimension. Still experimenting though.

Secondly, the rivers etc are drawn as vectors, and at some scales they appear very road like with lots of straight lines. Some of the data in these can also be offset by up to 2km in some datasets you can download, so if accuracy is your game, be aware.

Indeed. But I'm going to try to have the program draws the river lines with 2 or 3 px, saving the map with 8x enlargement, then I'll use GIMP anti aliasing filter to get them smoother before downsizing it. I wish there are simpler ways though, but i'm still exploring the program to find out more.

And speaking about accuracy, I pasted the resulting tracelines above map_c sized MicroDEM files and while it's not 100% perfect match, it's still usable to provide clear guidelines, IMO.

I believe this mapping format, GIS, was intended for the ease of producing maps for presentations, books etc quickly with different data, ie roads, climate, traffic, urban sprawl, pollution.....

...and map_t textures allocation since it has land coverage layer. And since it's in vector format, It can be used for this purpose, i think.

A good source of data is The Digital Map of the World at http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/. You will need to convert it though using Import71, unless there are other methods of importing the data.

Thanks for the link, I'm downloading the data for comparison at this moment. Speaking about datas, if anyone making the map of their own country, maybe it's worth to check your own goverment's websites for downloadable geographic datas first before checking outside sources.

I just found few days ago that in here there are actually a lot of them freely available... :roll: