Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Geotagging Photos and Trackpoint Reduction with TopoFusion
TopoFusion is a shareware product that can be used for free without time limit, the only limitation to the free version is partial obscuring of 1/3 of the tiles of the downloads maps (Topo, Aerial Photo and Satellite) automatically from Microsoft's TerraServer and NASA's OnEarth server.
Although somewhat reduced in value due to the ability to do similar things in Google maps, the software does offer some nifty features that can be appreciated without use of the mapping portion. In either case, its reasonable price of $40 makes it a good buy for anyone serious about GPS mapping and Geotagging photos.
Although somewhat reduced in value due to the ability to do similar things in Google maps, the software does offer some nifty features that can be appreciated without use of the mapping portion. In either case, its reasonable price of $40 makes it a good buy for anyone serious about GPS mapping and Geotagging photos.
- PhotoFusion: Geo-reference digital photos using EXIF timestamps. This include the ability to set the size of the thumbnails, and include an offset for the tiemstamp from GMT. It places photos along GPS tracks and produces HTML pages with clickable image maps. The camera icons are a bit hard to make out in topo view, but the page can be toggled into aerial view where it is much more visible.
- Multi-track playback: This feature allows various options for visualizing a single trip or multiple riders/travelers each using theri own GPS. The playback can be captured on screen with an appropriate screen capture program, such as xxx and made into a movie.
- Networks: A network of trails consists of individual trail segments that link between bike-route/trail intersections. The network reduces each bike-route/trail covered by any track to be represented only once.
- A single file (the trail network) is produced that contains one trail segment for each trail segment covered by the combination of all tracks.
- Multiple tracks are averaged together, typically producing a more accurate representation of the route/trail
- Trail intersections are marked and can be used as accurate waypoints.
- Routes that were not represented by the any of the original data can be created, mapped and measured.
- Trail segments can be combined together to create a new route--possibly one you've never taken before.
- Splining/Simplifying GPS data: Splining, increses the number of points and is primarily good for off road trails. It interpolates data points is an attempt to recreate the actual curve traveled. where Simplifying reduces the number of pointes and is primarily suited for road routes where a street can be reduced by the number of tracks without losing any accuracy.
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