Implementation Details
TopoFusion was written by current Computer Science PhD students. This
means that the latest computer science techniques were applied in its
design and implementation. For the user this means the most efficient use of
computing resources -- roughly translated as
SPEED.
A few areas were TopoFusion's design differs from other mapping programs:
- Scrolling speed. TopoFusion uses DirectX, a graphics API designed
for computer games. Combined with the other efficient techniques
employed, this results in super smooth map display and scrolling.
Try the demo and you'll see a large difference compared to
other mapping products.
- Tile caching. Tiles downloaded from Terraserver are cached and
pre-fetched on disk, main memory, and video memory. This means map
data is kept in the fastest place possible so you spend less time
waiting for maps to load.
- Memory usage. Tired of waiting for your Topo program to read maps
off the hard disk or cd-rom when you have plenty of system RAM free
to cache it? You can set TopoFusion to use as much system RAM as you
want resulting in less wait time.
- Multithreading. Separate threads are spawned for downloading tiles,
producing trail networks and downloading tracks from GPS units.
This means you are free to continue using the program while it works
in the background.
-
Hard
disk use. TopoFusion stores tiles downloaded from Terraserver
in a 625mb chunks (burnable on CD). This eliminates costly slack
which saves an
enormous amount of disk space. In the example below, a directory of
160mb tiles from ExpertGPS can actually eat nearly 500mb of disk
space due to slack (click properties on the directory to compare
actual size to size on disk).
TopoFusion was designed to take advantage of today's powerful systems.
Got a 128MB video card? Your map scrolling will be incredibly smooth
because TopoFusion will utilize your hardware. Got a 512Mb of RAM?
Let TopoFusion utilize it and you'll see amazingly smooth performance.
