TopoFusion is proud to be a sponsor of the 2009 Cascade Cream Puff 100. The Cream Puff is one of the oldest and most challenging 100 mile mountain bike races in the country. We’ve taken care of the course mapping for this year’s event. Here’s a sample of a color aerial overview map:

TopoFusion author Scott Morris raced the CCP back in 2001, placing 9th. “It was one of the most brutal days I’ve ever had on a bike.”

For more course maps (including printable with full directions and an
awesome 3D map) head over to the TopoFusion Event Mapping page:

http://topofusion.com/race.php

Mike Curiak set off earlier this week to ride the 1,100 mile Iditarod Trail to Nome, completely unsupported. He’s carrying a SPOT GPS/satellite tracker.

We here at TopoFusion are pretty excited about his trip and have set up a tracking page to track his progress:

http://topofusion.com/spot.php

We’ve leveraged some TopoFusion technology to compute distances and speeds, all computed on-the-fly, as the SPOT points come in. You can see his track history, distance traveled, speeds and all that good stuff.

We’ll be continuing to develop the SPOT tracker as his trip proceeds. We’re also looking at adding SPOT tracking to the TopoFusion application itself. We’re hoping to see a lot of these features go into tracking self supported events as the Arizona Trail 300 and Tour Divide (the Tour Divide crew have been pioneers of SPOT tracking, and we are working with them) later in the year. If you’re interested in advanced SPOT tracking for your own event or trip drop us an email or get in touch with the Tour Divide folks. We’d love to see this technology used on other cool trips / events.

Finally, we’ll be posting text updates supplemented with TopoFusion generated maps, charts and playback videos over at Mike’s blog: http://lacemine29.blogspot.com

TopoFusion displaying geotagged photos

We’re pleased to announce the release of a new version of TopoFusion Pro. Version 3.70 features an array of improvements, new features and fixes.

New and improved PhotoFusion

TopoFusion was one of the first pieces of software to place photos using GPS tracks, and we’ve further improved all the photo display/geotagging/handling options. Most significantly, the software can now read and write coordinates into photo headers (EXIF). With PhotoFusion’s straightforward setup, this makes it one of the easiest options available for geotagging your images. TopoFusion’s display of photos and the user interface has been significantly improved as well.

For more info, see PhotoFusion.

More color aerials

We’ve added four more states to the Color Aerial Tileset. This brings us very close to covering the entire United States with high resolution imagery. Alaska, Washington, Georgia and West Virginia are new in v3.70. For more info, see Color Imagery. Remember you can also add your own servers using the WMS server feature.

Download

Head over to the Download Page to try TopoFusion out, free of charge.

Registered users refer to your registration email for the download link, or go here to request your code and the download URL.

Full list of changes

For a complete list of changes see the Revision History

2009′s Singlespeed Arizona course maps are now available in the usual place:

http://topofusion.com/race.php

(including GPS data ready to upload, printable maps and all that good stuff)

48 miles of one gear suffering, with the addition of the High Chiva loop this year…

Check out this combo of TopoFusion’s playback feature with some helmet cam footage, courtesy of Mike Curiak of Big Wheels.

Though only a GPS single track is being played back, the video was done with TopoFusion’s Multi track playback function, so that the “on screen” stats of speed and grade can be displayed as the simulation proceeds.

Keep in mind that the GPS unit is on the rider in front of the camera, not the one with the helmet cam, so the GPS track tends to go around the corners a bit before the camera gets there.

TopoFusion displaying new Color Aerials in Colorado

We’re excited about the release of version 3.60 of TopoFusion Pro. It features the new “Color” tileset that combines high resolution color aerial data from a number of servers into one “mega” tileset, covering most of the United States:

click to enlarge

For list of states covered go to:

http://www.topofusion.com/color-coverage.php

Download

Click [ HERE ] to download TopoFusion Pro with the new Color Tileset.

Registered users refer to your registration email for the download link, or go here to request your code and the download URL.

One note: the server responsiveness and quality vary from state to state. For some reason Texas and Pennsylvania are not in true color — they are red (?). But otherwise this is some very high quality and a MAJOR improvement for TopoFusion, especially over the black and white DOQQ data from Terraserver which is often old and sometimes fuzzy / washed out.

Also new, WMS servers

Version 3.60 also introduces custom WMS server support. Any WMS server can be served and cached by TopoFusion, as long as it can output in the EPSG:4326 projection (most can). For more info see WMS servers in TopoFusion.

For a complete list of changes see the Revision History

November’s issue of BIKE magazine features a story on a 160 mile singletrack epic in Utah’s Wasatch range. The author of the article contacted TopoFusion for a 3D plot of their route, published on page 75, and also online:

http://bikemag.com/gallery/across_the_wasatch_markewitz_utah_mountain_biking_photos/

They had tried to get an acceptable result from Google Earth, but the “patch work” effect (from stitching together data from various sources) made the result inacceptable. TopoFusion’s Landsat tileset was just the trick for mapping this 160 mile GPS track. It’s consistent and great for large scale maps. For publication their art department fiddled with the colors to make it a little less “mars” like (see the magazine). Original from TopoFusion looks like this:

(Warning – large file – 2.5 mb jpg)

In the soon-to-be-released next revision of TopoFusion we can do even better. We’ve got statewide color aerials at very high resolution (~1m or better) coming ‘atcha (for most of the United States). Here’s what the Wasatch Epic track looks like on the new color aerials:

Still very consistent. Also note that to get a high resolution 3D export in Google Earth you need the $400 Pro version. And even then it’s only 4800×4800. TopoFusion can export to 8192×8192 as long as you’ve got a video card that can support it.

We’re pleased to announce the release of version 3.51 of TopoFusion Pro.

The latest revision adds direct support for the newest Garmin GPS units, like the Edge 705, Colorado, Oregon (shown above, mounted to handlebars) and Nuvi. These are the new “mass storage” device GPS units. TopoFusion has always supported them in that it loads and saves GPX and TCX files. But now you don’t need to do your own file management and be unsure if you got things into the correct directories — let TopoFusion handle it for you.

The new units are supported just like older USB and serial units are — direct transfer of tracks and waypoints. We’ve also added a few little tricks like auto-naming of tracks based on the filename. This prevents every track from being named “Tracklog” (the default if the track has no name field).

Also in this release is more Windows Vista friendly install and directory structure. Existing users won’t notice any change — settings and default directories will remain the same. New installs will now use “My Documents\My TopoFusion Files” by default, rather than storing everything in “Program Files.” This avoids the compatibility mode issues and the storing of files in the “Virtual Store.”

Download Link: Download TopoFusion

Full list of changes since v3.41:

3.51 – [10/03/08] (Full Release)

Separated transfer of waypoints and tracks for Garmin mass storage devices
(e.g. Edge 705, Colorado, NUVI, Oregon).
GPS transfer dialog now behaves the same for Garmin USB and Mass storage
Added track names (based on filename, and only if empty) to tracks upon upload
to mass storage devices. Now on Colorado/Oregon units uploaded tracks
will have names, rather than “Track log.”
Fixed crash unloading a newly downloaded file after using “Save all” command.

3.50 – [09/24/08] (Beta only)

Added direct upload support for Garmin mass storage devices
(e.g. Edge 705, Colorado, NUVI, Oregon series)
Updated Installer and default directories to be more Windows Vista friendly
Fixed double .INI file problems on Vista
For new installs only:
* Default tracks directory now “My documents\My TopoFusion Files”
* TopoFusion.ini and TopoFusion.log stored in “AppData\Local\TopoFusion”
Existing installs:
* Default tracks dir remains the same
* Current TopoFusion.ini file will be loaded, whether in
C:\Program Files\TopoFusion or in the “Virtual Store.”
* TopoFusion.log stored in “Appdata\Local\TopoFusion”
TopoFusion will now run without admin privileges on XP/Vista
(still need admin to install)
Installer now asks to run *after* closing
Fixed problems loading some NMEA .log files

3.42 – [09/10/08] (Beta only)

Added direct download support for Garmin mass storage devices
(e.g. Edge 705, Colorado, NUVI, Oregon series)
Changed default filename for downloaded tracks to YYYY-MM-DD
Downloaded “saved tracks” now default to their name if saved

Today we released a new revision of TopoFusion Basic — version 2.975. This version includes several bug fixes and some additional functionality.

Smart merging is a great new feature that really simplifies track merging. Trailing extra points on drawn tracks was another really nagging UI issue that has been resolved.

We tried a couple approaches to get Landsat tiles to download again in the Basic version, but it just isn’t possible. The way Basic talks to the Nasa server simply isn’t supported anymore. If you want new Landsat tiles, you will have to upgrade to the Pro version of TopoFusion, which besides working, downloads much faster than Basic ever did, and stitches them together much more seamlessly.

If you’re using Basic and have existing Landsat maps already downloaded they will continue to work. But we have disabled the code that tries to download tiles and replaced it with a (one time) error message.

Download Link: Download TopoFusion

Other changes, from the revision history:

2.975 – [10/01/08]

Fixed crash in “edit track properties” when editing info
Fixed intermittent “unknown exception” on finishing track download
Fixed bug causing main TF window to become tiny when un-maximizing
Added “smart” merging (track merge tool)
– also: holding shift is no longer required to merge
Fixed problem with stray point added to end of drawn track
Fixed crashes loading some network files (removed maketopology()).
Updated copyrights on splash and about
Disabled Landsat tiles by default, added error message indicating new landsat downloads non-functional (Existing downloaded landsat tiles will still load and display)

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Thanks!

bikepacking.net is a new site focused on multi-day travel on the bike. The focus is on off-road (mountain bike) touring, but the concepts apply too all forms of overnight travel.

bikepacking.net will make extensive use of TopoFusion software, as already seen in the Route Matrix. Stats, profiles, and map images are available for many of the bikepacking routes. Also look for GPX downloads, merged and edited using TopoFusion.

Other features on the site include a web forum and gear reviews.

We’re excited about this new site, and the concept of bikepacking in general. Planning bikepacking trips was one of the main reasons we wrote TopoFusion in the first place!