By lhe - 7/23/2015 10:53:10 AM
So now I have downloaded the improved charts. I must confess I was disappointed - I had expected more details in the charts. Particularly in light of the Facebook posting:
In next week's chart update we are introducing more detailed scenery data across Europe. This includes roads, railways, rivers, lakes and the coastline. Unlike our previous data, the new data will be spatially perfect, and even scenery in large-scale georeferenced plates will match up.
Along with geographical data, the town waypoints will also change. You should see more smaller towns as you zoom in, and a better selection of towns at each zoom scale.
The new charts will also include secondary roads, when you are zoomed to 1:250k or larger scales, which should help people operating at a low height.
The accuracy does seem better now and that is of course a very, very, good thing, but as regards detail I can't see any improvement - rather the opposite. At least for Sweden. Yes, a few roads have been added, but some waterways and even towns/villages have been removed (even at the largest scales).
Look at the following two screenshots of the area west of Uppsala (ESKC/ESCM) at 1:250000. The first one using the old charts and the second one using the new charts. (Taken on different devices, as I can obviously not revert to the old version once I've updated.)
You can see the improved accuracy in how the roads are rendered. But you can also see that all waterways are gone and so are the villages of Vittinge, Järlåsa and Lövstalöt. Well, actually, in the new charts you can see a fragment of the river in the upper right corner. (Yes, I have enabled rivers in the mapping settings! There are rivers shown in other places.)
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By Tim Dawson - 7/30/2015 3:25:48 PM
Well, we now have secondary roads at 250k scale so there are hundreds (at least) of those across Sweden in the new chart. We should have more town waypoints, too. If you think an area is particularly sparse and you know there is a town there which you think we should have, let us know. We can take a look and see if there's anything we can do.
As I mentioned, the river data is not very good from the Swedish source. I can definitely get them all to appear at 250k scale for you, but there won't be a gradual increase in the number of rivers shown as there is elsewhere in Europe (for the time being, anyway).
It's possible there might be some tiny urban areas which are currently excluded by a size threshold. If you can come up with an example or two - towns with a distinctive shape, which you think are large enough to be identified from the air but which we do not have, I will look specifically at them to see if we can do anything.
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