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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: robertt on July 31, 2021, 07:40:49 AM

Title: Map for navigation on Forest Service Roads
Post by: robertt on July 31, 2021, 07:40:49 AM
I looking for a solution to help me navigate on my Oregon 610. Lets say get to an area that is 50 miles away utilizing a myriad of forest service roads. I can't find a solution where I can be zoomed out to 5 miles or so and still be able to see anything. The topo maps(Idaho Topo from this site) seem to have the good forest service road coverage but not visible zoomed out plus the topo lines completely cover the map. So in a nutshell, would be great if the forest service roads were visible at 5 miles and the topo lines were shut off completely. I've played with the zoom and other map setting and can't seem to come up with anything. It seems in general the zoom setting effect the topo lines and the roads in the same way. So reducing topo detail also reduces road detail. I've also tried some street maps and haven't found a solution. Hopefully I'm just missing something, thanks in advance.
...robert
Title: Re: Map for navigation on Forest Service Roads
Post by: Boyd on July 31, 2021, 07:44:08 AM
Sounds like you would be better served with TRACKS instead of a map. These would be roads converted to .gpx files. Tracks should be visible at all zoom levels (if not, I believe there's a zoom level setting to control this).

Not sure where this kind of data is available since I've never looked for it. But pretty sure you can find it somewhere.
Title: Re: Map for navigation on Forest Service Roads
Post by: robertt on July 31, 2021, 08:00:24 AM
Thanks Boyd, I agree that if the info was available as tracks it would solve it. Probably too many roads in idaho to have discreet tracks for though. What I did for single track is create a transparent overlay that has all the single track in Idaho, works great and visible at all levels. I wat able to do this because Idaho has a way to download this single track info as a .kml file and I was able to work with that and make the the overlay. Problem is I don't know of a source for the same info on roads....
Title: Re: Map for navigation on Forest Service Roads
Post by: Boyd on July 31, 2021, 08:12:22 AM
Have you looked here? You can convert shapefiles to .gpx files - if you know how  ;)

https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/edw/datasets.php
Title: Re: Map for navigation on Forest Service Roads
Post by: robertt on August 01, 2021, 06:51:14 AM
Thanks Boyd, it looks they they do have this info. I don't know a thing about shapefiles but I'll start reading up on them....