Rana Hossain is getting ready to release a new freeware moving map program for FS2004. It will track your aircraft on a moving map either in the kneeboard or a seperate window. (See http://www.ranainside.com/software_flightsim_movingmap.html)I've been working on the maps to go along with it. So far I've done all the Sectional and Terminal Area Charts for United States (including Alaska and Hawaii). Similar quality to the maps I uploaded last year, but these have had borders removed so they fit seamlessly together in the moving map program. Also, TACs will automatically open to replace the Sectional when entering the area covered by the TAC.I've also done a world map that covers the entire Earth based on a very high resolution image of the Earth by NASA. I also hope to eventually do High Altitude Enroute charts.Now, here's my dilema. I can provide very high quality maps, but they will take up a lot of hard drive space (and server space at AVSIM, if they would even let me upload them). TACs are about 250 megs, Sectionals about 800 megs and World Map about 175 megs. I've split the files into smaller chunks and converted them to GIF format so they don't use very much RAM while the program is running, just a lot of hard drive space. And of course you don't have to use all of them.The other option is I can downsample the images and reduce the color depth so they don't look quite as nice. But they would only use about 1/3 of the space this way.Also thought about converting them to JPGs, but JPGs use about 10x the RAM as GIFs for the same size image, which isn't good.So, I guess the question is would you rather have high quality images that take up a lot of hard drive space, or smaller files that don't look quite as good?Matt Fox

Hi MattFrom my perspective the high quality is lost in the small size that they are viewed at in the kneeboard or small seperate window. So a smaller size is more useful, unless perhaps the maps could be stored and downloaded on demand - however a 175mb download on a dial-up line is a big ask.Look forward to seeing this though regardless of how it comes.

Hi Matt,I wonder if this program supports ECW format. Don't know if the ECW files are smaller but with TRI Fly2 the ECW format is used in all included maps. You could use the free Irfanview program to see if that format makes any difference. Maybe the maps can be released in ECW format with the enduser doing a conversion with IrfanView before using it.I look forward to your new maps.GreetingsHarry

>175mb download on a dial-up line is a big ask.>>Look forward to seeing this though regardless of how it>comes.>In a perfect world, I would probably upload high and low quality versions of all the maps so those with dial up had a chance. But doubt AVSIM would be too keen on handing over almost 2 gigs of server space for it :)The lower quality version of the world map is only 45 megs. The original world map I got from NASA website was over 2 gigs, so I got it down quite a bit :) In case you're curious, here is an example of what the world map looks like. http://my.starstream.net/mfox/images/world.jpgMatt

That's direction I was thinking of myself: ECW or MrSID. I think there may be more MrSID utils out there that could maybe incorporated into an end product, but I'm just guessing here.scott s..

I think Mr. Sid had pretty expensive licensing requirements. I'll try ECW. Somehow I think I'm going to have to get the file sizes down.Matt

I vote for the high quality maps. I'm using your earlier maps and see no reason for you to downgrade them for this new program. Storage space is cheap, and if AVSIM was willing to host your other maps, why not these in lieu thereof? And as far as download times are concerned, before I had dsl I would download large files like this overnight. I don't see why this isn't still a viable option for those not having a broadband connection. Indeed, my dsl has been down for the past 4 days (bad weather here in northern California) and I've had to make do with a backup dialup service. It's not dsl, but it still works.

I'll send an email to the library managers seeing what they think. I did try ECW and they are about 1/2 the size of the GIFs, but not sure if the moving map program can be made to use them and not sure what kind of memory requirements ECWs have.Another option is I could convert all the files to JPGs, which seem to be about 1/3 of the size of the GIFs. But then I'd probably recommend the end users convert them back to GIFs because the JPGs use so much more RAM than the GIFs. The GIFs use about 15-40 megs of RAM. Same size JPG uses about 150-200 megs of RAM.I'll figure something out.Matt

Decided to just convert them to JPGs. Minimal difference in visual quality and they are much more reasonable sizes this way.Might recommend that you convert them back to GIFs after you download them if you're concerned about RAM usage. Irfanview can do that in a batch process.Matt

Matt,Very good decision. If AVSIM storage is an issue you may want to upload only areas that have high user interest such as USA, ALaska, Southern Canada, Europe and selected areas such as Hong Kong, Japan, E & W Australia, parts of South America, etc. May cut the first upload in half.I am in beta for Moving Map and it works very well automatically selecting maps based upon resolution. As an example, if you are flying between Miami and Quebec as you get to "altitude" (you set the level) it automatically reverts to a lower resolution (wide coverage) map. When descending the higher resolution appears. When entering Quebec airspace the highest resolution map shows up. I use maps from DeLorme (old AAA travel product) to produce areas that allow me to even follow state (secondary) roads for VFR.All of my maps are JPEG.Dick Boley @KLBE

For those of you interested in this, Rana has uploaded FSM Moving Map and it's now available in AVSIM file library. I've also uploaded the world files and TACs for the US. Just search for FSMMM and you'll find them all.I'm still working on the Sectionals for the US and should have them uploaded by this weekend.Matt

Matt, thanks for uploading your textures and charts in their full glory. I can't wait to set up the program.But first, a question about your comments concening RAM usage and your suggestion that users may want to convert the JPEGs to GIFs. I am unclear on whether the need for this conversion is dependent on the amount of RAM installed. In other words, is there a point at which RAM usage is immaterial? For example, I can understand that if a machine has 512 MB of RAM you might want to do the conversion. But is this also the case with machines having 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM?In my particular case, my machine has 1 GB of RAM and I use FSAutoStart to shutdown unnecessary programs when running FS9. I seem to recall reading in the forums that FS9 can't access more than 512 MB of RAM (why I don't know and probably wouldn't understand in any event). If this is correct, is there any benefit to converting the images to GIFs where a user has 1 GB or more of RAM?RobertP.S.: I look forward to the TACs over the weekend. Thanks again for your efforts.

>Matt, thanks for uploading your textures and charts in their>full glory. I can't wait to set up the program.>>But first, a question about your comments concening RAM usage>and your suggestion that users may want to convert the JPEGs>to GIFs. I am unclear on whether the need for this conversion>is dependent on the amount of RAM installed. In other words,>is there a point at which RAM usage is immaterial? For>example, I can understand that if a machine has 512 MB of RAM>you might want to do the conversion. But is this also the case>with machines having 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM?>You might be right, only reason I mentioned it in the readme is because the JPGs seem to use between 100 and 150 megs or RAM, which is a lot. You don't really lose anything by converting to GIFs, except they take up more hard drive space. The image quality is the same. So really up to the users, depening on what is more important. Plus, even if FS only uses 512 megs, a lot of us also have other programs running such as SimCharts, Active Sky, etc., which also use up RAM.Also, I figured it was just a matter of time before someone posted a message complaining about RAM usage with the JPGs :)Matt

I have downloaded the software and anxiously await getting it up and running. I would like to thank Rana Hossain for all the time and effort required to create this software.Not at all by way of complaint but just to help avoid confusion when reading the instructions, Mr. Hossaid inadvertently got his definitions of latitude and longitude backwards when he wrote:"above image (img:1) is a map of Manhattan. Blue grid lines are longitude and latitude marks... as you can see, all longitude lines are parallel to horizontal axis, and all latitude lines are parallel to vertical axis." Longitude On the globe, lines of constant longitude ("meridians") extend from pole to pole. Latitude, is of course, a series on concentric circles (actually ovals due to the earth's bulge caused by centrifugal force) that run parallel to the equator.Regards,Jim

I am using GPSout and Ms MapPoint with a null modem cable connecting 2 serial ports.Is it possible to use MapPoint, Streets or any other mapping program with the moving map program? Can the moving map program extract images from the mapping program?Thanks.Abe