This is a desktop application for displaying Google Maps (and Bing) aerophotos with specially tailored distortions to make railway track layouts more clearly visible.
I don't particularly expect anyone but myself will really want to use it, but just in case someone I tell about it is curious, here are some notes:
For gross navigation, the application displays map tiles it has downloaded from one of various sources.
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OpenStreetMap -- © OpenStreetMap Foundation and its contributors, map data licensed under Open Data Commons Open Database License. Tiles rendered by OpenStreetMap itself.
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OpenStreetMap "Humanitarian" -- Map data from OpenStreetMap, rendered by OpenStreetMap France.
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OpenTopoMap -- Map data from OpenStreetMap.
Kartendarstellung: © OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA)
The program can also show a map overlay from OpenRailwayMap, mainly useful because it contains track numbers in many locations
- OpenRailwayMap -- Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, Style: CC-BY-SA 2.0 OpenRailwayMap.
The aerophoto views use orthophoto tiles from
Google Maps
or alternatively Microsoft Bing.
For each of these, I use URL formats I've reverse engineered from
their public map websites. Since they're serving tiles from them
without as much as requiring a faked Referer header, I suppose they
can't be too opposed in practice to consuming them in a small-scale
hobby project.
Google and Bing both have official APIs I probably should be using instead (which would also provide specific attributions to their photo subproviders, which vary from place to place) -- but those require API keys, and even though they have free plans available, it's unclear at best whether it makes sense to bundle an API key with source code I put up on GitHub.
If either provider actively complains to me, I suppose I can rewrite the code to load an API key from a local configuration file and require the user to acquire one themself, but I so far I'm not bothering.
Installation, what's that?
If you're on Linux or MacOS and have a Java Development Kit installed
(so there's a javac command on your path), you should be able to
just check out the contents of this Git repository and run the
mapwarper script. It will compile the source code into a
mapwarper.jar the first time it runs. If you pull new code changes
from GitHub, delete the JAR file to provoke a recompilation.
Or, if you're super ambitious, load the source tree into Eclipse or
another IDE that will populate a bin/ directory automatically. The
mapwarper script will use that preferentially over a
mapwarper.jar.
On Windows you'll be more on your own with compiling the code. I don't have any opportunity to test a launcher script for Windows. If you know how to run a Java compiler at all, it should be straightforward -- there are no dependencies beyond what comes with Java out of the box!
From time to time (if people bug me for it) I might release a pre-built JAR for the benefit of people who only have a Java Runtime Environment installed. You'll still want to check out the source tree from Git in order to get my example warp definitions.
Strictly speaking I don't know the program will work on MacOS or Windows, but Swing claims to be cross-platform, so there's at least a fairly good chance that it should. If you try it, let me know how it goes!
The program spams copious status output to the terminal -- mostly for debugging purposes -- so don't expect it to run quietly in the background.
The program starts by creating a cache directory for downloaded map
tiles in an appropriate location. The default location can be
overridden by giving a --tilecache argument. The program never
itself deletes anything from this cache itself, so be sure to clear it
out once you're done playing.
With a 4K display you need to add a -Dsun.java2d.uiScale=2 argument
to the java command line, at least on Linux. (I haven't found a
robust way to autodetect the need for this yet).
Navigate to a *.vect file in the cases/ subdirectory, single click
on it to load, and then press W to switch to warped view and locate
the tracks. To get back to the graphical track picker the program
starts up in, press R to get back to an ordinary unwarped map view,
then O.
Drag holding the middle mouse button to move the map. Or, if you don't
have a working middle button, press . to select a tool where the
first button will do it.
Beyond that, play around. Most of the command keys are documented in the right-click menu in the map view. For many tools, holding Shift down previews what the result of clicking would be. In the drawing tools, Ctrl-click (or Ctrl-drag) deletes nodes.
If you can read Danish, my original design notes in gui.txt may give
you an idea how the UI is supposed to work. Otherwise you're on your
own. (In any case, I don't have a written-down explanation in any
language about the underlying model of how a chain of vector segments
defines a warped map projection ...)
The cases/ subdirectory contains my own warp definitions, currently
mostly for large German stations.
Many of them were created with earlier versions of the program, so they shouldn't be taken as canonical examples of how best to use the current feature set.
I can be reached at henning.makholm@gmail.com -- though I don't have a good track record of answering emails promptly ...