National Geographic TOPO + Google Earth

[fluke]

Is this the place for Google Earth Hacks?

Disappointed by the rare and strange attempts to overlay topo maps in GE?

Ever wanted to see National Geographic Topo on top of Google Earth?

NGTOPO.kmz

Refresh as needed, be sure to take advantage of layer transparency.

dev.ortopo.com

[Forkboy2]

Very cool. Is there a reason you didn't set the network link to refresh automatically? Is this legal? I didn't realize topo.com had a free public tile server.

[fluke]

This is not legal. this is map thievery. but I'm sure they aren't hurting for cash eh?

Didn't set the network link to refresh automatically b/c pre-set zoom levels are sometimes limiting...but yeah maybe in some free time...

[Appletom]

This is not legal. this is map thievery. but I'm sure they aren't hurting for cash eh?

Dang. You had to admit it so I had to remove the file. We can't allow copyright violations to remain. But it was a great file!

[fluke]

but I'm sure you kept a copy for yourself. ;)

[Forkboy2]

By the way, I'm working on a legal project to put USGS topo maps for entire US into Google Earth. More info here.

http://www.gelib.com/usgs-topographic-maps.htm

I'm about 75% done so for. Hope to be finished in about a month.

Matt

[fluke]

Just got off the phone with ESRI - they claim that this file:

http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/NGS_Topo_US_2D/MapServer/kml/mapImage.kmz

is legal for personal use. Any commercial or web-based use requires a fee.
So go use this file at home and enjoy.

courtesy, ESRI.

and please, for God's sake, stop georeferencing those old DRGs...we have better technology than this.

[Forkboy2]

Just got off the phone with ESRI - they claim that this file:

http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/NGS_Topo_US_2D/MapServer/kml/mapImage.kmz

is legal for personal use. Any commercial or web-based use requires a fee.
So go use this file at home and enjoy.

courtesy, ESRI.

and please, for God's sake, stop georeferencing those old DRGs...we have better technology than this.

Great link, thanks.

But what's wrong with the "old DRGs"? They are the exact same maps that you see with the ESRI kmz. Only difference is I'm including the entire map with the borders instead of cropping out the borders. The information in the borders is useful for some purposes. Also, my version can be downloaded and used off-line. And the DRGs are already georeferenced by USGS, so it's just a matter of running them through a batch process to convert them to KMZ.

I AM manually geoferencing a lot "historic topo maps" that typically date from 1890s to 1970s. They may be old, but they still have historic significance for some.