boydsmaps in the post-NJGIN era

[Boyd]

If anyone was wondering, I just renewed the boydsmaps server lease through the beginning of April 2026. Had considered adding another terabyte of disk space but actually, my current disk is a bit larger than I thought, there's still about a terabyte of free space. When I fill that up, will probably add more. Here's the current coverage of maps directly hosted on the boydsmaps server.

For the past couple weeks I've been downloading map tiles to upgrade the boydsmaps version of the USGS digital topo to level 16 (the full resolution of the USGS original). There are about 10 million tiles and the servers are slow, so it will probably take a couple more weeks. There are some pretty large unfinished parts of this map, mostly in the far North. You can see an example (from Maine) here. The level 15 map is on top, level 16 on the bottom. Although the bottom map has twice the resolution, there are no labels, also some missing contour lines.

Will be expanding smaller maps to larger regions throughout the year, also finishing up Midatlantic versions of the light and dark street maps and hybrid map.

But I'll also be phasing out almost all remotely-hosted maps and focusing the site on the Northeast US as shown above. I just don't want to deal with the issues related to maps on other people's servers anymore. However, I will continue the current 8 maps from USGS servers for basic coverage of the whole US with topos, aerials and LIDAR terrain. Considering the current budget cutting mania, I do wonder how long these maps will be available though....

 

[Boyd]

The updated version of the USGS digital topo is now available. Previously, this map only offered level 15 coverage. The resolution has now been doubled, with full level 16 coverage (about 60gb of new data and 10 million new map tiles), which is the full detail available from the USGS servers. There's nothing different on the menu, you will just be able to zoom in one more click now. This map has coverage in the West past Indianapolis and South to beyond Virginia.

You can compare this map with the version from USGS server here (the boydsmaps version will be on either the top or the left, depending on your screen). The level 16 maps should be identical, since it was just downloaded. There are some (trivial?) differences at lower zoom levels, the most obvious is that the USGS version uses green wetland symbols and they are blue on the boydsmaps version. I also see some differences in contour lines in places. But functionally, the boydsmaps version should be the same and it loads faster.

Along with this, I am moving ahead with discontinuing remotely-hosted maps. The remote version of OpenTopoMap has now been removed. I just learned that this project actually shut down in January 2023 and their map has not been updated since then. So, the remotely-hosted version offered no advantage here in the Northeast US and performance was usually poor. I have also discontinued the maps of Switzerland, which were very cool, but boydsmaps is phasing out all maps outside the US. Finally, I removed the Pennsylvania LIDAR map. It really didn't offer anything that isn't available from the boydsmaps LIDAR or USGS LIDAR maps.

Looking ahead a bit, a future update will remove the mapset menu where you can choose different regions. Does anybody even use this? If you do - sorry - it's still here for now but will be going away soon. The new version will only let you choose between automatic and favorites. Will also move the option for editing favorites to this menu.

As usual, you might have some problems with your browser cache following this update. Please see the troubleshooting section at the end of the help file for cache-clearing instructions if needed.