Thanks for map, but i have a problem. Install map of China region into my Windows mobile phone Garmin-ASUS M10E. I see map, but without route. Then i try to find chinees city - i cant change country - i see only “Russia” from official garmin map (ihave it with my phone).
As a new member I would like to say Hi and also say thankyou for the work and time that has been put into this site by all.
Congratulations Lambertus on such a great site.
Cheers
Greg
Hi. Thanks for your great service. One suggestion: I noticed that the default tile set for Australia is missing one tile north of Melbourne (“AU-Albury” - 63240316.img), and it probably does not need to include the tile for the south of New Zealand (“NZ-Dunedin” 63240324.img).
Thank you all for the nice comments.
Elbenezer: I know that the country masks of several countries are suboptimal. E.g. UK, Italy, some US states and apparently Australia as well. However it’s a pain to define proper country masks and I keep postponing working on it 
Edit: Well, I decided to do something about the country matching and wrote my own “matchit” application (I previously used a generic one Greencaps wrote, but that did not like my country definition polygon files very well). It’s working alright (Italy, UK, Arkansas and Australia are nicely covered now) but there are still a few glitches to cover. I hope to update the website with the new country definitions quickly.
With a nearly 500 requests backlog extending 3 days back I have reduced the map availability time on the server from 48 tot 40 hours…
Edit 1: It’s not helping much though Disk usage is 100% all the time and CPU usage is working on new maps about 70-80% of the time. This service does not need to become even more polular… Releasing a new map version doesn’t help either I guess (as it needs every map request to be rendered, so no help from caching).
I just see in the stats that this service server almost 19.5 TB in traffic during 2010. Wow!
Anyway: the new tile matcher is now in production. You might notice nicer country names in the pull-down menu’s (e.g. ‘San Marino’ instead of ‘san_marino’) and the problems with obviously missing tiles for certain countries (like UK, Italy, Arkansas and a few others) has been fixed finally.
Now an opposite situation has developed: for some countries too many tiles are selected (e.g. Netherlands, Germany), but I don’t expect that to be a big problem for all you out there 
Edit 2: Ahh, I still see some countries with ‘holes’ in them (e.g. Kazakhstan, Thailand). I need to improve the algorithms a bit more. Please be patient.
Over 500 requests now, after the map update yesterday. I guess it’s time to start some serious thinking about the future. For now, I’ll probably update only once every two weeks which will use the caching mechanism more effectively.
As per request here I added the queue length below the map on the main webpage and a rough guestimate of the waiting time.
I had requested for a map (for Bangalore, just one tile) 2 days back and still I did not get that. That time the waiting list was 400+. I am trying to request the same again and I am getting the following error:
"Error: Requested map version (08-01-2011) does not exist. This is mostly caused by some browser caching issue. Please clear your browser cache before trying again.
I’m very sorry but your request failed, this combined map won’t be created. Please try again."
Any idea how do I get the latest map for Bangalore, India.
First of all , I want to thank Lambertus for this great service !
I try not to abuse it by just refreshing my Luxemburg & surroundings map ( 8 tiles i think ) 2 times a year but I’m running into problems this time
Yesterday , Queue 540+ , when i tried to create my request , I got :
“Error: Requested map version (08-01-2011) does not exist. This is mostly caused by some browser caching issue. Please clear your browser cache before trying again.”
aswell , today , withe a queue of 2 , still same error … so I did two tests
- remove the version parameter from the URL → Request gets accepted but not executed
- replace the version by 24-12-2010 → Request gets accepted and executed but generates an empty map
So I guess there’s a slight problem with the latest map update
Let’s sit back and wait , I’m sure Lambertus will find a solution and please don’t complain too much , don’t forget he’s giving his time and service to all of us at no charge !
cheers,
Claude
Aiaiaiaiiii.
The map directory is gone somehow… I think the cleanup script has killed it by accident. I’m afraid that all map requests of the last 2+ days have failed.
I’m very sorry about this, but everyone who has requested a map from the latest version (08-01-2011) will have to do it again…
Lol
No biggie Problem identified , that’s the most important thing …
Just let use know when the maps are available again , don’t stress yourself too much
Cheers,
Claude
The old version of 31-12-2010 was still available because there were still requests in the queue for that version number so I’m pointing to that version again. Next update is scheduled for this weekend.
Thank you very much for your time. I will wait for the next version to release.
Hi Lambertus,
whoever you are and where you are, YOU are doing a FANTASTIC Job. The development of your website and the usage of the maps is just amazing. It is admireable how much time you invest into this project and your level of dedication is just outstanding. I am not much of an IT/internet wizz but I certainly can imagine how much work goes into this.
I have been in plenty of countries in Europe and in the US and thanks to your maps I have been really getting everywhere. Allthough not everything works perfectly yet, all users should be very happy with your output. Remember folks: this is a free service!!!
CHAPEAU !!!
Keep up this fantastic job !!!
Skubiduhh
Heh, well, thank you! 
Actually, the website is a bit of a hack. It looks ugly and I don’t have the skills (or interest) to make it more polished. But it works, which is what counts I guess. Most of the hours have gone in creating the scripts that automate the map pre-processing, building and other miscellaneous things. There are also a lot of people (mostly the really non-experienced computer users ofcourse) who have difficulties moving the maps to the GPS and ask questions by email which sometimes takes a lot of time.
I must also note that a significant portion comes from Greencaps who provided the transliteration application and the first version of the country vs tile matching application. And, ofcourse, last but certainly not least: this website would not be possible without the work of the Mkgmap developers (actually, “Mkgmap community” might be a better description), they deserve the most credit.
Hi!
I have two questions:
- Is it possible to compile a TYP file into gmapsupp files by default? I requested a map and it uses internal garmin styles which look quite ugly (and don’t render sea areas for example).
- Maybe this idea was mentioned before but I missed it - how about pre-generating most popular countries maps and upload them to file sharing service like hotfile or rapidshare? It would certainly free a lot of bandwidth, disk and CPU usage from your server.
Good questions 
Yes, it’s possible but there are no good public generic TYP files (afaik, although one is mentioned/developed on this forum, but I haven’t looked at it yet). The sea is not rendered because Mkgmap could not produce a good quality sea, at least not until shortly ago. It has become better but, again, I haven’t really looked at it yet.
Good idea, but I want things to be fully automated, because otherwise it costs me way too much time. So I’ll check it out and see if things can be scripted.
Maybe you could make torrents for the popular country maps, so other people could help sharing them?
That has been mentioned before, but I don’t think torrents will be very helpful for two reasons (correct me if I see this wrong):
- The maps are updated frequently, so older ones are outdated quickly which doesn’t make it likely that there will be many seeders.
- The server will have to be a seeder which doesn’t alleviate it from it’s biggest burden: disk space.
I think secondary hosts which run this website (or part of it) for map generation, of download servers for predefined maps are a better solution then torrents.
mkgmap has MASTER.TYP style which is quite good, maybe compiling TYP should be optional when requesting a map?
File sharing portals are better than torrent in many cases - don’t depend on firewall/router issues, you can quickly download a map on a borrowed computer, etc. Hotfile has (as I remember) partnership program in which you earn money for downloads - nice way to gather $$$ for better server :).
Scripting upload is possible for 100% - I’ve used some ebook sharing portal which automatically distributed files across all services. 4shared.com and adrive.com have some advanced options for upload.
If you need any help, please let me know on private message - I can make a research on that and write appropriate scripts.