Matthew Dickerson, Addison Independent, May 27, 1999 (reprinted by permission)
I've always loved maps. As a kid on family excursions--especially fishing trips to Northern Maine with my dad--I sat with an open map following every curve of the road. Not that my dad was looking for my navigational aid. I did it purely for fun. Of course I had always had the vague idea that road maps were actually useful too. For example, although it is well known that men never got lost driving, my dad had been known to consult a map on occasion to find the most efficient route from one place to another.
Some time later in life I discovered that maps were also useful for more important things like fishing, hunting, and hiking. Many of my readers have spent the past few weeks diligently studying their USGS topo maps of favorite quadrants as they planned for November 13. And I've mentioned before that my favorite resource for discovering new fishing spots in Vermont (as well as New York and Maine) has been my DeLorme Gazetteer. Indeed, maps have been the starting point for many of my adventures. (My misadventures I've generally been able to accomplish without the aid of maps.)
I've been excited, therefore, to watch the recent advances in geographic information systems. In particular, the avid outdoors person will be interested in two software packages now available for under $150. Both the Maptech Terrain Navigator" ($99.99) and the DeLorme 3-D TopoQuads ($149.95) have software versions of 1:24,000 scale maps of the entire state of Vermont.
Basic features of these packages are a similar. Both use as their data the USGS topo maps. Beginning with the entire state of Vermont on your screen, you can zoom to any particular region for a closer look. Or you can use a search function to locate a particular town, stream, mountain, by name. A navigation bar allows you to move in any direction along the map, or to zoom back out. The software also automatically gives the precise coordinates of any location where you place your cursor. Another feature of both packages is the ability to plot out a complex route, and then display not only the distance traveled, but also a cross-sectional contour of the traveled route. This is a wonderful feature for hikers or even hunters to get a better sense of the difficulty of a particular hike. Both packages also allow the user to annotate and customize their own maps. Both run on Windows 95 or Windows 98. And both allow interfaces with GPS systems for additional functionality. Neither come with a manual, but both provide an extensive integrated help menu.
There are a few additional features on DeLorme's brand new 3-D TopoQuads that might make it worth the extra $50. The most compelling of these is the ability to select a particular section of map and have the software generate a 3-dimension picture of the terrain, complete with shading to enhance the sense of elevation. You can then look at the 3-D picture from a range of angles and from any compass direction. This provides a much more useful visual picture than just looking at contour lines. TopoQuads also has some other nice navigational features. Whereas Maptech's software is limited to eight levels of detail, TopoQuads has several hundred. You can drag your mouse across any area on the map and the software will automatically scale that region to fit your screen. It also has a nice tutorial program.
What I'd love to see in the next version of 3-D TopoQuads would be the ability to fly-through a terrain on your computer. As it is, the only disadvantage I found with DeLorme's software was that it isn't designed to run on Windows NT. In town, you can find Maptech Terrain Navigator at Vermont Field Sports. 3-D TopoQuads is currently available only through DeLorme at www.delorme.com, though it also may soon be available at VFS.