I am just curious if Aster data starting to be useful with version 2. Just now I am trying convert Aster tif files to hgt to use them in SrtmCache folder instead of original srtm.hgt files.

For me would be using Aster data great improvement , because Patagonia having a lot of holes in srtm data.

I don’t really blame Jonathan since I don’t have the precise info on how these DEMs were produced. After all, they could have been made from old out-of-copyright Soviet military maps.

I’m not against copyright per se but I also don’t like the fact that a lot of various government organizations try to earn money by selling their products to the same people which pay for their existence: the taxpayers. This is the situation we have in Slovenia, too.

The sad fact is that the only people we can be very thankful to is the American government/taxpayers for providing us with free services like GPS and SRTM. Where’s Europe in this picture?

As for your suggestion on a Viewfinder plugin, I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll take the risk and publish the code after all.

yeah, it is not ideal for an open source project.

Jonathan is assuming that factual data about the earth cannot be copyrighted, and I’d say he’s at least somewhat correct. One of the most vocal and active copyright “experts” in Norway, Gisle Hannemyr, has criticized OSM for just this.

As I understand it Jonathan isn’t copying the maps directly, but using them as sources.

Maybe you could make an add-on for the viewfinder maps for those willing to take the risk? Like the non-free and patent encumbered repositories for Ubuntu?

My problem is that Viewfinder seems to be the only free source for Norway and Scandinavia, and most of my potential projects for Norway involve hiking routes and the like.

I’ve implemented the code for Viewfinder’s Alps but I haven’t released it. From what I’ve read on OSM mailing lists, I think the licensing is dubious at best, so I decided to play it safe.

Thanks for the link. From your post, ASTER actually looks worse than I initially thought. I guess SRTM is still the only option.

http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2010/01/13/aster-not-worth-it-yet/

First of all, thanks for the links. I’ve had a brief looked into ASTER when they released it a few months ago, but the fact you had to be registered in order to download the data put me off it, at least for now. SRTM is not very good, but at least it’s easily available for any user to access (and any software to download it transparently), so ASTER cannot be a replacement for it.

Also, from what I know, the terms of use for ASTER are a bit problematic from the OSM perspective, so it’s not as clean as “public domain”.

I’ll try to add ASTER in the future, but right now it’s not on the priority list.

have also experimented with those Viewfinder datasets a few months ago. Better resolution for sure, but often unrealistic contours. Wouldn’t it make sense to implement the new ASTER-Datasets and kick the SRTMs away? They have 1 arc-secong giving a 30 meters resolution. But i think they can’t be directly downloaded online to programs like Kosmos. A registration is needed to get the datasets for free. Would be great if they could be used with Kosmos.

More informations and comparisons of the resolution: http://forums.atomic-systems.com/viewtopic.php?f=304&t=96025&start=15 http://forums1.avsim.net/lofiversion/index.php/t253387.html

Informations, Registration and Data-download: http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/OnDemand.asp https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/~wist/api/imswelcome/ https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/wist-bin/api/ims.cgi?mode=MAINSRCH&JS=1