OSM Adventure Riding Maps for Garmin, Free

[AdvOSM]

I would like to share with you the OSM maps I developed for back roads and off-road adventure riding. I created the first one because I couldn’t find a map that displayed on my Garmin screen the important road information I knew was available in OSM—whether a segment was unpaved, impassable, or even closed. Friends with Garmins asked for adventure maps for their countries, then their friends. The AdvOSM project slowly grew to cover 167 countries in 22 maps.

UK and Ireland now have their own map (previously, they were part of the Europe E map). Screenshots in Basecamp 54.02044,-1.83835 of the UK map and some other free general-purpose maps.

AdvOSM, annotated:


AdvOSM, without annotation:


AlternativasLibres:


Freizeitkarte:


BBBike:


I hope you enjoy using the maps as much as I enjoy making them—and using them.

For more information and the download links: https://rex8475.wixsite.com/advosm

 

[Treb]

@AdvOSM
Nice idea but what a shame you do not offer 10Mtrs or 20Mtrs contour lines scale as a separate map which I use.
You could then chose to enable one or the other or both at the same time as the DEM map
IMHO, a 100Mtrs scale is way to large to be of any practical use.

 

[AdvOSM]

If you want to add 10m contour lines to any map in a Garmin, you can download an overlay here: https://garmin.opentopomap.org/ and turn it on and off in your Garmin.

Interesting timing! Within days after publishing these new maps of the world, I received requests to publish versions without any contour lines at all. It turned out that not all Garmins can turn contour lines layers on and off. Oregons can, but Montanas can’t--go figure. So starting 27 August, I have been publishing twice as many maps. The maps are in pairs, available with or without contour lines. Both can be put in any Garmin, which can switch from one to the other. The number of downloads of the maps with and without contour lines has been roughly 60:40, with and without contour lines.

My first version of these maps had 10m contour lines. They are available ready-made. But IMHO, closely-spaced contour lines are ideal for hikers, mountain bikers, and equestrians, who use maps zoomed in, but not ideal for motorists (both 2 and 4 wheels) who follow roads and tracks in their vehicles and walk on designated footpaths. They use maps at various zoom levels and want to know where the cliffs, embankments, and steep sections are. Days of experimenting showed that 100m is enough to show the lay of the land, without covering other details in brown lines, and without grossly increasing the size of the mapfile. Adding 100m contours to the map of Australia + Oceania increased its size by 15% but adding 10m contours increased its size by more than 100%. But to have 100m contours in a Garmin map meant I had to download raw NASA height data for the whole world and generate new contour maps from scratch, which was weeks of work and data processing. But it only had to be done once.

The result looks like this—examples from Japan and Australia in a Montana 650 at 3km, 800m, and 500m zoom levels. Above, 100m contours, as my maps look today. Below, with 10m contours overlaid from OpenTopoMap, which is how my maps originally looked.

 

[Treb]

You are correct re: clutter
This why I use separate contour maps at 10m or 20m.
And I do use a Montana710 so can switch on/off as needs be.
Top marks for your work