If you know what it is, you know that this is huge. If you don't know what it is, you probably won't care. Suffice to say, its usefulness to CAP is pretty great. Doesn't come with any data, but it'll read most GIS formats, including GPS track data and georeferenced sectional charts, topos, etc. Definitely has the ability to affect how we do business, particularly in the planning/briefing/debriefing realm.
http://www.falconview.org/trac/FalconView
SWEET!
Been using FV for a few years now. This is good news.
Thanks for the information!
Outstanding. I lived on that thing in the desert. Thanks for the heads up.
I have been playing with this program for a couple of weeks now. So far it looks fairly promising. My goal is to have a portable tool that can generate appropriately scaled maps for use by ground teams, printed on regular 8.5x11 paper. A very good example of what I would like to be able to produce is shown by the US National Grid Training Map (http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/cg534/nsarc/USNG_TrainingMap.pdf).
So far what I have done is combine Falconview with free downloadable GeoPDF files of USGS topographical maps obtained from the USGS website. The problem is that they simply will not print correctly to scale (1:24000 or 1:25000 according to the scale of the GeoPDF).
Apparently this is not the only freeware GIS software out there, so I may need to try others.
Quote from: N Harmon on October 13, 2009, 05:30:26 PM
So far what I have done is combine Falconview with free downloadable GeoPDF files of USGS topographical maps obtained from the USGS website. The problem is that they simply will not print correctly to scale (1:24000 or 1:25000 according to the scale of the GeoPDF).
Apparently this is not the only freeware GIS software out there, so I may need to try others.
You're going to run into some trouble stacking GeoPDF inside FalconView and printing it with the right scale (or any other GIS viewer for that matter ... GeoPDF was intended to be printed from a PDF viewer, with the shrink to fit option turned off). To use FalconView effectively, you really do need to download GeoTIFF (http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/, zoom to the area, and click download) or CADRG files.
Falconview.org web site isn't responding even to a ping. When was the last itme you accessed the site?
Just like this place, it might be gone for a day or two for some weird reason. ;-)
... good thing I snagged it all though. If they reneged on the deal, at least people got it. Most likely server voodoo...