IGN Maps

[venu]

Does anyone know whether the IGN 1 million maps for Sahara are available on CD-ROM?

[Damien Galanaud]

Honestly, I don't think so !
Very few IGN maps are available on CDROM; at the time being, not even the whole France is covered.

Damien

[Chris Scott]

Actually for Alg, Niger and Mori they are available unofficially - at 1mil, a few poor half mils and most of the 200ks.

Private individuals and shops like Darrs have had them scanned to sell as bootlegs (~ €80 a country?).

If IGN know they don't seem to do much about it. Maybe they're not that bothered as the 1m paper originals are still easily available, cheap and more useful in the desert - and printing a full map off a scan will cost as much in ink and probably be worse quality. (the 200k paper originals are unavailable out of Africa)

People make copies of these CDs and so they get around.

Chris

[desert soul]

in germany they sell the tpc 1:500000 pilot charts for the whole northern part of africa (inc. all of the sahara) for 99 € on DVD/CD. of course, these maps are not to be compared with the magnificient ign, but nevertheless they are useful for orientation and trip planning.
have you ever seen the satellite pictures sold by touratech (ca. 50 €)? to me, these pictures (resolution up to 1:250000) in combination with software like quo-vadis are the most useful desert maps of all! with a little expierience, you will be able to make yourself a very good picture of the landscape with interpretation of colors and relief. i used printouts (with a gps-grid) as the only maps in morocco, with much "success" and joy.

good luck

[bernardo feio lightweight]

...and were to find the satellite pictures?
(touratech??)

------------------
best regards from Portugal
bernardo feio lightweight

[Sophie-Bart]

...and were to find the satellite pictures?

you can try http://www.saharamaps.com/

[Chris Scott]

Well they are free at the NASA link here:
http://www.sahara-overland.com/maps
though I presume Touratechs come with a Long Lat grid (at the very least).

I believe Yves at Sahara info was doing something similar with sats and as it happens I'm seeing someone tomorrow about providing L/L grided sat images of the Sahara to order. Away from IGN-covered areas they certainly open the country up.

Ch

[artw]

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Good morning,

The mr.sid Nasa landsat dataset (https://zulu.ssc.nasa.gov/mrsid/)
has the advantage of being really compact and allows to fit whole
Africa on two DVDs. It also covers the whole world. Unfortunately
this dataset is far from reaching the original 30m resolution of the
imagery because of a much too strong compression. The false
colorization also does not always allow to read the terrain easily
but can eventually help to contrast details.

You can check the difference here :
http://www.saharamaps.com/html/scree...o.html#compare

SaharaMaps is not providing images alone. They are packaged with
SaharaMaps software that will allow you, not only to browse the
imagery efficiently and smoothly, but much more.

SaharaMaps is providing a country like Libya on one DVD (Libya at 30m
represents the equivalent of 121 12000x12000 images) packed with
other datasets. It includes, for example, 90m-resolution elevation
data that will allow you to generate 3D views of the terrain.
http://www.saharamaps.com/html/sahara_in_3d.html

You will also be able to export/print maps with a customizable
lat/lon grid overlay or UTM grid overlay. The results on
photo-quality printers are quite amazing.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any additional
question.
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