[Freegis-list] Europe Base Map

[Jo Walsh]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 02:01:58PM +0100, Stephan Holl wrote:
> >  am looking for a base map of Europe with the following features:
> >  major water bodies, major roads, province boundaries, major
> >  cities/urban areas. I am looking all over the web to see what I can
> >  find--If anyone had any tips on good sites to visit I'd be grateful.
> 
> Search for vmap0-data. It includes the above mentioned layers.

does anyone have a bittorrent source for vmap0 or the subsets of vmap1
that have been declassified? i have found vmap0 availability to drop
on and off the net quite a bit :/

coverage of province boundaries i have seen to be highly variable
(e.g. only sub-countries for the UK, but lots of local regions for
france) ... also be aware that vmap0 road lines are very, very
inaccurate... and that a lot of the boundary data dates back to the
late 80s... http://makeashorterlink.com/?T12825B7A is a
mapserver/vmap0 browser that my partner Schuyler threw together, gives
you an idea of level of detail (for your purposes, probably spot on).

i heard from a #worldwind regular that they were getting a couple of
irc questions a day saying "why is the satellite imagery so blocky
everywhere that's not in the US"... sigh


-jo