[Freegis-list] vmap1 - any news?

[Maciej Sieczka]

Hi!

Anybody has news about the vmap1? On the NIMA website I cannot find any
info about its availability, neither for free nor dollars [1]. On the
USGS website either.

However, on NIMA's page you can find documents from 2006 [2],[3],
mentioning the processing is done as of December 2005.

The only official NIMA's source [4], which the Mapability website links
to [5], still only contains the 57 tiles (out of supposedly 234 total),
released several years ago.

Interestingly there is a company, East View Cartographic [6]
("headquartered in Plymouth, Minnesota, with offices in Russia" [7] "and
Netherlands" [8]), which provides a *complete* vmap1 coverage at 55 USD
per tile. Note it is the same price that, as I heard in rumours [9],
USGS was supposed to charge. If the rumours are true, how does the
company make their profit ;)?

If you know anything please add to the thread.

Best,
Maciek

[1]http://www.nga.mil
[2]http://www.nga.mil/NGASiteContent/StaticFiles/OCR/nga0602.pdf
[3]http://www.nga.mil/NGASiteContent/StaticFiles/OCR/janfeb06.pdf
[4]http://geoengine.nima.mil/ftpdir/archive/vpf_data
[5]http://www.mapability.com/info/vmap1_download.html
[6]http://www.cartographic.com
[7]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_View_Cartographic
[8]http://www.rmib-geoscience.nl
[9]http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/community/lists/viewmessage.phtml?id=4423