4 image::load-maps.png[width=500]
6 Before heading out to a new launch site, you can use
7 this to load satellite images in case you don't have
8 internet connectivity at the site. Try not to wait
9 until the last minute, though, particularly if you're
10 heading to a major launch. If too many people are
11 all trying to download map data at once, Google may
12 limit access until the next day.
14 There's a drop-down menu of launch sites we know
15 about; if your favorites aren't there, please let us
16 know the lat/lon and name of the site. The contents of
17 this list are actually downloaded from our server at
18 run-time, so as new sites are sent in, they'll get
19 automatically added to this list. If the launch site
20 isn't in the list, you can manually enter the lat/lon
23 There are four different kinds of maps you can view;
24 you can select which to download by selecting as many
25 as you like from the available types:
28 A combination of satellite imagery and road data. This
32 Just the satellite imagery without any annotation.
35 Roads, political boundaries and a few geographic
39 Contour intervals and shading that show hills and
42 You can specify the range of zoom levels to download;
43 smaller numbers show more area with less
44 resolution. The default level, 0, shows about
45 3m/pixel. One zoom level change doubles or halves that
46 number. Larger zoom levels show more detail, smaller
49 The Map Radius value sets how large an area around the
50 center point to download. Select a value large enough
51 to cover any plausible flight from that site. Be aware
52 that loading a large area with a high maximum zoom
53 level can attempt to download a lot of data. Loading
54 hybrid maps with a 10km radius at a minimum zoom of -2
55 and a maximum zoom of 2 consumes about 120MB of
56 space. Terrain and road maps consume about 1/10 as
57 much space as satellite or hybrid maps.
59 Clicking the 'Load Map' button will fetch images from
60 Google Maps; note that Google limits how many images
61 you can fetch at once, so if you load more than one
62 launch site, you may get some gray areas in the map
63 which indicate that Google is tired of sending data to