Violaine Paquereau points to an article about France’s upcoming map app that contains some extra details gleaned by actual reporters. Here they are, translated, for those of us who don’t speak Freedom:-)
The first 2D Google Maps-like version is due in June 2006 and is being developed by Teamlog and Digitek… The National Geographic Institute (IGN) says Google Earth currently only covers 20% of France at the resolution that GéoPortail will cover it at… GéoPortail will be a website, and not an application like Google Earth, and yet by 2007 it will have 3D capabilities.
Géoportail project chief Patrick Leboeuf (really) says that they’ve been thinking for years about how to present their datasets, but that it’s true that the arrival of Google Earth showed them that there is great demand by the public for this type of data. He also says that over time, he doesn’t exclude having commercial links to the site. “But such things would have to be much more separated than on Google,” he adds, cryptically. Finally, IGN says they expect to have 500,000 unique visitors during the first year, which sounds very low to me.
Great news. Will complete lacks of GE and NasaWW. But should better be european.
Great news. Will complete lacks of GE and NasaWW. But should better be european.
comment se se de serre ton de groportail
The geoportail page is online since yesterday and performs horrible. I can’t get the whole page – it times out all the time. Not to mention the cruel webdesign. I can’t believe that somebody is saying that they have been thinking for years “how to present their datasets” and then produce such an Internet catastrophe. Nested table design, font tags everywhere … hey come on, not even a doctype declaration in the header. A shame!
Be patient, my dear fellows, it will work.
But we must admit that this was foreseeable, and that there has been a lack of anticipation !
From myth to reality : http://geoportail.blogspot.com/ first pictures of the “beast”
While Geoportail may be having birthing pains it is nice that an alternative to Google Earth is coming out. I am sure neither will be perfect but at least will have some choice now. Many of the places I wish to view do not seem to be covered by Google Earth very well.. I might as well just look in my old atlas :) So maybe some competition will get things improved in both products :) I hope the French can pull it off.. or maybe the Germans should take up the project ;)
I often use the IGN 1:25000 maps for hiking and mountain bikking.
IGN’s geoportail is a good initiative, because it allow anybody to browse really detailed maps –footpathes, single tracks, level curves, relief, habitations, etc … . Considering that such a map
costs around 10 Euros, it’s somtime expensive to buy some maps
just to know if a place worth the travel.
However, the window size is too little to offer a quite global vision.
Cannot even get a basic map of France let alone a specific locality. Not good after so much hype for a year.