So what is going on?

While we don’t want to just stick the whole roadmap here, there is a summary of it in the end tldr. Also, we will go a little bit in the detail what is this v2 all about and the future v3 or long term goals we are trying to achieve with this application: Who is it for and why?

Background

The whole v1 started as a simple elevation map tool, the goal was to let everyone check any coordinate on this globe for its elevation, for free, forever. This should be part of human rights.

We quickly realized that just a map and click won’t really cut it but is already very useful for many situations so we went ahead for the v1 just to give some relief for those poor humans without rights out there who can’t figure out how tall is that hill they watch everyday.

Enter Copernicus deep dive

So after dealing with the copernicus dem 30m resolution geotiff data, we realized that the elevation query is just the tip of the iceberg and is only a 1d thing (as in dimensions). You query for one point and then you are happy, or are you? Those geotiff files provide much more when you look at them as a group, you group all those 1d points together and soon enough, you see a mountain forming, a bit like Neo reading the matrix.

So we figured that we can draw our own 3d landscape from it. SO you could see the mountains and terrain in their actual shapes. And why to stop there, we have the same data for oceans as well, those deeps pits sounds scary, what can you find in the bottom?

However, this needs a bit of processing. When we say “a bit”, we mean “a lot”, or well, it depends what kind of CPU power you have access to. But even the modern 24 core CPU’s chew this stuff quite a long time. And a lot of things get a lot easier if you happen to be able to acquire, lets say 8TB+ of very fast ssd memory. And we did.

So I guess we can finally say it, the v2 will introduce 3d map where you can see your favourite spots around the world in 3d and freely rotate the camera. This includes once again, the whole globe, as copernicus represents it. We are also introducing v2 of the elevation query tool, which will operate on the 3d map and will provide more info besides just the elevation in that point. It will be much easier to pinpoint the location you want since you can see the 3d terrain.

This allows us also to pre-show local peaks without you even querying them.

We could also talk about hillshading, but lets leave something for the future blog posts.

Our material is processing inside the CPUs as we speak and we will be rolling out the 3d map as soon as there is global coverage for it. Here is a short video of it right now:

Roadmap, hello?

So now we revealed the first and likely the biggest single change or new feature of the upcoming v2 and it is safe to move to the other things.

Without further ado, and without much of description:

• iWatch integation

  • We are also looking into CarPlay, but so far Apple does not like to let us in your car, lets see what happens here

• Favourites upgrade

  • Show all in map, compare or update their elevation according to copernicus, allow editing favorites

• Location tracking from point A to point B

  • This is very nice if you want to profile your hiking track or dog walk path and get some insights

• Visibility tool v2 will also take into account objects between the observer and the subject

  • So you can finally identify what you see or can you see x

• Cloud sync, so all your devices will keep in sync

• More languages? Portugal, Deutch and Polish likely coming in

V3 and forward

This tool is always aimed for the elevation geeks and try very hard not to be the “hiking app” or navigation app, or sports tracker.

The only feature in the v3 horizon is a camera AR silhoutette, but we can talk about it more later.

Contact

If you have nay questions or suggestins for the future releases please don’t hesitate to contact us at help@elevato.app or just go into the comments section