WHAT'S NEW IN V4.20

 
Favorites
This dialog lists some favorites routes for your region. These include both routes that come with KLIMB, and also routes that you add yourself.
Extend Route
This features provides a quicker way of creating long routes. Instead of clicking on each adjacent node along a route, you can right click on a distant node, select Extend Route and KLIMB will automatically extend the current route along the shortest path to that node.
EMail Routes
With a click of your mouse you can have your route emailed to your friends. (Only on Windows)
Web Update
You can keep KLIMB's road database and your favorites list up to date by downloading off KLIMB's website.
Miscellaneous
  • Better page sizing in printing
  • Route Description computes turns for you
  • You can add profile image to your Route Atlas
  • Scrolling by panning in overview window
  • Go & End icons displayed for your route
  WHAT'S NEW IN V4.10
Route Atlas
The route atlas feature allows you to compile many precise, detailed maps of your bike route into one document. Instead of grabbing one map of you route, you grab a set of smaller maps with more detail. These maps are joined to form an atlas, either in pdf or as a web page.
Route Arrows
These are markups you can place on your map showing how to proceed at every intersection. KLIMB can automatically add arrows for you. You can fine tune the exact shape and location of any arrow.
PDF
KLIMB can now save your route profile, route description or atlas as a PDF file.
Gradient
"Just how steep was the top part of that climb?" KLIMB can now tell you gradient between any 2 points on your route. On the profile graph, just click at the first point and drag to the second point. KLIMB will display the rise, run and gradient between the points.
Zoom Route
You can now view your entire route in the zoom window.
  WHAT'S NEW IN V4.00
New Maps
The maps that KLIMB used originally for the San Francisco Bay Area had one fatal flaw: their latitude and longitude coordinates were inconsistent with both the USGS maps and with Google maps. So, if you used the zoom feature and bent a road to match its course exactly, it would be displayed on the master map incorrectly. Version 4.0 now only uses maps from USGS. (This means, however, you must download again all the regions you're interested in.)
USGS Elevation
One exciting new feature in version 4.0 is the ability to query the USGS for the elevation of any point. If you combine this with the zoom feature you can precisely locate a node in all three dimensions: latitude, longitude and elevation. But the result is even better for roads. With zoom, add waypoints tracking the road along its true course. Then, with just one click, you can get the elevation for each waypoint. This can yield a very precise survey of the road.
Route Profile Labels
You can now optionally display node labels on the profile graph. This lets you better see where key points of the ride occur.
Hills Dialog
The new elevation data from the USGS now enables you to see all the individual hills along your route, and to find out how much it climbs in how much distance.
Google Earth
Google Earth is a really stunning piece of software. Now you can display your routes in Google Earth, and do sweeping zooms and worm's eye views.
Route Info Dialog
Want to know the biggest climb on your route, or how about the highest point? The Route Info dialoge will show you this.
Photo Markups
Suppose you want to share a fantastic ride you've just taken in which you've shot a lot of photographs. With the photo markup feature, you can add symbols to your route which will link to images stored on the the web. This way others can not only view your route but also see your photographs.
Mileposts
You toggle the display of mileposts positioned at intervals along your route.
3D Profile Graph
The profile graph now has a 3-D ribbon appearance.
Route Description Columns
You can now configure exactly which columns appear in the route description dialog.
Picture Gallery Passo Stelvio, Italy
I've made a collection of of fun biking pictures from both KLIMB users and off the web.
Estimated Times
The route description dialog will estimate at what time you'll arrive at a different point given an average speed.
Weather Forecast
With a click of a button, you can get the NOAA forecast for your region.
  WHAT'S NEW IN V3.06

Version 3.06 has three major changes. First is some GUI changes resulting from revamping the core widget set. Second is an improved road database which resulted from a community effort to fix up the data. Third is a snapshot feature which lets you capture the current screen or multiple screens and save it as an image file.
New Features
  • Cosmetic improvement to the widget set (technically, it now uses the new tile widget set)
  • Snapshot the current screen and save as an image file
  • Better data quality, with many, many more "bent" roads
  • View roads or nodes on Google maps
  • Admin tool to show roads that still need "bending"
  WHAT'S NEW IN V3.00

Version 3.0 has five major new features and a bunch of minor tweaks.
Zooming
You can zoom in on any road, node, POI, geocache, etc. at up to 1 pixel = .25 meters. KLIMB will automatically connect to the USGS Terraserver web site and download their maps for zooming. These maps can be topographic, black and white aerial or color aerial (the color maps presently cover only about half the Bay Area but more are being added daily).

The zoom dialog also lets you more precisely locate nodes and to "bend" roads to their true course (you have to turn on superuser priviledge to do this).

Printing
You can print out any map, climbing profile, route description or zoom image. This is only available on Windows. Also, check out the new annotation feature that really helps make printed maps more useful.

Printing is disabled by default, see the printing page for more information.

3-Dimension Profiles
Using an auxiliary program gnuplot, you can get a 3-Dimensional view of your route. gnuplot lets you use your mouse to rotate and scale your 3-d route so you can see it from any angle and zoom in and out. A copy of gnuplot is included in the Windows distribution; for other platforms you'll need to download a copy from its homepage.
Annotations
Annotations are text labels you can place on the map. You can add annotations to any KLIMB feature—node, road, POI, geocache, etc.—or you can make your own ones. You can also add annotations for every road on your current route.
GPS Support
I got a new toy, a GPS receiver, and I wanted to make KLIMB work with it. You can both save your route in GPX format to download onto your GPS device, and upload GPS tracks into KLIMB. Once you have track loaded, you can:
  • Display the track
  • Compute total climbing (filter out small fluctuations)
  • Highlight hills over a given height and slope

A sample GPS track comes with KLIMB to let you play with this feature. Try going to Tools->GPS Tracks... and loading in "sample.gpx".

Miscellaneous
  • KLIMB About dialog pictures enhanced—try right clicking on the image.
  • Region Info dialog provide details about the current region such as size, longest road, biggest climb, etc.
  • Ridelog filtering: you can now say show me all rides after March 24, 2004 that were longer than 30 miles and went through node 120.
  • Ridelog statistics: show statistics about all log entries matching the current filter, such as total distance and climbing.
  • Automatically detect http proxy info.
  • Tracing a route now animates a small biker image.
  • Fixed some bad road data.
  • Route description wording changed.
  • KLIMB understands maps in UTM format. This has now user visible change but this allows for:
    • Zooming (see above)
    • Tools to automate creating new zones and regions
  • Better mouse wheel handling.
  • Map scale displayed in the legend panel.
  • Geocaches. Geocaches are another GPS oriented activity. KLIMB can read a geocache data file and display all the caches. You can bring up details about any cache and jump to its web page. See www.geocaching.com for details.


  WHAT'S NEW IN V2.02
Version 2.02 is a very minor upgrade. The biggest change was needed for the Ohio Zone to make the startup time for faster—the zone has almost 3,000 roads and nodes and time to process all that was becoming too costly.
V2.02 Changes
  • Faster startup by deferring balloon help creation until needed
  • Node font is now 6 point Times Roman
  • Seven new images for the About dialog
  • Overview map is labelled even for multiple windows
  • First map attribute now understood for region files
  • Various bug fixes:
    • Zooming multiple regions
    • Dialogs update when changing to metric units
    • Default zone was incorrectly spelt
    • Corrected prompt when loading too many regions
  WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 2.0
The biggest single change in KLIMB version 2 is the advent of Zones. This allows KLIMB to work in areas other than the original San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to zones, there are numerous other new features.
Zones
Many people have asked me if it is possible to have KLIMB for other areas, and then I moved to Ohio and wanted the same. So I added the concept of zones which are a collection of KLIMB regions. All the version 1 regions now belong in the SFBay zone. You can switch between zones at any time, and you can specify which zone to start in either by the Customize dialog or by using the -z command line switch. Other available zones include central Ohio, East Bay Regional Parks and mountain bike trails in Marin.
Windows Installation
For Windows users there is a separate setup program for installing KLIMB. KLIMB will now appear on the start menu and, optionally, as a desktop icon and quick launch icon. It also has an uninstall command and icons associated with it. All the additional regions are available as a setup wizard.
Metric System
Old La Honda Rd may be a 3.3 miles and 1,320 foot climb but some people may prefer thinking that it's a 5.3 kilometer and 402 meter climb. Fortunately for them, KLIMB can work in either English or metric units.
Points of interest
Places of interest, like where to find water or a covered bridge, are now marked on the map with a star. I welcome people sending me additional places to include.
Trails
A feature that arose from adapting KLIMB for hiking trails is the ability to show trails (roads) with unique colors and to have the trail names appear in the legend. This is done by creating special road types.
Legend
A legend windows can be displayed showing all named trails (see above) and all the predefined road types.
Node neighborhood
By right clicking on a node you can bring up the Node Neighborhood dialog. This dialog lets you do two things: first, find all nodes and roads that are within a specified distance of the selected node, and second, find the shortest route from that node to any other node.
Split road
This features lets you split an existing road at a given spot into two roads. This greatly facilitates mapping your exact route. This seemingly simple function is actually quite tricky, especially in how it interacts with saving and loading routes.
Zoom out
Any existing region can be displayed at half its normal size. This is useful when you want to get a better overview and don't care so much about the details.
Printing to postscript
This is the start of the facility to print KLIMB routes. You select a portion of the map and KLIMB will save that as postscript, which you can then send to a printer using other tools. I know this isn't a great solution—it's slow and creates a huge postscript file, but it's a start. (A better solution still is to use a screen grabbing utility like IrfanView.)
Coordinate Locator
You can enter in a latitude and longitude position and KLIMB will locate that spot for you.
Way Points
To make the profile graph and climbing estimates more accurate, roads can contain way point data points which specify the altitude at a given point on the road.
Profile Graph
The profile graph can now also display a graph of the total climbing along the route.
Help
A new, hypertext based help system is included.
Miscellaneous
  • Route turnings now allow for zigzag turns
  • Two new route descriptions:
    1. space-delimited—like tab-delimited but it copies better for printing
    2. minimal—just the bare-bones details
  • Normal route desciption uses "about 3 miles" instead of "3+? miles"
  • Multiple roads between the same nodes
  • Unknown road distance is better estimated using the great circle distance
  • Many more bike quotes for the splash screen
  • Several new images, especially for the About dialog
  • Advanced region selection available for all magnifications
  • Data quality tunable as to what gets displayed as bad data
  • More road types: single track, fire break, paved fire roads
  • Smaller font for node labels (they should fit better now)
  • More ride log features
Home ©2008 Keith Vetter
klimb at klimb.org