So yesterday my Hema Maps Desert Explorer CD Rom arrived. It's a single CD and has a quick installation. It comes with a copy of "OziExplorer LITE," which as far as I care should be named "OziExplorer BROKE."
There were a number of irritating graphics-based problems immediately. The tiny little drilldown-zoom window was being misdrawn. You could only see about 55% of it. The map index window, once minimized couldn't be restored.
I have no time for shabby software like that. I did a short search for software upgrades for OziExplorer LITE, but failed. So I ended up going back to using the "OziExplorer 'DEMO'" version. At least the graphics errors were solved.
So how are the maps? There are six of them designed to provide overlapping coverage of the central outback of Australia. The scale is 1:1,250,000. The typography and legending is nice. However, the map lacks the track detail I'd hoped for. Maybe I am being unfair.
My total lack of sense for the size of Australia probably to blame. These maps are 1:1,250,000 scale. Is that big or small? To put it in perspective here are some map scales for some Arizona Maps...
So you can see that the entire state of Arizona can be comfortably mapped at 1:500,000 scale. That scale represents 7.891 miles in one inch.
The entire area of Australia is 7,682,000 square miles, similar in size to the 48 mainland states of the USA. Lonely Planet says that 75% of this continent is referred to as the 'Outback.'
Therefore, it's impossible to squeeze the desert outback (assume it's only just 50% of Australia) into Arizona-scale maps -- roughly 20 states' worth of data on six maps -- 3 states on one map.
Consequently the Hema maps are 1:1,250,000 scale where one inch equals 19.728 miles and you can fit the equivalent of half the 48 states into six maps.
Once I considered the maps in scale terms, I'm more comfortable with the detail level they provide. Maybe moreso when I realize that Hema field-checked all these tracks, which tend to move around and degrade. So the major tracks on the map you can rely on more comfortably.
Of course, I would like more detail... more side trails, more pointers to ruins, mines, and other strange points of interest, but I'll get at those in different ways.
Thanks to the OziExplorer software, I can keep several different maps, even satellite images, inside the software. Then as we are driving along, the GPS updating our coordinates in OziExplorer, I can switch to different panes showing our location on each of the different map sets I have loaded into the software. Therefore I am able to drill down on my specific location as necessary and as the mapping data is available.
For sure the next series of maps to load would be the Auslig data. Since these maps are much larger scale (1:250,000) than the Hema maps(1:1,250,000), you get a lot more detail, even down to dwellings. That is a very good start for points of interest, for example.
There are more piecemeal data sources too. Recently I found data for the 'Northern Territories' that allows me to get actual aerial photography of the regions around and north of Alice Springs all the way to Darwin.
To show the level of extra detail provided by those two compare the Hema Map detail to the the Aerial Photo detail of the same region. Drilling down further on the Aerial Photography maps yields thumbnails of aerial photos that you could order!
This allows us to take an interesting approach to trip navigation. We plan a route based on the basic Hema maps and Auslig maps. And then we drill down on specific areas and points of interests and seek out supplementary data, like aerial reconaissance and satellite imagery to provide some more color to the navigation.