So I did Whistler, you might be thinking I’m going to do Blackcomb, but instead I did Shymbulak in Kazakhstan, also known as Chimbulak. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but the data is just so bad, I think it’s 90 meters between posts. Still, it’s kind of interesting. Strange thing is, last year they were all primed to have 7  resorts in Kazakhstan, but the minister in charge of that must have gotten sacked, and the KazSport.kz website disappeared and now it’s back but it’s just got the one page.

I’m still not able to get good data for Whistler/Blackcomb, which I’ve been wanting to do for the 2010 Olympics, but since I discovered Google Earth’s Superoverlay I figured I’d try it out anyway. It doesn’t look too bad. The 30 meter data is not nearly as useful as the 10 meter data, but at least it gives you something. So here’s Whistler with a slope map overlay.

Also, since I’m unable to get an aerial shot of the area, I just overlayed it as is with about a 25% alpha so it shows Google Earth’s imagery through and you can see the slopes. This seems to work well enough to be interesting, so now I’m going to start doing some other places in the world. Guess I’d better get some Southern Hemisphere ski resorts in before Winter’s over down there.

3dSkiMaps for Google Earth

It’s been a while since I made any updates. I took a while off, and then started making some kml to get 3dSkiMaps links on Google Earth, then I discovered that Google Earth now has something called Superoverlay.

I always wanted to put 3dSkiMaps overlays onto Google Earth, but in their native form they take up way too much memory. GE slows down tremendously when you get a few 1 or 2 meg overlays loaded up, and they don’t even look that good at that size.

But with Superoverlay you cut the overlay up into multiple levels of tiles, so they display like the rest of Google Earth’s imagery displays. You only get as much resolution as you can see anyway at each level. I used Zoomify’s tool to cut up the images, then wrote some PHP to make the kml to pull them into Google Earth correctly.

Then Google also released a Google Earth Plugin, but it doesn’t work with Windows 2000 so I have to get Windows XP to develop for it. This could be the best thing for 3dSkiMaps if they make versions of the GE Plugin for all platforms.

I’ve just put up a Mobile 3dSkiMaps at http://mobile.3dskimaps.com. The user interface is pared down to make it load fast, and be easier to navigate. Only the jpg images are shown, in three sizes, thumb, mid, and large, also for quicker loading on mobile devices.

It won’t complain if you’re not on a mobile device, so you can still go ahead and use the interface on a regular browser if you like.

Here’s a design for shirts for Kirkwood Mountain Resort. Kirkwood actually looks like a pretty nice place to ski. It’s got some good steeps and an interesting shape.

I used to have Telluride up there, but then I redesigned my color scheme and how the website works and only just now got around to redoing it. So now it’s back up.

Telluride is pretty big in land area, mainly because of its large nordic skiiing area. If not for that, it would be more like an Aspen Mountain thing, long and skinny. It’s got a lot of steeps. Some of the steepest areas are out of bounds, but I show them on my map because they make a nice bowl off the southern tip of the resort.

Diamond Peak is a small resort at the northeastern tip of Lake Tahoe. It doesn’t seem to have any wild steep stuff, but practically the whole thing is reddish purple or deep blue, and it’s got a lot of glades. Looks like a nice place.

Finally a new resort, Jay Peak. And there’s a t-shirt for it too.

I got a little distracted by a brainstorm that may or may not bring fruit. Check out my new, non-ski related CafePress products at http://cafepress.com/loonybuns. You may decide that I should have been working on 3dSkiMaps instead.

There will be some outages and errors this weekend. I’m rewriting my code so I don’t have to use all that “index.php?path=” stuff anymore, but my development server isn’t exactly the same as the public server, so there have been a few problems shaking it out.

I’ve just added maps for Purgatory at Durango, Colorado. No 3D Java though, still waiting for Demicron to come out with a free version of WireFusion.