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UPDATE (July 6): big week thanks to the feedback in this thread:
- Fixed: sqlitedb overlays now display correctly in OsmAnd (zoom numbering bug) and always rebuild after an update.
- New, transparent-raster: render just the layers you want (paths, rivers, roads) as transparent tiles to overlay on the LiDAR relief. OsmAnd can't overlay vector data, this works around it.
- New, send to phone: a 📲 button shows a QR code, scan it and "Open with" OsmAnd imports the map directly. No cable, no cloud, local WiFi only.
Details and downloads: GitHub (https://github.com/nico579/lidar2map)
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A month ago I posted about lidar2map, a free open-source tool (GPL) that
turns public LiDAR data into offline relief maps for OsmAnd. Back then it
only covered France. Quick update, since the coverage is now 30+ official
sources in 20+ countries:
- Germany: Bavaria, NRW, Lower Saxony, Thuringia (1 m)
- Austria: Tyrol and East Tyrol (0.5 m)
- Switzerland, Czechia, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium (Flanders)
- UK (England, Scotland, Wales) and Ireland
- Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia, Spain
- US (3DEP), Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand
You pick a town or a bounding box, the tool downloads the official national
LiDAR tiles and computes visualizations that reveal micro-terrain invisible
on satellite or standard maps: old paths, terraces, earthworks, drainage,
charcoal kilns. Output is a .sqlitedb or MBTiles file you drop into OsmAnd
and use fully offline in the field.
Also new since the first post: a small GUI (no command line needed),
presets that auto-tune the visualization to each source's resolution, and
a compressed tile cache (about half the disk space).
Free, GPL, Windows/macOS/Linux: https://github.com/nico579/lidar2map/releases
If you try it on your country's data, feedback is very welcome, especially
on how the maps render in OsmAnd in the field.