Maps: Detailed map of the Beijing area Great Wall of China version 4

[Bryan]

The Great Wall Forum is pleased to announce the release of version 4 of our detailed map of the Great Wall of China in the Beijing area. This map is packaged as a kmz file for use with Google Earth.

The map is free, but you must comply with the license agreement to use it. Basically, the agreement contains these rules:

• The map is only for personal, non-commercial use.
• You may not copy, redistribute, or modify the map.
• You are strongly urged to help protect and preserve the Great Wall.

The map is a community project. Users are encouraged to contribute additions, corrections, and suggestions.

The map contains the following features:

• Major Great Wall location markers
• Detailed Great Wall paths
• Driving routes from downtown Beijing
• Hiking/walking trails
• Cable cars

Only forum members can download the map. Guests must register before downloading the attached map.

Please note that this map only covers the Beijing area. You should download the complete map from this forum if you are interested in other areas.

The Beijing Great Wall map is a work in progress. The current release is dated 2009/09/13. Please check back regularly for updates as we continually improve the map.

[youwinle]

Thanks very much for your map. Actually i was using Google Earth for the whole evening to locate the part from Shanhaiguan to Badaling.

But after I download the attachment, my PC says it cannot be installed. I have already got a GOOGLE Earth. Do I need to reinstall it? If you can offer me a detailed procedure for installing the map, that would be great.

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by youwinle

Thanks very much for your map. Actually i was using Google Earth for the whole evening to locate the part from Shanhaiguan to Badaling.

But after I download the attachment, my PC says it cannot be installed. I have already got a GOOGLE Earth. Do I need to reinstall it? If you can offer me a detailed procedure for installing the map, that would be great.

First you should make sure you successfully downloaded the BeijingGreatWallMapSetup.msi file. Then, all you should need to do is double-click on the msi file that you downloaded. After installation is complete, go to your documents folder and double-click on the Beijing Great Wall.kmz file.

If you still have problems, please tell us the exact message you are getting, and maybe we can help you to install it. You should not need to reinstall or make any changes to Google Earth.

This map is only the Beijing area. For the map all the way to Shanhaiguan, you should download the whole Great Wall map from here.

[saravk]

Hi Bryan.. thanks for this wonderful site. Lots of great information here which i cannot find anywhere.

Btw, with regard to the maps. I use a Mac and im not able to open the .msi file. Is there anyway for me to directly use the .kmz file and load it to google maps (i have to admit that i havent used google maps that extensively)

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by saravk

Hi Bryan.. thanks for this wonderful site. Lots of great information here which i cannot find anywhere.

Btw, with regard to the maps. I use a Mac and im not able to open the .msi file. Is there anyway for me to directly use the .kmz file and load it to google maps (i have to admit that i havent used google maps that extensively)

You'll need to find a PC on which to run the msi file to extract the kmz file. Then you can copy the kmz file to your Mac and view it in Google Earth there. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[youwinle]

Thank you for this wonderful map. I mean you are really an expert of the Great Wall. Hope more people can join you and others in studying and protecting the Great Wall.
btw, I am able to use the map now. It is great and I am so surprised to find out that I was able to distinguish 80% of what you have draw by my bare eyes last weekend....

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by youwinle

Thank you for this wonderful map. I mean you are really an expert of the Great Wall. Hope more people can join you and others in studying and protecting the Great Wall.
btw, I am able to use the map now. It is great and I am so surprised to find out that I was able to distinguish 80% of what you have draw by my bare eyes last weekend....

Did you find anything that we have missed?

[69SHOVLHED]

wow. never used google earth before. very cool. thanks!

[pmolsen]

The chairlift at Mutianyu appears to be missing from the data. It runs above the toboggan slide.

[pmolsen]

You can save some space in the file (and a lot of typing) by deleting all the altitude values. In the Coordinates tag within KML the third value is altitude. It is set to 0 for all values in the data and defaults to the terrain height in Google Earth. It is optional and can be deleted altogether. See
http://code.google.com/apis/kml/docu...tml#linestring

Quote:
<coordinates> (required)
Two or more coordinate tuples, each consisting of floating point values for longitude, latitude, and altitude. The altitude component is optional. Insert a space between tuples. Do not include spaces within a tuple.

It is easy to update. Just edit the KML data in Wordpad and replace all ",0 " with " ".

I did it and the KML file reduced by 15k.