New 2025 Spatial Services topo map survey

[Allchin09]

For those interested in maps, Spatial Services appear to have released a preview of the next edition of the topo maps.

Below is a link to their survey. In it includes a link to a sample of of the new maps which you can download and view. Worth checking it out and providing feedback.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TopoMaps2025

First thoughts from me are:
1 - mostly the same as the 2022 version
2 - contour colour is a slight improvement from the 2022 version, but still not as good as what they were back in 2017.
3 - that dark green colour for certain vegetation types is still there, needs to go
4 - resolution appears to be poorer than the 2022 version. Text and lines are not as crisp and are pixelated when zoomed in. Unsure if the final versions will have the same issue.
5 - very slow to load when zoomed in. Not sure if they've been produced in a different way. Older versions didn't seem to have this problem.

[johnf]

Test will be if it prints out and the contours show up with the vegetation background.

I am not a fan of the big fat Suburb and Local Government Boundaries obliterating streams and ridgelines all over the place. Yes you can turn off layers, but sometimes it would be good to have something more subtle showing. The restricted Area line is enough to scare you off by itself.

[crollsurf]

Always found their offerings awkward to decipher and make useful.

Outside of the resources sector, should anyone care to investigate these changes?

Have they made GIS better for us as bushwalkers?

Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

[Allchin09]

Yes, I think us bushwalkers are better served by creating our own maps. We are pretty lucky in NSW that all the data which sits under the official topos is made freely available for re-use. It can be a little challenging to do so but it's always getting a little easier as technology advances.

[tom_brennan]

It was hard to tell as the sample maps aren't really a good cross-section for bushwalkers (how about the Katoomba map?!!)

I had similar thoughts to Alex. Contours slightly improved, everything else much the same as 2022. Vegetation colouring is terrible. Tracks/fire trails are pretty bad.

My detailed comments in case anyone wants to paraphrase...

* Contours (colour): the colour of the contours still doesn't stand out sufficiently well. The contour colour has been slightly improved from 2022, but the brown contours are still hardly visible in the areas where there is thicker vegetation (styled dull green). This is probably as much a problem with the vegetation colouring as the contour colouring. In any case, the contrast is still much worse than the reddish-pink contours from the 2017 styling.
* Contours (detail): while it's great that the new contours are on the maps, it's a shame they are not hydrologically enforced. It means that in the creek lines the contours look poor, with unwanted circles appearing. It's also a shame the hydrology layer doesn't match the contours. The funny thing is that the hydrology layer itself was slightly updated between 2011 and 2014, but the hydrology layer on the 2025 (and 2022) maps appears to be the same as 2011!
* Foot Tracks and Fire Trails: there are a variety of issues with the styling of foot tracks vs fire trails. In the 2025 maps, foot tracks are in a pale grey, and fire trails in a mid brown colour. Grey is a terrible colour for important features. The foot tracks are hard to distinguish against some backgrounds. In addition, the widths of both are quite similar, and the dash pattern is slightly longer for foot tracks vs fire trails, which makes little sense! It's not obvious which is which. In the 2017 maps, the foot tracks were a thin black line, with short dashes, while the fire trails were a thicker orange line, with longer dashes. This was much easier to distinguish, though the lines for foot tracks could have been just a tiny bit thicker.
* Clifflines and Cliff Areas: I was never much of a fan of the cliff styling on the 2017 maps (pink lines with ticks on one side, grey fill). The grey fill covered the contours, and the pink didn't stand out against the contours. However, the 2025 styling is worse. The black lines for the cliffs could be OK (a reddish colour would probably be better), but the tick lines are way too far apart, and the cliff area styling (a dot pattern) looks terrible, particularly for smaller cliff lines. It would be better to do away with the cliff area styling altogether, as was the case in pre 2000 era maps! Just provide the clifflines.
* Waterfalls: while I disliked the waterfall styling on the 2017 maps (a blue spot surrounded by a blue circle), the 2022/2025 styling is worse. To be fair, the only issue is that the waterfall bars are all vertical, instead of being aligned to the stream direction. So in some places they look fairly good, in others, terrible.
* Dirt Roads: there no longer appears to be any distinction between minor sealed roads and dirt roads. This is a major oversight.

[Allchin09]

Thanks for the comments Tom. I agree with the map selection, Katoomba (or a map I'm familiar with) would have been more useful for me. Also, some text about what has and hasn't changed would half helped.

I do have to laugh at the waterfall symbology, it really is a shocker. Maybe they no longer have direction information? The series 1 topos used a line at right angles but the more recent ones just used a circle, so possibly that information wasn't digitised. If so, they should just go back to doing circles (or they could do some basic processing to work out the correct angle, being perpendicular to the watercourse which isn't hard). The vector tile topo layers also have the same odd vertical waterfalls. I think they share much of the same symbology.

[peter_mcc]

4 - resolution appears to be poorer than the 2022 version. Text and lines are not as crisp and are pixelated when zoomed in. Unsure if the final versions will have the same issue.
5 - very slow to load when zoomed in. Not sure if they've been produced in a different way. Older versions didn't seem to have this problem.

Did you view the map in your browser only or then download it? The browser viewer is terrible - if you click on "download" in the viewer you'll get a proper PDF which is crisp as you zoom in.

My thoughts:
- I hate how the LGA Boundry line is non-transparent (as it is in the 2022 maps). I'm looking at the Corang map because I'm about to head off to the Budawangs - the LGA line wipes out the walking track in places. On their sample map there are places where a road follows the LGA boundry and it just dissapears.
- The label roads/trails with the name distributed across the length of the road/trail. So if it's a long one you get "Main" on one end and "street" on the other, perhaps 10-20kms away. In between there will be lots of road junctions so it's difficult to work out what the relevant road name is.
- the lookout icon is a bit useless and covers too much useful info (as it did in 2022). This combines with the cliffs and LGA boundaries at times. A bag example is Yurnga lookout on the 8927-3N Corang map GR393923 - on the 2017 map you can see the the cliffs around it, on the 2022 map you can't see anything much!

[johnf]

I note that the survey for commenting on the 2025 version of the NSW Spatial Services topographic maps is still up. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TopoMaps2025
I made a mashup of the 2017/2022/2025 maps at:
https://imgur.com/a/PYSXWT7

The three maps join at the blue hand drawn arrows at the top.
There is not that much difference between the 2022 and 2025 versions except the contours have higher contrast.
On screen the contrast between the contours and the green vegetation layer for the 2017 maps does not look so great but when printed they are much clearer than the 2025 version as the colour of green vegetation is quite dark.
They seem to have mucked up the grey dash for some types of walking track as it is overlayed by another layer maying it undisguisable from a road.
The 2017 version also has three different minor road types (perhaps one is 4WD?) with unbroken red, dashed red and small light dashed red.
The creeks on the 2025 version seem higher contrast and a little darker blue than the 2022 version.
The grid on the 2022 and 2025 maps can hardly be seen when printed.

[Allchin09]

Thanks johnf

I'm pleased they have released the maps for review.

I'm very disappointed at the product, particularly the type of errors you've described, and the lack of any substantial improvement of the 2022 version, for which I believe much feedback was already provided.

Clear information on what has been changed would have also been useful.

However, I'm not sure we can complain too much. All / the majority of the data used in the maps are made openly available, allowing others to produce their own maps which may cater better for their needs. Not sure about the vegetation layer though, and that's not very good (but it could be more of a styling issue vs data, although it's pretty rough, would be interesting to know how it was generated)

[johnf]

Agree with you Alex that at least the data is free and available. I make my own maps most of the time but when running short of time load the official map on my phone. For the most part the styling is ok on a phone. Still I'd like more people to be able to navigate with a paper map and compass and if the printing is poor they won't use it.
I made a second compilation of the three different versions so you can see the same area for both the 2017 and 2025 maps, just swapped around. https://imgur.com/a/o25k548

[Allchin09]

Agreed that not being able to easily print a quality map is an issue. Even harder now that they aren't widely sold like they used to be.

I wonder why the 2022/25 maps aren't published as a seamless web map and why the new styled web maps aren't the same style as the pdf style?

You'd think that at least the same general styling should apply across both. Obviously the pdfs are a fixed scale but a well designed web map should work at 1:25k. Not like any of the work is being done by hand with it all being 'autogenerated'