converting img files for oziexplorer

[wilko76 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close wilko76]

Hi all

mate gave me a disk today with a heap of aussie maps. tried to open with ozi but wont recognise .img files. did a quick google and found some posts but no real info.
any one done this and can point me in right direction?

thx

[StormyKnight Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close StormyKnight]

I think you will find that the .img files are for a Magellan?

If so then it wont work easily at all.

The img files are vector format. i.e they are a series of coordinates representing lines. Ozi needs raster maps. i.e. a picture of the map. You then calibrate the picture so that ozi knows where in the world it is.

There is no easy way to convert between the two.

Sorry :cry:

[Spurio Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Spurio]

You need to get the 'img2ozf' convertion utility. I think you can get it from the ozi site.

This will convert the img (vector - Point, Line Polygon) into a raster (grid format). Ozi can't think outside the square - really !!!!

I can't comment on how useful the converted maps will be, as there are a number of vital steps that don't seem to occur.

But it shouldn't be too bad, should be within about 100m or so of truth, maybe a little more it is ozi

[StormyKnight Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close StormyKnight]

From the IMG2OZF help file...

Image Types Supported

This is a list of the image types which can be converted by Img2ozf and how they are handled.

Explanation of terms

Fully loaded into memory - this means the image must be uncompressed from the file and placed into memory. The size in memory can be many times larger than the size of the file on disk.

Paged from disk - Only the part of the image needed at the time is loaded, usually just a few lines of the image. This means very little memory is required, usually only a few megabytes.

Image Types

PNG

Must be fully loaded into memory.

8 bit color, 24 bit color and Grayscale are supported

TIF

Paged from disk.

1 bit, 4 bit, 8 bit and 24 bit color images can be used.

24 bit LZW compressed images cannot be used.

JPG

Must be fully loaded into memory.

BMP

Must be fully loaded into memory.

ECW and SID

For efficiency Img2Ozf attempts to load these images fully into memory. However if this fails because the image is too large the images are then paged from disk.

Note:

These are highly compressed formats (20:1 compression or better is quite common), some of the images may be too large when uncompressed to convert to the OZFX3 format.

As an example : the satellite images from the NASA web site are in SID format - a 50 to 200 Mbyte image when uncompressed could be 1.5 to 5 GBytes in size, too large to convert although Img2Ozf will attempt to do so.

Smaller images can be converted but the file size of the converted image will be considerably larger, this is because the ozfx3 format does not use the same compression method (for speed reasons).

To get reasonably sized images you must use the resize option to reduce the size of the image and specify a low number of colors (say 32 or 48). You will need to do some experimenting to see what settings work best.

For larger images you need to find software that will allow you to cut the image into smaller pieces for converting.

HDR and RML

These are Maptech formats.

Must be fully loaded into memory.

KAP (BSB)

Paged from disk.

CAP (BSB4)

Are fully loaded into memory.

To convert BSB4 files the PDA you are going to use with the converted files must be connected to the PC at the start of the conversion process. OZFX3 files converted from BSB4 charts can only be used with the PDA connected during the conversion process.

OZFX3 files converted from BSB4 charts cannot be used with PC OziExplorer.

KOMPASS

Paged from disk.

NOS (NOS/GEO)

Paged from disk.

OZF2

Are fully loaded into memory.

OZF

Are fully loaded into memory.

So .img files themseleves are not supported.
IMG in the title refers to 'Image Files' not .img files.

Cheers