Hat tip to Google Maps Mania for posting about this.
In my later years I hope to be able to walk around any part of Scotland, point to the horizon and exclaim without hesitation things like, “ah yes, Buachaille Etive Mor. A challenging climb but well worth the effort, my lad.” Or something similar.
Trouble is, at the moment I have very little idea what I’m looking at. Even looking at an OS map and working out what peaks are going to be visible in 3D space is a headache.
Take this pic for example, taken near Crainlarich:
This was the (moonlit) view from a campsite I was at with the family recently. I knew Ben More was out of shot to the left but the other peaks I had only a vague idea.
So this clever website is a real bonus. It’s caled Peakfinder.
You enter in a location using Google Maps or coordinates then it spits out a simple line-drawn panorama showing the names of the visible peaks around you.
Here’s the same horizon as the pic above:
Which is kind of neat.
You can share the exact view you’ve found via Facebook or a URL or download the entire panorama as a PDF.
They do have a mobile app available but only for certain locations (Alps, and parts of USA and Canada).
You could bodge something together using Layar if you wanted an AR version but that has a number of problems like poor coverage in mountainous areas and being able to see markers for peaks that aren’t even visible from your viewpoint. It takes quite some GIS jiggery-pokery to achieve that.
Is it useful?
Certainly from the point of view of helping establish a sense of place and orientation if you’re out in the field, or combining it with a traditional map reading exercise (compare the horizon view with what’s represented on an OS map? Sketch a peak’s prfile from the contours on the map then compare with PeakFinder?).
Perhaps students could try reverse engineering something like it using GIS tools for something a bit more challenging.
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