KAS Software

KAS Software Ltd

We've developed a free-to-use Windows map viewing program - MapView - for the display of digital raster maps in traditional 'flat' format, in 3D, or with height shading applied. Supported raster map types include the geotiff format - used extensively by the Ordnance Survey and the US Geological Survey (USGS) - USGS DEMs (Digital Elevation Models), and our own open specification gdf format, used for large custom-made composite digital maps.

Using data available via the Ordnance Survey's OpenData™ initiative, we can supply maps, height data and gazetteers for Britain and beyond. Our composite OpenData™ height data map, most of our gazetteers and all our smaller scale maps are royalty-free and can be downloaded at no cost whatsoever.

We can also supply USGS geotiff quadrangle files, which are themselves freely available for download from numerous US state and government websites (there's a comprehensive list of internet geoTIFF resources elsewhere on this site). There's an awful lot of these files available for each state - for example Arizona is covered by over 1,900 1:24,000 scale geotiffs, amounting to around 11Gb of geotiff files (plus another few hundred 1:100,000 & 1:250,000 scale maps for that state). There are some sample composite maps (and matching elevation data), created by merging these original geotiff files, available for free download on this site.

The MapView application was developed in 2004/2005 (using C on Visual C++) as a map viewer for Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 & 1:50,000 scale maps which I was then licensed to sell. It lay dormant thereafter for a few years until the first OS OpenData^TM data release in 2010 put a significant volume of free map, height & gazetteer data into the public domain, which acted as a spur for a wee smidgen of further development.