What you need before you start
Two things. The first is obvious and the second is not, and the second is the one that stops people halfway.
1. An image of the venue
A picture of the place, flat-on, showing the whole area you want covered. A piste map, a festival site plan, a floor plan, an aerial photograph you have the rights to use.
It needs to be flat. A photograph taken at an angle of a paper map on a table cannot be calibrated well, and no number of Anchor Points repairs it — see choose and prepare a venue image for why, before you commit to a picture.
2. Real-world coordinates for at least three spots on it
This is the prerequisite people do not expect, so it is worth being blunt: you cannot finish a Map without it. The editor has no way to know where your image is on Earth, and there is nothing to press that works it out. You supply that knowledge, three times over, by pointing at a spot on your image and typing the latitude and longitude of the place it shows.
So before you open the editor, have a list like this ready:
| Spot on the image | Latitude | Longitude |
|---|---|---|
| Main gate | 55.67254 | 12.56571 |
| North-west corner of the car park | 55.67491 | 12.56102 |
| The bridge over the stream | 55.67108 | 12.56890 |
Three is the minimum. Five or six is much better, because with only three the editor cannot tell you whether they were right — it can only fit them exactly. That is worth understanding before you gather them: what calibration is.
How to get them
Two ways, and either is fine:
- From a mapping site, at your desk. Find the spot, read off the decimal latitude and longitude in that order, and write it down. Details and the pitfalls are in where to get the real-world coordinates for a spot.
- On site, with your phone. Stand at the spot and let FriendTrack record it. Slower, needs you to be there, and more accurate for anything a mapping site draws badly — capture anchors on site.
Which spots to pick
- Unambiguous. A gate, a corner, a junction, a mast. Not “the middle of the field”.
- Spread out. Near the edges and corners of the area you care about, not clustered in the middle.
- Not in a straight line. Three spots along one road cannot define the mapping at all, and the editor will tell you so — why three points in a line will not work.
What you do not need
- Any drawing skill or software. The editor does the drawing; you only click.
- Permission from FriendTrack. Anybody can make a Map. Publishing one to the public catalog is reviewed, but making and using your own is not.
- A survey, or professional equipment. Coordinates off a mapping site are good enough for a venue map; the accuracy you need is metres, not centimetres.
- The rights to publish the venue’s own map — unless you intend to publish. For your own Group’s use nothing is reviewed; for the public catalog you are asked to confirm you have the rights to the image, and reviewers see what you say about where it came from.
A realistic time estimate
With the coordinates already in hand: half an hour for a simple site, most of it drawing Areas. Without them: an afternoon, or a trip to the venue.
That asymmetry is the entire reason this page exists. Get the coordinates first.