I would be VERY interested in all of the suggestions that pistos has made - customizable maps for export, elevation data (ideally with the possibility of 3D views eventually), and travel distance would be extremely useful.
I'm so amazed I was able to fit terabytes on my netbook:
..
It's amazing what's available five years ago (Bible Mapper; free)
"God will save his fallen angels and their broken wings He'll mend."
Sean Boisen:The elevation is directly reflected in the shading on the maps
I think for general use defining locations and relative points shading is sufficient.
I do want an easy way to discover the elevation of Mt. Carmel versus the elevation of Jezreel, or see the elevation of the Temple in Jesus' day with that of the Mount of Olives, and brook Kidron in-between.
As a minimum, elevation should be available in the popup when one hovers over a marked geographic point. That wouldn't give all the reference points one would like, but those should be easy to add.
The maps also need to take us well below the 5000 foot level of resolution (without the major pixelation of the terrain maps we now have at that level). I know I am spoiled by Google Maps (and don't need the 20 foot level I can get there), but 5000 feet is very course. I've got lots of screen left and Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives are still only an inch apart.
So the start of this project is nice, but just drawing lines on a map to show routes is certainly underwhelming with the data you seem to have already and what we have grown used to outside our Bible software.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
Mark:
Thanks for the suggestions. We're definitely planning to increase the map resolution, but our current priority is to get more maps shipped.
I haven't used it a ton, but http://www.openbible.info/geo/ is a great resource in the mean time.
Thanks for the link to the openbible.info site. A lot of interesting stuff there. I don't remember running across that site before.