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I just recently bought the app. While it looks like it should be good around most major urban areas it’s disappointing to see that the maps just aren’t up to par with some other apps in many less urban areas. There are a lot of sections with only the major roads and highways and no real streets or roads otherwise. I was hoping this was only something wrong with the app install but I see the same on the web site map.
Any thoughts on this? Perhaps the ability to use maps from different sources, even if it means larger downloads?
PocketEarth uses community generated open map data from the OpenStreetMap Project (OSM). While it has excellent coverage in many places, its a bit lacking in others. Fortunately, this is a very active project with around half a million people contributing to it, and the maps are constantly improving! If you have local familiarity with a place, I invite you to join the community effort and improve some maps 🙂 See this post for more information.
There is not really any other viable datasources that we are aware of, and we are committed to the efforts of the OSM community!Quote:Any thoughts on this? Perhaps the ability to use maps from different sources, even if it means larger downloads?If you think larger download is the answer, you will be doubly frustrated.
One GPS app I tried (MotionX) required me to download >300MB for a small city (taking more than 6 hours) and it would not even allow me to download a map for a state (which will take about 70 million tiles or more than 4GB of data). It is not even recommended to have maps of more than 2 cities as the app takes exponentially longer and longer to add more maps. I was in China for a week and MotionX failed to download the map! It was a major FAIL.
PocketEarth is different. It uses Vectored Map technique which I believe is the most efficient! I was able to download maps fast and without restriction!
Most GPS/Map apps uses OSM. The quality of maps is with OSM.
I had once suggested to PocketEarth to use Garmin’s map data. Garmin also uses Vectored Map technique but I dont know if it would be compatible with PocketEarth’s app. However, Garmin’s maps are expensive. Many will not be able to afford it.
Considering the cost of OSM, free it is a great choice and whilst it is sparse in some places, there is an awesome amount of data. I have about 3.4gb of data saved for offline use. This includes all of Great Britain, France, Swissland, Austria, Australia, NZ and about half of USA as well as Western proviences of Canada
I to used to use MotionX but PocketEarth runs rings around it, especially ease of use and speed.
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