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Let me begin by saying that, although I have found a number of incorrect things in the new version, I still am very happy with Pocket Earth and will continue using it.
Some of what I will write may be seen by other people as a “feature”, not a bug. However, I will try to explain why it should not work that way.The great benefit of Pocket Earth is that it can be used anywhere and any time (assuming the proper preparations have been made) without making costly connections to the Internet. I don’t know how widely this is known, but in December 2015, unless something happens, roaming costs in the EU will drop to zero. This means that if you have a European SIM card, you can use it in any EU country at the same cost as when you are home.
OK. Bug #1: when making a new route, the current location is always given as the first destination. And GPS is turned on. Since my home is 1200km from the route and my transport is bicycle this is not at all correct. It seems to me this is what should work in what is called “Track Recording”. However it is not there. Furthermore, deleting my location as the first destination as turning off GPS, plus zooming often leads to a crash.
Bug #2: since the iPhone screen is rather small, I have turned off all except one of the POIs in the settings. Thanks to a tip from GeoMagik, when I need to find something, I go to the nearby search, select the type of object and then choose “show all on map”. The bug is that all the pins that I have made then disappear. So, if I am looking for what is close to my hotel, for example, I have to memorise where my hotel is since it is not shown.
This I will not call a bug, but something that needs improvement. I made a route from my house to a place X. Again the means of transport is bike. The one route delivered to me is not the way I would choose to go. Place X is on the other side of a river from where I live. I can cross the river by ferry (near my home) or ride a long way to a bridge which I can bike over. The ferry is more desirable because the ride from the ferry to the place X is on small local roads where there is very little traffic and it is almost countryside. The route given to me by Pocket Earth is over the bridge. This route means I have to bike through most of the city until I reach the bridge.
If I try this on Google Maps on my iPhone, it gives me three options with the default option being the way I described above as the better way. I see no way in Pocket Earth to modify a route. It would be nice to even make a route by starting to draw in Pocket Earth and then letting it finish the route.
A new update 2.0.2 was made available since yesterday. It corrects about 20 bugs and crashes in the app, many with the routing feature. Your current location is no longer added as the start point for a New Route so should solve your point 1 at least. Point 2 was intentional, but you made a good case, we will reconsider.
Another update 2.0.3 should be available within the next 2 weeks to address the few remaining bugs and routing usability issues. An latest map data will be available in the next day or 2 via in-app data update. This data update will also greatly reduce chances of crashing when panning/zooming over certain areas of the world (Netherlands especially).Our current routing provider doesn’t give alternate route suggestions. You can only get 2 versions by changes the transport mode between Fastest and Shortest. Fastest tends to prefer larger highways and Shortest tends to prefer smaller often more scenic roads. You should always set this to your preference for a route for best results. After doing this, you can control the path a route takes by adding one or more control points.
To make a control point press and hold on the route line on the map until an orange dot appears, then drag it to the road you would like the route to follow. Sometimes even with 1 or more control points it will “refuse” to follow the road you want, this can be because either the Fastest/Shortest setting or because the OSM data is lacking the proper routing information to know that its possible to drive through that road.We are planning on migrating to a different routing provider in our 2.1 update. Initially the features will be the same but they support public transit routing, tollway and ferry avoidance, and offer alternate route suggestions and in the future we will make use of these new possibilities.Thanks very much. I am happy to see that the New Route works correctly. I haven’t used “Track Recording”, but shouldn’t that work the way that New Route used to work – GPS on and current location automatically chosen?
Using the New Route, the options I see are walking, bicycle or auto with, as you say, shortest or fastest routes. That is, for walking or bicycling there is no choice of fastest or shortest. Personally, what I would like to see for bicycle or walking is not at all fastest, but flattest. I once used Pocket Earth (two years ago) for a bike route in Bavaria. To my surprise, after a pleasant beginning, we stood in front of a small mountain. I have learned from this and now use either either Maps 3D or Elevation Chart on my iPhone (Maps 3D works like Pocket Earth – download maps in Wifi, use them without any Internet and you can also export your route to Pocket Earth) or this website: http://ridewithgps.com/ I haven’t used the website recently, but you could make a route using elevation data, export the route and then import to Pocket Earth.
I hope that the return of user pins will come to the show all in Nearby. I really don’t understand the reason for their removal.
I can confirm that user pins and favorites not showing on map during a Nearby > Show All was not intentional, and will be corrected in 2.0.3 which is expected out end of next week.
New Track doesn’t automatically enable current location, as the user may wish to plan waypoints on the track in advance of using the recording function. Pressing record on a track will automatically enable GPS if it isn’t already.Yea, I hear you, our current routing provider is poor to say the least. The one we are planning to migrate to in 2.1 should be much better. Of course the ultimate goal is to do routing completely offline, but thats exceptionally difficult and we don’t have the resources to do it just yet. Hopefully in 2.1 we will get offline address search completed. Topographic maps is another huge feature, and automatic iCloud sync for favorites, etc… we got our work cut out for us 😉That is very good news to hear. The routing will I hope be much better. As I have written above, there are, I think, already good sources for topographic information that will work with PocketEarth. Perhaps I am the only one who doesn’t see the need for topographic maps in PocketEarth, but I don’t feel that it needs to do everything. I am also looking forward to when we can easily offload and onload maps.
I have just spent a month in New Zealand where PE proved to be a great planning and routing tool, allowing me to dispense with paper maps completely. The current routing engine however would not route along “white” roads which are unsealed in NZ (but not the case in UK!!)
Will the new provider allow this?
Just to let you know, we did switch routing providers in v2.1, and the new one appears to produce much better routes and is based on more up to date OSM data than our previous provider. It has also allowed us to add new options for avoiding ferries, tollways, etc. Hopefully it has improved the routing in UK? If not, it is probably due to poor route tagging in the OpenStreetMap project in that area.
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