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These layers should still be working okay, but may not be available everywhere (depends on data available in the OSM project). The Cycling layer shows highlights for officially recognized cycling networks, while the Hiking layer simply shows hiking trails from a more zoomed out view. They also emphasize related POI such as view points and cycle shops. See the attached screenshots for an example taken from Switzerland.
The update we had announced was implemented, but this was only to provide a way to export a Route and re-import it as a Route again without it being converted to a Track (by using Pocket Earth Archive format rather than GPX).
We have had a few requests for the feature you are asking and are considering the best way to implement it. GPX format is designed to contain Tracks but not Routes and as such does not contain turn-by-turn navigation info. The best option is probably to take the waypoints contained in the GPX and perform an online route request with them to produce a Route in PocketEarth which can then be used offline.
I will let you know when this feature can be implemented as soon as we assess and schedule it.
The Show All bug we are aware of and will be fixed in the next update within the next week.
I am not sure about slowdown as we haven’t seen that or had other reports of it yet. Do you have a very large number of Favorites items? If so that could be part of it. Since the last update, Pocket Earth keeps a complete Recents history which if you have a lot of favorites items could be taking too long to re-save them.
iOS 8 and iPhone 6 threw us a curve ball, but an update is on the way! It should be available towards the end of this week.
You might also double check Settings > Map Layers, towards the bottom there is a layer called Minor Roads. Make sure it is Checked.
We’ve just published the latest maps update, which was a bit behind our usual schedule. Perhaps these streets were only added recently (last 2 months) to the OSM project and you will find them in the update. You can get the update by going to Settings > Manage Data > Check for Updates.
This week we will be updating our free app, city apps, and doing an in-app maps data update. Next week we will be looking into this and several other data issues that had been reported. Sorry for the delay, we have a long queue of tasks.
We are working on an Android version but it will be several months still before it is available.
PE already has an input wheel for DMS and DM.mm formats. Just go to Search > Coordinates and tap the top right button to cycle through the input modes.
For textual entry, you have to rewrite it in one of the two DM formats shown in Help Manual (those mentioned by @Kritou).
Though we will look into adding support for this format directly.Yep I had already found and added it (they come from the open SJJB icon set). Easy to do if I know its missing and it exists in OSM (well usually, sometimes its not high enough resolution and I need to give my graphics designs a few weeks to replicate it). If you find others let me know. I will update the stylesheet along with v2.3 in the next 10 days.
We are planning to allow users to add POI in a coming update and you will have the full choice of POI icons for this. At that point, for adding Pins, we will change the available Pin icons to simpler designs, like geometric shapes appropriate for Waypoints as to not overlap with POI icons.
These are beer gardens. Usually if this happens its because there is no standard OSM icon for them. But seems like there should be one for beer gardens, I will look for it and add. If you find others like this that have OSM icons (e.g. shown on the OSM website map), let me know and I will add them also.
nounours and xomtor are Pocket Earth users just like yourself. They have also volunteered as Beta testers to help us catch bugs in new Pocket Earth updates. GeoMagik is a very small company, just 2 people and we don’t have the resources to help improve the OSM project on the technical side, though my business partner and I do contribute to OSM when we have time by tagging in the areas we live or have traveled extensively. We are just one of thousands of companies and organizations that utilize OSM data. In regards to routing, we utilize the MapQuest Open routing service. (they’re using OSM data also)
OSM has data for many different purposes (not only travel and routing) and there are countless websites and apps using specific subsets of the data, for example OpenCycleMap (for cycling & pedestrian, but not routing oriented), OpenMBTMap (offroad cycling) or OpenPisteMap (skiing). I imagine if OSM has a lit tag for streets, some people thought it was very useful and there is a specialty map that makes use of it in some way (not necessarily for routing purposes). The tagging scheme is somewhat complex but I am not sure there is really a good solution to that. For example, every one of the access tag values give important meaning for certain cases. One thing that could improve perhaps is the Map Editor software, and I have seen them improve greatly over the past years (there are a number of different editors, even specialty editors that help people to add specific kinds of information).
Anybody is free to propose changes to the OSM tagging scheme on their wiki site and the community votes for changes. But in the end its just conventional as you are free to tag things as you like. For any map app or website to make use of those tags though, their usage must be widespread enough to justify it. I don’t honestly know about the situation with pedestrian crosswalks, but the OSM website’s Forum would be an appropriate place to discuss it with the OSM community.
If you find mistakes in OSM and don’t have time to correct them yourself, you can also just flag them and (sooner or later) someone else in the OSM community will make the corrections. This can be done directly on the main map on their website by tapping one of the buttons on the right side.
Sorry I haven’t followed this full discussion, so if you have any specific questions for us, let me know.
I believe the access=no tag applies to all transport modes including pedestrians as per the OSM wiki page about it. This can be overridden for pedestrians by specifying a foot=yes tag. There are also tags for cycling and oneway only access by transport type. I am pretty sure though that these only apply to movement along the street, and has nothing to do with crossing streets. The cross walks should be tagged so the router knows where it is possible/legal to do so. There may be assumptions by the router about which kinds of streets are cross-able anywhere vs ones that can only be crossed at designated crosswalks. I am not myself that familiar with these details of OSM yet.
The OSM project has come a long way but it is far from perfect. It has a huge community though and is rapidly improving.
Yes you can save all favorites, even maps are possible to save using the following method:
- Download and install the third party software iFunBox (free) on your laptop/desktop.
- Connect your iPhone/iPad to your computer using the USB cable.
- Open the iFunBox software and select your device.
- Choose User Applications and double click on Pocket Earth in the list.
- Choose the folder Library
- Choose the folder Private Documents
- You will see two folders called UDB and Data. UDB contains all of your favorites (including pins/routes/groups/etc). Data contains the map data.
- Select one or both of these folders (just highlight, don’t double click) and Choose the “Copy to Mac/PC” option from the toolbar.
- After it has finished coping the folders, verify that folders are on your computer.
- On your iPhone/iPad, you can now delete and redownload/install the app.
- On your iPhone/iPad, double tap the Home button to get to the app multi-tasking mode and swipe up on Pocket Earth to close it.
- Use iFunBox to copy the folders back into Pocket Earth using the same approach as above, this time using the “Copy from Mac/PC” to copy them back on.
- Open Pocket Earth again and verify your favorites are still found.
Note: After doing the above, if it still crashes, try deleting the Data folder in the app using iFunBox (but leave the UDB folder), and re-downloading your maps manually using the Pocket Earth “Get Maps” option in the main menu. If you still have issues, you can email us the UDB folder by making a ZIP file of it first and we can correct it (this might also indicate the bug is not what we think it is, and could greatly help us diagnose it).
Let me know if you have any problems.
We think we have identified the bug causing this and will have an update in a week or so (we need to do more verification and then wait for Apple approval for the update).
If you need to use Pocket Earth before then, the only option is the delete and reinstall the app. If you want to preserve your favorites this is a way to do it using some third party software on your computer to manually copy the favorites data off the device before deleting PE. If you are interested in doing this, let me know and I will give more details about the process.
GPX files are meant to store GPS Tracks, that is, actual recordings of ones movements. GPX does not have support for turn-by-turn routing. For this reason GPX are imported into Pocket Earth as Track objects, not Routes. There are two related feature requests which could improve this situation and we are considering them for inclusion in a future update:
- Option on GPX import to create a Route, fetching the turn-by-turn instructions from our server using the coordinates in the GPX file as the start and destinations points.
- Option to do Navigation on Tracks, by giving simple directions like “Head Northwest” for “1 km”. This wouldn’t be the kind of rich instructions given with real routes, but just state the direction and distance to next point on the track. Tracks already offer this kind of functionality but only by using Waypoints.
- We do offer the full OSM icon set via the OpenStreetMap stylesheet in settings > More Settings > Map Style.
- We do plan on allowing users to add public POIs in a coming update to help fill in missing data. This will likely be independent of OSM data because we want to allow things like ratings, reviews, and photos which OSM doesn’t support. However, we feel its less confusing to use a standardized set of colors and icons for POI categories.
- Very good idea! We will consider best way to add POI Category filtering for favorites.
- Yes there is a lot of overlap between the two, but currently they need to stay separate. They are built on fundamentally different understandings of the POI objects. They also are meant to serve different purposes. Nearby is for searching through the nearby POI data while the Map Layers are for the styling of the POI and other OSM data.
- Sounds like you are talking about simple straight line routing, not requiring any route fetching from the server. If so, we have had some requests for this and are planning to add support for it at some point.
Thanks for the feedback, we will reconsider the star button styling for our next update! v2.3 will be out in probably 2 weeks and include a unified search bar that searches everything at once.
We did change the layout of the map buttons on iPhone to make it more ergonomic for one handed use. Also to avoid a serious usability issue with pinching that numerous users had reported. Before though the left side zoom buttons were meant for right handed use, now the right side zoom buttons are meant for right handed use, and you may need to change the setting for this for it to “feel right”. Tap the settings button and go to More Settings. Then tap Zoom Buttons and change it to right side if you are right handed or left side if you are left handed.
Hope this works out for you, I think you will find it a much nicer layout once getting used to it.
Glad to hear routing is better now, the routing system alone had over 20 fixes and enhancements in 2.2!
Sorry to hear this happened! Of course it shouldn’t have and we haven’t had any other reports of this issue. But we will be on the look out for the bug that could have caused it. I am guessing though that you had a corrupt favorite caused by a bug in the saving routing in a previous version of the app. Just wish I had jumped in this conversation early I may have been able to save your data (and identify the bug!).
BTW, we are working on an automatic sync feature for one of our coming updates (probably v2.5) so you don’t have to do the manual export/import approach.
I can see how it might seem arbitrary but it was part of a larger change to greatly simplify Maps Management and Routing. Maps no longer have the confusing dual notion of being a favorite and/or being offline. They simply have a download or delete button. Routes and Tracks also no longer have a star as they auto-save and only need a delete button.
Pins and POI still have a star but we wanted to make it more consistent with our other buttons being flat gray. Now it is just a hollow or filled star.
E.G. Colored star no longer have a double meaning of offline cache status. Sorry if this was a confusing change!
