Map scale and visible roads
  • Hello,
    I use this application (MapFactor Navigator v2.1.97) on Android 4.3. But still I have there one disadvantage. If I have map scale, that I see approx. 57km and more in diagonal on my display then the navigation shows only motorways and forests nothing other roads. It is possible to change display in hight scale and show roads? I can't
    show forests, because it makes CPU load. This application is navigation for car, it is not a guide to green ;-).

    The situation describes above is, when I have software render. When I have hardware render, then it is worse - roads dissipate
    in smaller scale.

    Best regards

    Vohary
  • 13 Comments sorted by
  • Hi Vohary,

    this has already been discussed here several times, e.g. http://forum.mapfactor.com/discussion/6200/road-visibility-at-lower-zoomlevels#Item_1.
    It seems that this is not of big interest for the developers.

    Regards, James
  • We can start pushing again. I still feel the same about it and I think it needs improvement.

    @Tomas: What is the current state? Will MNF try to improve this?
    We can repeat all arguments said then, but they have not changed.
  • I think I said this before, mobile devices have limited power and adjustments must be made very carefully, otherwise rendering will be slow
    I do not think it is a good idea to let users tinker with this
    having said this, there is space for improvement and we will look at it
  • Currently users can't tinker with this. Users can play with line widths and colors and the like. This will not have big influence on the perfomance.
    Users have no influence on what zoomlevels roads, or any item for that matter, appear or disappear. This is hard-coded in the app. 
    The initial request was by a user to make this editable and I do agree with you that that is not a good idea. 
    However, all following requests/comments were to just have roads visible in the app itself on lower zoomlevels, so when zoomed out.

    And like myself and others have said before: 
    When navigating you are on the zoomed in navigation zoom levels where  the amount of detail is fine. No changes needed there, so no influence on the performance.

    The changes do need to occur on the low zoom levels (region/country wide) where roads are not visible. These levels are never(!) visible/used when navigating, only when the route is calculated immediately before starting the navigation, or when "sitting on the sofa" examining your route. Performance will not be an issue at all in these circumstances.
    And of course only main roads need to be visible at that level.That will hardly add any extra data to the render. 
    From my point of view I do think that the 3D building rendering requires a whole lot more performance than those few major roads on that low zoomlevels.
  • yes, I noticed, but what is 'stadard' map application'?
    I reckon he means Google and other online apps
  • or maybe osmand and maps.me?
  • Hello, today I also solved similar problem, I wanted to plan a route using small local roads in sparsely populated country, where the distances between villages are relatively high (nothing extreme, a few km). Unfortunately the roads between them appears on the map only at such high zoom levels. Then so small part of the country is on the screen that sometimes no village is visible and it is very difficult to plan the route. I was able to plan the route only with help of Google maps, where the small roads are rendered at more reasonable zoom levels.
    Neither Google maps nor other OSM maps (e.g. in GPS Essentials) have this problem, only MapFactor.
    It would be very nice if user could influence the map rendering.
    Thanks, Peter.

  • Hello,
    I have the same problem mentioned above planning a route through Norway. Only with very high resolution zoom you have a chance to see villages, village names and small roads.

    Could you give me an advice how to plan a trip prefering sideroads for several thousand kilometers through a country with this reduced information on the map?

  • I also think the level of detail on different view levels should be re-designed.
    On some of the views there is very little roads or village names visible, but very detailed forests / lakes which takes longer time to render but have little use for the user.
    Other apps (maps.me, magic earth) do display less detail on low zoom so it is faster to use the map and display more detail only when zoomed more (including house numbers, etc). When it comes to navigation I have best experience with mapfactor so far, however user experience when using maps is not the best and it can be that many users visually prefer some other app becuase it is easier to see things on map, faster to scroll and nicer.
    Menu and POI icons were re-worked recently. Maybe is time to review how the map is drawn? Give it a thought.

    my recommendation is to display less lakes/forests on low zoom and highlight the roads and village names etc.....
  • v,5,5.25 Samsung Galaxy S9.

    On a journey tonight from coordinates 54.878967/-1.554544 to 54.614592/-1.071655 (Washington, Tyne & Wear to Redcar) I had a problem with the HD traffic. Navigator tried to route me along a road that was closed for repairs (at coordinates 54.580914/-1.139606 Trunk Road towards Redcar) between the hours of 20:00 - 06:00. It was 21:25 at the time, The Tom Tom unit in the car correctly marked the road as closed. If Tom Tom was reporting correctly then surely Navigator should have also marked the road as closed.
  • Hi,
    Yes, the visibility of the roads is very difficult.
    I put the width at 100% to see the roads better and then I come back to 25% for the navigation mode.
    It is true that 2 scale factors would be easier.
    - Width of roads in Map View
    - Width of roads in Navigation Mode
  • For me the most important advantage of a better visibility of roads in higher map scales would be the possibility of planning routes on PC with MFN (which isn't practicable with the current implementation of road visibilities).

    In such a case MFN would be the only software I know offering a single software solution including identical routing for both PC and mobile device. At the moment I am planning routes on PC with other programs and always am forced to manually synchronise different routings between these worlds.

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