How to use the new support for ground overlay maps?

gynta · June 24, 2012, 00:01:37

Could anyone check this?
Downloading the kmz file (3MB) of Darwin and import to Locus.
For me it works. So it is difficult to find a bug...

Menion · June 24, 2012, 08:51:54

Iml I was checking your log file and there is some serious SYSTEM crash when converting images from file to displayable form. Was this working for you some time ago? It's weird because I did not changed anything is GroundOverlay system, but I'll rather check it once more ...

ah one more question. Didn't you changed your ROM to some unofficial one? Maybe it's a problem of new ROM

lml · June 24, 2012, 18:05:30

My phone is a non-rooted Samsung Galaxy Mini upgraded from android 2.2.1 to 2.3.4 by Samsungs own software (Kies).

I started to use this feature about a week before the latest release of Locus. I prepared a couple of kmz-maps in Google Earth and copied them to my phone and all of them worked. (There seems to be a bug how Locus handles the <hotSpot>-tag but I will do a proper bug report about that if I need it to be fixed. I decided to not use any icons and instead use separate gpx waypoints instead)

Today I tried again and I actually found a workaround that works on my phone.

If I select a kmz-map in "Map manager" it says "Importing..." and the selected map turns red:

If I now press the "Back" button Locus crashes in some way (I get thrown back to the launcher screen but the Locus process is still running).
If I instead tap the tools icon and then select "Center on map" the map works!

The resulting map:

Menion · June 24, 2012, 18:09:01

hmm very interesting. thanks for info, I think it's similar to this issue viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2091 (czech sorry), anyway i'll for sure look on it more precisely tomorrow and let you know!

Menion · June 24, 2012, 19:46:35

fine, should be fixed. At least correct centering after you select items. Why Locus crash is little mystery for me. Anyway check next version next week ...

mdmystko · August 27, 2012, 10:51:39

I have been using Locus with the "centering after map item selection" fix. Locus does not crash anymore but its usability is reduced. Centering and zoom-out cause slow initial map redraw - Locus tries to load ALL tiles of a given map. If I quickly zoom-in, I can start working with the application. However, Locus becomes unstable, probably due to plenty of memory wasted during the initial loading of map tiles. I never know if Locus would crash within a minute, within an hour or not at all. Additionally, swype starts to work slow during describing new waypoints. Thus I highly appreciated the feature you introduced (a month ago?) to remember selected map items because zoom-out and zoom-in became unnecessary. I could waste some time and memory to select a kmz map, quit Locus to reclaim memory and enjoy quick startup many times until I would need to switch to another kmz map. Unfortunately, after a recent update I discovered you dropped this feature and Locus became unstable for me again.
I understand you cannot fix the original crash occuring during map import only on selected phones. Would you please consider re-enabling the feature to remember selected map items? Thanks.

Menion · August 27, 2012, 11:18:48

Hi mdmystko,
I just few hours ago discovered also that Locus do not remember items. It's issue caused by merging points/tracks/items into one screen. This is already fixed and will be working again in next version

anyway about usability. You see some changes in last version when loading images from KMZ files? It's correct that Locus is trying to load all visible! images from KMZ files at once, but all are reduced to only required size and also all are throw away immediately when not needed.

mdmystko · August 27, 2012, 12:04:30

Hello Menion,

Quote from: "menion"Hi mdmystko,
I just few hours ago discovered also that Locus do not remember items. It's issue caused by merging points/tracks/items into one screen. This is already fixed and will be working again in next version

That's what I suspected so I am not surprised but pleased a lot. Thanks!

Quote from: "menion"anyway about usability. You see some changes in last version when loading images from KMZ files? It's correct that Locus is trying to load all visible! images from KMZ files at once, but all are reduced to only required size and also all are throw away immediately when not needed.

Last Saturday I used Locus, the version with re-designed Item Manager and without the feature to remember selected map items. It did crash after about an hour of track recording. Application restarted and the recorded section was present so I did not loose anything. Swype was slow and I had to be very careful when describing new waypoints. Restarted Locus successfully recorded another one or two hours of a track.
I did not have an opportunity to test long track-recording with the previous version that supported remembering of selected map items so I cannot tell if it was stable on my phone. I am going to upgrade Locus as soon as you release the fixed version but it might take couple weeks before I have another opportunity to test track-recording during a hike. I promise to comment on stability. OTOH, I can tell you that Locus on my phone had no problems to record many hours of hiking in Český ráj in June. I used cached tiles of SHOcart map as a background.

Menion · August 27, 2012, 12:18:47

Český ráj ... ah, I lived there 5 years, amazing place

anyway, I suggest to be carful with GroundOverlay (KMZ maps) in Locus on your phone. As I see, Samsung Gio is quite a "low-end" device and memory available for Locus will be around 16MB, not more. So in case you'll record track few hours together with some KMZ maps, expect very soon crash on "OutOfMemory"! If you want to use KMZ maps together with longer track record, I really suggest to set as a background "Online > Blank" map, which take almost zero memory so quite useful in your case. Also handy should be "reduce visibility of recorded points" (in settings >track record) to some lower (100 - 1000) number. It will also save some power and memory

mdmystko · August 27, 2012, 13:44:50

Quote from: "menion"...I really suggest to set as a background "Online > Blank" map, which take almost zero memory so quite useful in your case. Also handy should be "reduce visibility of recorded points" (in settings >track record) to some lower (100 - 1000) number. It will also save some power and memory

Thanks for tips. I will remember them when testing track-recording in the updated Locus.

mdmystko · August 31, 2012, 14:38:43

Hello Menion,

I am very much impressed how quickly you improve Locus but this time you were too quick

I cannot use Locus anymore

Here is what I did. I updated Locus and opened it with a vector map selected. Then I opened Data (Manager?) and checked a big kmz GroundOverlay. As previously, Locus zoomed-out automatically to 30km scale and started loading and displaying GroundOverlay tiles. I did not wait but clicked zoom-in few times to go to 500m scale. I was pretty disappointed to notice that tile quality degraded badly. Then I quit application to check the re-implemented feature to remember selected map items. When I started Locus again, it displayed first tile (low quality again) but I needed to wait quite long before it displayed another tile and finally it crashed soon after. When I tried to start Locus again, its progress bar stopped at 70% while it was displaying GroundOverlay tiles and it crashed. Now I cannot disable Map Item to get a working Locus. Is there an xml file with settings that I could edit?

Menion · August 31, 2012, 14:52:47

solution on this is simple - just rename little bit your KMZ file ...

anyway this is quite weird. I added into Locus small protection mechanism against huge KMZ tiles. What KMZ map are you using? Is publicly available, so I can test it?

mdmystko · August 31, 2012, 15:10:26

Quote from: "menion"solution on this is simple - just rename little bit your KMZ file ...

It worked, thanks for the trick.

Quote from: "menion"anyway this is quite weird. I added into Locus small protection mechanism against huge KMZ tiles. What KMZ map are you using? Is publicly available, so I can test it?

My maps are not but there is one made public for testing purposes: http://www.compass.home.pl/klient/Kiss/ ... 10_kmz.zip
It should have similar tile size to the maps I have, it is the same publisher.

Menion · August 31, 2012, 15:58:01

thanks ...

this is weird. For me maps looks normally

please check this test version https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8015949/Locus% ... .6.1.1.apk. I found small bug in resampling, so maybe this will help on crashes. But about quality it's interesting. Only thing I changes is that now images should be little bit blurred (anti-aliasing enabled)

mdmystko · August 31, 2012, 18:06:37

Quote from: "menion"please check this test version https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8015949/Locus% ... .6.1.1.apk. I found small bug in resampling, so maybe this will help on crashes.

I installed it and tested. Behaviour is exactly the same. I add map item, Locus zooms-out, I zoom-in and quit. When open again, Locus is very slow to display tiles. There were 4 tiles to display and I waited maybe 15 seconds for the last one to appear. When it appeared, I tried to slide map but Locus was not responsive. Soon after it crashed. It behaves as if it loaded many more tiles than the needed 4. That would explain slow appearing of needed tiles, non responsive gui when all 4 tiles are displayed and the final crash, possibly caused by OutOfMemory.

Quote from: "menion"But about quality it's interesting. Only thing I changes is that now images should be little bit blurred (anti-aliasing enabled)

Well, it is blurred, I agree. Way too much... Until now I was impressed by quality of jpg overlay displayed by Locus. Literally impressed.