New ground overlay feature

[wolodik]

Hi!
Overlays from raster maps is one of the most important things in locus for me. I was quite happy with its realization. But last version you start to divide one big map into plenty of smaller ones. I undestand that for devices with low performance and small memory it would help, but for more powerful ones (i.e. my galaxy note) now it looks very strange - it begins loading many small sqares in chaotic order, it much more slower and confusing. And I want to have the whole image in kmz file, not plenty of them.
Please make the settings, some checkmark, to generate file with splitted image or no. (There is a bug now - Google Eath start to refuse to open newly generated files).
I'm using locus in my every trip, and it perfectly satisfied my needs. Thank you. But I want to ask you for couple of small improvements:
- Allow making folders for tracks, as it is for points.
- Make clear indication while recording track, when the lost of gps signal occures - maybe change color of marker from blue to red (especialy in transport, I often cannot understand from one glance is the position real or recent, I have to switch to the gps screen - very unconvenient)
- When I don't have internet connection, sometimes I haven't downloaded all tiles from all scales - when I change scale I have some blank squares on map. It would be very helpful, if locus will use the nearest availiable scale to show on screen. It already has the similar functionality - with lock button, but it locks scale for all map, not only for blank tiles.
It sounds for me almost unbelievable, but I use locus intensively for half a year and I haven't more complains except these!
Thanks.

PS: OOps! I looked one more time and found that since ver 2.6 overlay map shows in very low quality!! I rolled back on 2.5.6, there everything is ok..

[tommi]

PS: OOps! I looked one more time and found that since ver 2.6 overlay map shows in very low quality!! I rolled back on 2.5.6, there everything is ok..

Hi, please try 2.6.2, it should be better again.

[Menion]

it's not only for "low-powered" devices. Even my Galaxy Nexus crashed sometimes when I used calibrated map. Operation memory is very precious item mainly for mapping app. Thanks to this, Locus is able to handle in much much better and faster way, GroundOverlay objects. I'll check problem with Google Earth, so take it as fixed. But what is general problem with separating image into small pieces? "looks very strange" is not a problem by me. It just load one by one all images ...

"- Allow making folders for tracks, as it is for points."
discussed already on about 150 places. No, sorry. You have to use current system of predefined categories

"- Make clear indication while recording track, when the lost of gps signal occures" - you may enable sound &vibrate notification when GPS lost it's fix position. Do you know it? Check GPS settings

"- When I don't have internet connection, sometimes I haven't downloaded all tiles from all scales" - https://getsatisfaction.com/locus/topic ... zoom_level

EDIT: added possibility to disable this "cutting" anyway count that image will not be drawn in 1:1 resolution if will be too huge!

[wolodik]

Can I post links to youtube?
"new overlays" - I recorded 4 small videos to show you what is happening now. I made 2 maps from one file, using locus 2.6 (one-piece) and 2.6.2 (tiles). Very strange for me that in 2.6.2 loading tiled map became VERY slow compared to 2.6. And in 2.6.2 old one-piece map now almost unusable because of low-resolution (it will be not good if I had to remake them all...). I'm not saying that tiles is bad , I just don't want to look on many sqares that appears in chaotic order - can you make them appear together?.

http://youtu.be/y6gZxMnSpBc   Locus 2.6 loading tiled kmz file
http://youtu.be/FMO_-KH7EFU  Locus 2.6. Loading one-piece kmz
http://youtu.be/aEms28xFLL8   Locus 2.6.2 Loading tiled kmz
http://youtu.be/pHxfQ90fmqs   Locus 2.6.2. Loading one-piece kmz.

"indication of gps signal" - Thanks, I know about notification alert, but let me explain. When I'm in train, or a bus, I put my phone near window where I check there is GPS signal. Then I sleep, listen to music, etc, and don't want to pay attention on alerts, because signal appears and disappears many times during journey. But when I look at the display, I cannot understand what my position on map means - where I am now, or where I was half an hour before, hundred kilometers away. I really couple of times almost missed my station! So now I have to change every time to GPS screen, to see if there are satellites. If the position marker change Its color depending of current satellite lock, It would me very helpful.

"reuse tiles" - ok, I will wait I just thought It could be easy modification of "lock scale" functionality.

[Menion]

hello ...

this KMZ GroundOverlay stuff is quite hard to simply solve . Every phone have different memory capacity and it's hard to find a simply way. Anyway in new 2.6.3 version it should be little bit better, so check it.

I'm thinking how to allow loading of huge images without reduction and only solution seems to be add new settings into locus configuration file (http://docs.locusmap.eu/doku.php/manual ... ation_file) - maybe something like "Do not resample GroundOverlay images"? Because when I enable this by default, many people will not think about it and then, app will crash often because of lack of memory. So it should be optional.

anyway try current version. I have just few KMZ maps to test, but all seems to works correctly (not resterized) because they're also tiled.

[wolodik]

Hi.
I test new version, now it seems fine except resampling. In 2.6 image is still clearer than in 2.6.3. I can see it even on screenshot - colors slightly changes, and its size is 800 kb compared to 1.5 mb when using non-resampled tiled image , I can give screenshots or kmz files if you need.
As I see, now - when locus has new (very useful!) capability of tiling ground overlays, you don't need to resample anything. Just make "tiling" default option, and post alert when user disables it "if locus unexpectedly crashes, try to mark tiling image".
I think it'll be enough.