Fonts in diffenrent maps to small

[rainer042]

Hello,

I recently switched to locus pro. Its a really great app with many useful features and a good userinterface concept. Great!

I have been playing around with OpenStreetmap (osmarender) as well as google maps in locus. With both maps there is one problem with the font size of street names as well as names for certain areas that eg in openstreetmap are printed in blue. The fonts in those generated bitmaps are tiny as well as the street names in both OSM as well as using teh google map type. Zooming into the map does not help at all, the text is not scaled up.

However if I use Google maps app on the same phone, fonts are bigger and thus readable. So I guess there must be some kind of parameter that defines the font size in the resulting map and it would be helpful to have this parameter adjustable in locus.  The double display size is a helpful workaround but displaying maps with larger fonts in general would be of course better. So the question is what does eg google maps app do what locus does not or different?

Back to OSM, if I take a look at OSM on my desktop on http://www.openstreetmap.org and look at the same map-type font sizes are ok and redable.

Another strange effect is the load time of maps for an area not already in the map cache. While a download of locus using eg google map data type for an area say 3x3km took about 20sec using wireless lan (so network is not a limiting factor) using the google maps app for the same region needs only 2 sec.  This is a factor of ~10.  Maps once loaded are displayed faster afterwards in locus (2-3 sec) but loading is really slow. Does anyone know why?

Thank you very much
Rainer

[Menion]

you compare locus with basic Google Maps application? There is one main difference. Google Maps use vector maps so they download around 10times less data. But vector maps has disadvantage with speed compare to bitmap maps, so that's why locus is faster with drawing.

about font size. I'm worried that there is no solution. Map tiles are usually pre-rendered on server so there is no chance to pass another parameter in URL that will generate maps with bigger fonts. You have to use "zoom lock" function in Locus. That's only what I think is possible to do with this ...

[rainer042]

Hello, thank you for your answer.

Yes I compared android google maps app with using locus using google map type.
Well after all it seems that in this case vector maps are much faster. I tried a little: Whatever region I go to on my mobile using android google maps app, I see a complete map in say no longer than 3 sec. So even though these maps are downloaded, rendered and then displayed it takes the same time that locus needs to just read the files from the cache and display them.

The real problem is however the download time. Its hard to believe that this is only due to the amount of data to be transferred, since other apps that also use OSM (I tested this with ViewRanger as well as Back Country  android apps) need only about the half time until the map is completly displayed compared to the time locus needs for this task on the same mobile using the same broadband wireless internet connection.

Don't get me wrong: locus is in my eyes the best app of all, but it would be even better if it could compete a little better with the rest regarding map loading speed.

Thanks
Rainer

[Menion]

I had similar problem. And finally discovered that my SD card was really slow. Mainly for this is in Locus settings for disabling storing online maps into cache. You may try if. If then maps will be really fast (without caching) then problem is in saving data into database. Storing data on sd card directly (as many programs do), is much faster but have many disadvantages. Mainly worst work with files and many more. So I suggest to place Locus into internal memory if your phone have or use more preloaded maps. Problem is only when loading new maps right? Hmm you may try it anyway thanks to suggested settings

[rainer042]

Hello,

in between I checked if the problem still exists when I disable caching of map data. I f I do this locus is a lot faster when fetching map tiles. So it really seems to be the problem of sqlite databases on a slow medium like SD cards.

Did you find a faster card, that delivers better results? Which on did you purchase (>=16GB)? At the moment I am using a 16GB SanDisk (I guess class 2) and soon I want to buy a 32GB one.

Thanks
Rainer

[Menion]

no, I had 32GB Kingston, class 4 and it was really slow. Not too much but slow. Actually I placed Locus into internal memory and it's fast in same way as with disabled tile caching. If your Desire S have some internal memory as my SGS2, I really suggest to place Locus there.