Quality Of Life Improvements

This app is fantastic! It is by far the best FOSS map solution for android out there… However, it could use a few touch ups:

• A UI overhaul Something like this is what I had in mind. The next street name should be far more visible than the current one. And the color contrast needs to be increased for readability. The font size should be increased too… In addition to total trip time, time until next turn should be displayed, though this isn’t overly crucial.
• Make the TTS audible when playing music. I’m not sure how this’ done exactly, but in other map apps, it dampens the audio of other apps when it gives instructions.
• Make some instructions more clear:
  • “Stay right” when merging onto highways should be renamed to “Merge to the rightmost lane” and “Turn right onto street/highway name”.
  • When continuing straight onto another street, it prevents one’s ability to look for the next turn clearly. Optionally, combine “continue straight” instructions and simply display the next “stay/turn left/right” instruction. This is highly useful on the USA’s freeways/high-speed highways.
  • Roundabouts are a bit confusing, the turns here should be displayed as “At the roundabout, take the nth turn onto street name”.
  • Specific turn lanes should be specified, e.g. “Using the 2nd from the left lane, turn left”. This should be audibly relayed, but displayed with a different icon in the map-view navigation instead of text.
• Stop rotating the map based on the compass! Stationary GPS doesn’t work reliably enough for this purpose and causes confusion/inconvenience. Perhaps it could be disabled unless you’re biking/walking. This should at least be a configuration option.
• Stoplights/signs should be displayed on the map, this’ a feature in Google Maps, and it’s quite nice.
• Time based delay calculation… AKA take rush-hour(s) into account.
• POI searching is nonexistant… Perhaps integration with Acastus-Photon would work here?
• Alternate routes should be displayed and added as optional, toll roads should be ignored by default, but mid-navigation switching should remain an option.
• The open-in feature doesn’t work in this app. It doesn’t open search when an address is provided, and should. It often contains %20s which means the strings aren’t being parsed/sanitized correctly.
• LOD should be customizable, as of right now, the map shows too many details for my liking, this should be customizable.
• Night mode! My eyes!!
• Feet/Meters should be simplified to Miles/Kilometers when it’s over 0.5 (~2700/500) of either of these units.

Most of these features are present in other map-apps, namely Google’s and Apple’s. If this app gained these features, there’d never be any reason to use the proprietary ones! 😄

[feelingwalnut]

Exactly, we travel on the RIGHT side. 😆😉

[mikenrafter]

I agree, bloat should be avoided. Perhaps features like speed-limit leniency could be included in an add-on apk. Many apps do similar things, even on Android…

In your area, since they’re not really watching traffic - then it’d basically always show the fire emblem. As it’s obviously lenient there… 20 miles away… And yes, I understand the flow of traffic. But that’s not really something that an app like this would be able to incorporate without pulling information from its users/an external source.

On the 5+ lane comment, it’d really only show the 3 relevant lanes, the one(s) you should turn using, and up to 2 other lanes to the left/right, to give you context… Roundabouts would probably need some special work here, I’ll try to come up with a design that works for them…