Map overlays

Hi Nomad86,
No, that would be counterproductive and a step backwards. There's no need to make it hard for yourself with ExplorOz Traveller that already offers a full 1:2K topo offline vector mapset for the whole of Australia and with the Places overlays you have the exact location on the map for the points of interests and campsites and these are georefenced so you can simply tap to use for creating navigation if you want that too. The app already shows you were you are on the map as you travel and all these places, tracks are already there in more detail than those maps.

If you ever want to add a feature to the Traveller map you simply add it yourself by creating Places.
I've checked this area for you today and its excellently referenced on EOTopo. Remember you can zoom the map to reveal more details.

Hope that helps

Hi David and Michelle,

I'll take that as a fairly definitive response in the negative but would like to put forward my opinion as a user seeking to make ExplorOz, in my eyes, a better product.

Essentially, places (annotated points) do not come anywhere near close to replacing the ability to show custom spatial data on the map. For example, the ability to see colour-coded tracks, as shown above, with live location tracking. There are other situations where the base map doesn't show the information that I want but have available as geotagged PDF or image and thus I am forced to use another navigation package. Your point about the base map having all of the track information in this example is valid, but in my experience, I use my NP maps in Avenza more than I do ExplorOz due to the information layout and focus. This is a personal preference, of course, but others may hold the same opinion. Having the pdf as an overlay that I could toggle on/off would have been quite useful in a number of situations. I could go on, but I hope you see the need that I am trying to address.

There are other Android apps that deliver this sort of functionality such as:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coresoftwaredesign.mapover.pro
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.psyberia.offlinemaps
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=menion.android.locus

However, there are features of ExplorOz that I prefer and thus want to use it rather than these products.

I understand that with a small development team that you need to be very aware of what functionality you want to support and focus on that. I am also guessing that adding this functionality would be a non-trivial exercise and at the end of the day, it is your call.

You offer a fantastic product with a superior base map coupled with useful information on points of interest. I suppose I just wish it could do everything that I desire it to!

Many thanks for responding so promptly,
Daryl

I see that I may have given the wrong impression by my example that I am only interested in track information. The example shown was chosen as a simple case that I hoped would be relateable. Point and line data is already handled, for the most part, by the existing functionality as you have kindly pointed out. Points and lines (tracks) are not the main focus of my feature request but rather the ability to add two dimensional data as an overlay within some area of the map. The key idea being it is 2D. I could add satellite imagery for offline use, heat maps of magpie attacks, likelihood of tyre punctures based on historical data, etc, etc. It could be whatever I like. Essentially, the ability to import a geotagged 2d data format that is stored locally (don't want to overload the servers with large image files, make it a user storage problem) and displayed as an overlay with some transparency.

From your response this far I can only assume this is seen as functionality that doesn't fit in the scope of the project or it is a feature that would require too much development overhead. I can relate to both of these as a software developer myself and so I will leave it at that.

Kind regards,
Daryl

Sometimes its really nice to see the "official" park map.. ExplorOz maps are good, but when every minor goat track that ever existed and has since grown over is still shown its sometimes difficult to plan a viable route through an area - the signal to noise ratio can be quite low at times. I also run multiple tools for this reason and it'd be good not to have to.

I appreciate that this is not in keeping with the products ethos or intent - I am considering a move back to OziExplorer on Android in order to get back to a single product - especially as I have purchased the EOTopo map set and am not too fussed about updates to it. EO Places is still useful though.

The ability to measure distance between two points on the map would be good too - without having to clumsily add Places to assist that process.

Thanks David.. I appreciate your willingness to take new feature suggestions on board.. if I were designing the feature I'd love to be able to just tap out a series of points, as you tap a point the line joins onto it and a total distance is displayed along with a "clear" button to dump the lot after I've worked out a rough distance.

With thanks,