Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

@MartinK, I think downloading speed quite slow. Tried 90k google map tiles for around 30hrs with 50thread. Im using 2mbps data plan and when at home I use wifi with speed of around 8mbps. After completed, it created 107mb sql file but when I turned off the data plan. it still downloading tiles that i think should already be included. hope you understand my english :)

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I didn't time it, but for a similar size download it only 30 minutes or so using wifi but I do have a 100Mbps connection behind that. Wifi would have been the limitation though.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

@whats_up_skip
I tried to download using osm m@pnik and its fast like 500tiles per sec. Maybe the google map is slow in my area. thanks

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

Well, I drove a looong way and first I want to say:

A SIGNIFICANT, SIGNIFICANT improvement. Changing tile loading to LIFO makes a great different, the nav is useable now at high speeds. Thanks a lot, Marting.

Now for the problems however. I've identified three major issues, one of which is critical:

1. Map overlay results in at least doubling the CPU and mem load and makes it unuseable completely, the system slows down and just a big problem... You've already mentioned you're working on this.

2. Same with autorotation, to a lesser degree, it's useable but slows it down considerably. But that's how a nav should work, so this feature is needed. I understand you're also already addressing this issue.

3. This one I think is critical - the tile loading is still a SUPER slow process. It is slightly better when using the sql than regular files. The speed of loading each individual tile for display seems to vary, however in extended navigation it howers somewhere slightly under 2 secs per tile. This is terrible, since usually you're displaying a screen of 8 tiles or so, they go from green to display (this is for already downloaded tiles) one by one, each in under 2 seconds. The whole display thus takes 15 seconds, this on zoom in and zoom out, so this problem is a significant one.

It seems to me that tiles are also loaded around the visible area of the screen, since when dragged they are showed immediately for a while. However there is some intense processing when loading the tiles, which results in this incredibly slow loading process, which is bad.

Finally, I strongly recommend making the tile download also LIFO, as it's FIFO I think, and it's a big prob when on the move, zoomed in, downloading new tiles. It should be LIFO just like tile loading, with the ones no longer needed download paused and resumed after the visible ones are downloaded.

Another quite big problem is the size of the font. Many times, as has been mentioned here before, it gets messed up and is SUPER tiny, meaning you cannot read it. This issue usually corrects itself with the move to next driving direction, however it's always on a specific direction, i.e. if it's tiny, you go to next which is big for instance, and then back to the tiny one, it stays tiny.

More often than not, the directions' font is tiny which is a big problem, since many times I wanted to check the km to next turn etc. but couldn't.

Also, you definitely should change the setting for distance when speaking the directions to time-based interval setting, i.e. how many secs before a turn based on recent speed.

I also recommend adding, total remaining distance towards goal in the directions blue window display, not only next turn, but total remaining km.

These are my major remarks in testing the latest version.

Thanks for the big improvement, and please try to focus the tile loading especially, as well as considering my other suggestions.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

i'm going to donate to this , it's very very great and i'm waiting for an update soon :)

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I forgot to say: the zoom-in and zoom-out via the loudness key was a BRILLIANT idea, Martin. Operation while driving now is very easy, great improvement.

And I would recommend adding two buttons to the mainscreen when the zoom-in, zoom-out and menu buttons become available by clicking the screen:

- Toggle map overlay on/off, I do this quite often, sometimes it's useable to view the sat nav over the map, sometimes not.
- Sound on/off, this is also useful while navigating sometimes.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I would really like to see this.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I have two additional recommendations, it'd be useful to show current travelling speed.

And then, alongside the remaining km to next turn, and total remaining km, also the estimated time to next turn, and total remaining estimated time.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

short progress update:
I've reduced the number of tiles shown during rotation using rotated polygon overlap checking. The number of shown tiles is now about 14 vs 56 previously :) What remains to be seen is how demanding is the overlap checking in comparison to drawing more tiles than needed. Still -> less tiles drawn = less tiles down/loaded = less IO.
I'll do the map overlay optimizations next and I'm also working on quite a few other things in parallel.
Q/A -> soon :)

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I still think the loading of an individual tile must be unnecessarily CPU heavy, I've been experimenting a lot and very slow. Sometimes I have tiles popping in one by one, with each taking 5 seconds.

I think I've come up with the reason the font is messed up, sometimes supersmall in the directions.

You said, the size is determined automatically, so that the instructions fit in the box, right?

Well this is it, sometimes the directions are super long, and they seem to be fitted on only one line, and then when super small split...

I think this is a wrong approach, the font should always stay the same, the instructions should have line folding, and then after a couple of lines, if they don't fit in the box, well too bad, they should just be cut...