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Posts: 61 | Thanked: 2 times | Joined on Jan 2007 @ United Kingdom
#33
New feature requests:

I use the OSM maps a lot, but the OSM maps are constantly improving in my area, and hence even if the map has been downloaded before, it may well be out of date now, with new roads and features having been added. So, it would be useful to have the following two features:

1. An option to "expire" a map tile; ie a setting to say if this tile is accessed (viewed) and it's over x months old (ie x months since it was downloaded), then re download / add to the download queue if offline. This could be automatic (expire all tiles over x months old, or as listed, only expire tiles that are accessed).

2. An option that when downloading a route to force an update of all map tiles on the route; at the moment, it only downloads tiles you don't already have, which can lead to a mixture of older and newer tiles showing different roads. An option to force all of them to be refreshed would ensure that for that route all the tiles were the newest ones.

On a separate note, I would certainly like either some transparent buttons, or a toolbar option. Note, I say option, so, for example, I would probably only want the toolbar visible when in full screen mode. These would simply link to the same options available from the hardware keys now, and would give more access to functions for N810 users who don't want to drive with the keyboard open.

Finally (sorry for the long list!), I would like some auto zoom options. It would be nice if MM could automatically zoom to the highest available zoom level (ie lowest number). When tiles are missing and I am offline, I could spend a lot of time zooming out and then back in when the tiles are available again. This should probably still queue the missing tiles (including intermediate zooms) for download later, but would possibly give a better level of readability when you are offline and fallen outside of your downloaded map area.

Alongside this, it would be nice if the auto zoom had limits based on speed; eg zoom into the highest zoom level, but be able to specify 3 speed ranges, something like:
- For 0 to x mph/kph - maximum zoom: 2
- For x to y mph/kph - maximum zoom: 6
- Faster than y mph/lph - maximum zoom: 10
My reasoning for this is that when driving on the highway / motorway, a zoom level of 2, 4 or even 6 may be showing way too much detail, but as soon as you come off the highway / motorway, having MM automatically zoom in and show more detail would be useful. Obviously, I would like the exact zoom levels for the 3 speeds to be user configurable as well.

A lot of features, but for someone who spends a lot of time using offline OSM maps whilst driving, they would be nice additional features, although I appreciate some of them are easier to describe than they are to code (eg I don't know if you actually have the download time / date of an individual tile to be able to expire it).

I hope I've explained them all well enough. If only I were a programmer I would offer to actually help out and work on some of these myself
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UK Gadgeteer

Last edited by swing; 2008-05-30 at 10:54. Reason: typo