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Posts: 1,548 | Thanked: 7,510 times | Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic
#603
[QUOTE=jj0;975130]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:

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post
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.
Yep, I'm working on this - I have working visibility checking for rotation (previously an unnecessarily large are was loaded and drawn to cover the entire rotated viewport). I'll do the overlaid tile caching next - the tiles will be overlaid once and then cached, not drawn twice on every refresh like previously.
NOTE: Once clutter support is in, things like smooth zooming & rotation, fake 3D and mindbogling tile loading effects will become possible.

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post
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.
The tiles really should not take so long to load - most of them are very small and should load instantenously.
The tile loading is done sequentially in a background thread (so that the GUI doesn't have to wait for the tiles to load) - this thread might be resource starved or blocked by something.

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post
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.
Once loaded from storage or network, tiles are cached in memory. There is a limit on the number of cached tiles - once this limit is reached, old tiles start to be discharged.

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post
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.
I'll have to check if it is possible to pause a download - it might be easier to just cancel ant then start again, concerning the generally small size of the tiles.

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post
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.
As there were already quite a few requests for a more readable text in the navigation info box, I'll make this my priority for the next release.

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post
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.
That should fit to the right quite nicely, like this:
in 50 meters <-- blank space ---> 50/120 km
turn right to the Sesame street


Originally Posted by jj0 View Post
These are my major remarks in testing the latest version.
Thanks ! The feedback from your field-testing is very important and much appreciated!

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post
Thanks for the big improvement, and please try to focus the tile loading especially, as well as considering my other suggestions.
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