New Beta! (v3.2.10) CarPlay, roundtrips and much more

Corjan Meijerink

Hey everyone!

The update you have been anxiously waiting for is finally in the pipeline to be processed. You can expect access to the new Beta version before the weekend. Given the CarPlay integration, we expect a slightly longer review period by Apple.

There are a lot of cool features and changes to the app.
Let's get started!

Round trips
If any of you ever tried to create a roundtrip with the app, you know how much time it can take. A very painstaking and user unfriendly process. From launching the app to having a new roundtrip is now only 2 clicks. Want to navigate it? Just another 2 extra clicks

Open the menu, click "round trip" and away you go.
You can adjust the distance, heading and curvature of the route. Easy as that!
If you really want to get into details, you can even avoid specific sections Talking about avoidance, let's move on to the next big change!

Avoid options
When generating a route, we allowed you to select the curvature of the route but that was all! We now implemented all avoid options as they are available on the routeplanner (website)!

When selecting the fastest route, the only available avoid options are:

Highways
Ferries
Tolls

This because those options are also available within HERE. Nice detail: we save your preference for these 3 options so that we can automatically choose the avoid settings like you did the last time
When switching to another curvature setting (not the fastest), we have defined certain presets of avoid options. You are free to alter them. For these curvature options the following extra avoid options are available:

Cities
Main roads
Residential areas

When starting the navigation with the fastest routing options, you will use the default navigation from HERE where you can (again) set (different) avoid options. If you start navigation from any curvy (not fastest) routing setting, you will start the HERE track navigation!

For track navigation, no avoid options are available.

When you create a route in the online routeplanner and set different avoid options, these are now honoured by the app! You can choose to turn them on / off before starting the navigation but this won't effect the route as saved online in the routeplanner.
It doesn't even matter if the route has been made in HERE / TomTom or OSM! The app will respect your settings as long as it knows what is means. For example: the OSM avoid cities option for routes won't work in the app when starting that route. If the avoid option exists for the HERE map in the routeplanner, the app knows what to do with it.

Layout improvements
A bit of a continuous detail but none the less important! We have again improved the new menu to make sure the user experience keeps improving.

We also split the Navigation settings menu into multiple screens to give it a cleaner look.

Offline maps
The biggest issue was that it was unclear what regions were downloaded.

We fixed this by adding a little check mark in front of the downloaded regions. When deleting a region we now ask you to confirm this. Further improvements to the general stability / download progress insights will be tackled in another update.

Favorites
People were quite sad they couldn't save their current location as favorite while navigating. This has now been added to the menu!

Besides that, we now also ask you to confirm the removal of a favorite. The ability to change the name of favorites from within the app will be added later.

Satellite maps
For those who want to know more about the terrain they are driving through, we added a new map layer: satellite maps

Especially for the (occasional) offroad rider we expect this to be a nice addition.

Note: these maps are not downloaded offline with the "offline maps". You will always need internet for these maps and data usage will be higher given the higher level of detail

Fixed camera mode
A cool new camera mode has been added! Tap the compass to cycle between the default dynamic zooming mode or the fixed camera mode. The dynamic mode is exactly how you know it, the fixed mode keeps north up and uses a fixed zoom level. For now you cannot change the zoom but that will be added!

Minor changes

Navigation menu can now be closed by tapping on the map
Long pressing the compass focusses the entire route

Bluetooth controller updates

Zoom in now possible with '='
Zooming in or out will keep the camera following your location using the described fixed camera behavior.

CarPlay
There it is ladies & gentlemen! The first version of CarPlay.
Thanks a lot to Joost for being the sole person responsible for developing this project. The foundation is amazing and we will be able to add a lot of cool new CarPlay features in the upcoming updates.

Crucial about this first Beta release of CarPlay is that all features need to be started using your phone. Do you want to navigatie a route / to a favorite location / a roundtour etc.. just do this on your phone while CarPlay is connected. Once you click "Start" (like you would normally start the navigation) - it will also start in CarPlay

When opening your route overview in HERE, you can also select an alternative route from CarPlay! Starting the actual Navigation will show the instructions etc in CarPlay.

Within CarPlay you can fit the route to the screen and pan around like you would want to

You can also use the app in CarPlay dashboard view! This is something the current "MRA Navigation" app doesn't support at all.

From the dashboard view some extra features are already available! You can quickly load your last route and start / cancel the navigation of a route.

Now it is very important that all testers understand that this early Beta of CarPlay. This means that a lot of features are still missing. Please don't waste your own time by suggesting that navigating to a favorite location or showing a route list is a crucial feature. We know!

Lastly there are some important issues with regards to CarPlay that we already know about (these will be addressed in a future update):

MyRoute-app Mobile needs to be launched or in the background before connecting CarPlay
Start CarPlay while on the home screen (the one shown when launching the app )
CarPlay is only in English
Maneuvers & voice instructions can be slightly delayed (as compared to your phone) and sometimes show an incorrect (read: previous) maneuver
Lane instructions are missing
Maneuver icons for the next maneuver can be too small

We are very curious about your feedback! Hope you all enjoy this massive update

Best from us at MRA!

Dave J 0

Great work. Looking forward to trying this new version.

Bart De Medts

@Corjan-Meijerink great work!

Dae 0

@Corjan-Meijerink

Well done Corjan. Looking forward to getting this version installed.

Quick question on how CarPlay works. I open the app on my phone, I then start my bike so CarPlay starts. I then find my route on my phone and hit start navigating. CarPlay then starts showing navigation instructions. What happens when I stop for fuel mid route (or I stall the bike) which restarts my CarPlay display?

Corjan Meijerink

@Dae-0 I’m pretty sure you would need to restart the navigation on your phone

Ronni

What can i say ?

@Corjan-Meijerink said in New Beta! (v3.2.10) CarPlay, roundtrips and much more:

Round trips
Avoid options
Layout improvements
Offline maps
Favorites
Satellite maps
Fixed camera mode
Minor changes
Bluetooth controller updates
CarPlay

UNBELIAVABLE!!!

Damn good work!!!

Thx
Ronni

Stanisław

Thank you for the news, especially the new "avoid" options seem exciting! Perhaps it will be possible to get something similar to Tomtom's "ecological" route, which is my favourite.

Edwin_M

Can't wait to get access to test

Lluis Arasanz

@Corjan-Meijerink

Great Work!!! I can't wait to test all new features added.

Thank's a lot and keep pushing!!!

Bart De Medts

Patience is a great virtue

Lluis Arasanz

@Bart-DM I know

Corjan Meijerink

It wouldn’t feel special without a little waiting right?

Lluis Arasanz

@Corjan-Meijerink

Yes... I can wait, but... very nervous to check all new things!

Great team doing "Next". I see that you love what you do.

Keep pushing!

Bart De Medts

@Corjan-Meijerink

Bart De Medts

@Corjan-Meijerink saying the speedometer is missing in CarPlay is such an example of wasting time I assume?

Steve Lynch

@Corjan-Meijerink

Legendary work by the dev team.

Corjan Meijerink

@Bart-DM hahaha, smart thinking

We really are aware that a lot of stuff is missing. We could take another 1.5 weeks of adding that but then you’d all need to wait. Didn’t want to do that

All the obvious things will be added for sure over the upcoming updates! Do however feel free to share suggestions. I’m just stating the above to prevent 100 suggestions about the same obvious missing features

Corjan Meijerink

Thanks all for the kind words from you as community. Especially thankful for the amazing work put in by Joost he really is the beating heart of CarPlay

For all the Android people: we will now also start with Android Auto development, finally! and expect that somewhere around (middle) May.

Tim Thompson

@Corjan-Meijerink May? We got to wait until may!?

Corjan Meijerink

@Tim-Thompson yes That really is only ~5 weeks away. We are moving mountains here and creating the best app you can imagine for route navigation. We also want to get this right!