Feature suggestion - route decision points
-
Practical example - friends are planning a long route out. Reality is we'd like to place one or more "decision points" on the route where we can decide to take one of two paths. This might be because of running behind schedule, or unsure of personal preferences, or we won't know of a certain state of affairs until the day (whether a colleague is joining us or not, for example, or whether an event is taking place).
At the moment, you'd create multiple copies of the route and if the situation changes, load one of the alternatives (or just let the navigation find you an alternative path to your destination if, for example, you're running out of time).
It would be cool if we could pre-set "decision points" in a route, where an option for an alternative to the original defined route could be prompted to the user. No input, then the route continues. But the user may choose an alternative route if they wish (a simple "Do you want to choose alternative route XYZ?" prompt, times out after 30 seconds), in which case it's loaded and followed from that point.
I am guessing defining multiple tracks in a single route is going to be problematic from a software architecture perspective, but even if it's just allowing a switch to another route based on location on the current one, that would suffice.
You could even do some funky, cool things like "if behind schedule by more than X minutes, prompt user for alternative route 2" but... well... we might be getting ahead of ourselves
-
@Dan-Howell Taking route planning to another level, I love it but I can see the software developers reaching for their headache tablets when they read this
-
Indeed. The way my friend (who introduced me to this app the other day, as we're planning a ride out this weekend and he suggested we use it) explained MyRouteApp to me was that the devs were sick and tired of the stagnated approach to route planning and guidance by other providers, and wanted to break the mould and do something truly powerful and different. Hopefully they can achieve that!
-
Hi Dan,
I think these are some really cool suggestions that we'll definitly look into. We've discussed many amazing new features in the past but the reality is that a lot of those features depend on adoptability bad other brands. In this specific context I'm 100% certain that with decision points baked into a route every Garmin, TomTom and vehicle-bound navigation out there will at best be unable to read the route and at worst will malfunction. (please do inform me if there's devices out there that support this kind of behavior)
Of course, that doesn't mean that something like this can't be part of a longer roadmap. Thank you for providing this inspiration.
-
I think making "decision-points" in the form of "if X then load route Y" is not extremely difficult in a programmatic way. More difficult will it be to streamline that operation off-line. What if my decision-point wants to load route Y but my internet connection is intermittent? The load of Route X would need to automatically load Route Y too for example. And there will be many more unforeseen situations to take into account.
But it is still a cool suggestion, and certainly one that would make MRA even more unique then it already is!
-
@Timo-Martosatiman-MRA said in Feature suggestion - route decision points:
Hi Dan,
I think these are some really cool suggestions that we'll definitly look into. We've discussed many amazing new features in the past but the reality is that a lot of those features depend on adoptability bad other brands. In this specific context I'm 100% certain that with decision points baked into a route every Garmin, TomTom and vehicle-bound navigation out there will at best be unable to read the route and at worst will malfunction. (please do inform me if there's devices out there that support this kind of behavior)
Of course, that doesn't mean that something like this can't be part of a longer roadmap. Thank you for providing this inspiration.
Hi Timo, totally understandable. Any plans for your own nav feature in the mobile app, as I tend to use my phone for all bike navigation anyway (google maps at the moment)....? Maybe that's an option.
-
There's an official MyRoute-app Navigation app as a standalone alternative to traditional Satnavs. Look for "MyRoute-app Navigation" in your app store. Since you're still in your trial you should be able to use that right away.
-
We're planning on using it this weekend coming
hence my trial.
In that case, features like this, that won't migrate to hardware platforms out of your control, are a nice "power user" feature for users of your app only... I would find it perfectly acceptable that such cool features were only available on your app -
Aha, thank you for clearing that up. Anyway, we'd definitly feel more confident in releasing features specifically for our own platform if MRA reaches a level of recognition and adoptability by other brands that such a move would not alienate the majority of our current audience. Here's to that happening.
