New beta! 4.3.4 (369) - massive navigation improvements

Corjan Meijerink

Hi everyone!

It has been over a month since the 4.3.3 beta was started
The wait has been worth it for sure as we have been cracking our heads to improve the core of our app. Obviously it's nice to create fun features but after all we are a navigation app so it also makes sense to improve the navigation itself

A lot of fundamental aspects have been improved beyond imagination With this update, the app will become your default go-to navigation app! I am extremely proud of the work Joost and I have accomplished

Track navigation

Yes, it existed. With that, most was said.
Generate a scenic route or roundtour and away you go!
Diverting from the route or losing an internet connection would result in major issues

Now not anymore!

Track navigation works completely offline! When you go offline (either by choice or chance) the track navigation will continue working and recalculating! There might be minor differences compared to the online calculation but you are warned about that. Besides that, the original calculation will always remain visible

When you divert from your track, you will be redirected to the nearest logical point on the track. Yes, you might be sent back (depending on the location) but eventually (or immediately) you will be sent to another logical point on the track. Do you want to navigate to another section of the track? Just long press near the point where you want to rejoin!

Do you prefer navigating routes as track? Leave the already existing setting as you have it and away you go! This works similar to the GPX 1.2 format on your Garmin.

This means that even while navigating a track, you can skip your viapoints How amazing is that! Because you are navigating a track, shapingpoints are obviously not included. After skipping a viapoint, the fastest route is calculated to the next viapoint

When loading a track, you can now also change the setting to start from the nearest point on the track!

Long pressing near the point where you want to continue your track, also works before starting the navigation!

With this update, track navigation has been elevated to a level you could not have imagined. To be brutally honest, I have ridden a lot of routes as tracks and this might become my preferred method of navigating

Dynamic routing

Whenever you're going from A to B, you often get into traffic and a faster route becomes available. When you've enabled traffic optimisation we will now continuously search for faster routes!

After accepting the new route (which will happen when you don’t decide within a certain time) you will still see the original route.

Traffic warnings

For all types of navigation, it is interesting to know if you are driving into traffic or pass an accident. Now that we are introducing the dynamic routing as explained above, it makes a lot of sense to also warn about traffic related events on your route.

We will inform you about:

Traffic flow delays (significantly queued traffic)
Traffic incidents (accidents, closed lanes etc)
Road work (known construction)

You can choose the enabled categories yourself from the settings.
When enabled we will show an icon on the map, update the line to show the length of the delay and push a visual / audio warning.

If a faster alternative route is available, that will automatically be suggested too!

Destination reached

The amount of discussion on this topic on the forum has been incredible. Since the release of the app, people have different preferences regarding what the app should do when arriving at your destination.

Now the app will prompt to stop navigation after reaching it.
The default setting is that navigation will stop.
You can disable this behavior. In that case, when no choice is made, it will continue navigating as it currently does.

Updated settings

Check out all the updated settings and play around!
Most changes are within the functional settings

Automatic recalculations
Garmin people will love this too! You can now turn off the automatic recalculations. This will force you to drive back to your route by yourself We will show the original route (as we always do) and stop actively guiding you back.

Stop tracklog when stopping navigation
You can now make the tracklog pause when you stop navigating automatically. Saving is always up to you

Scaling improvement
Some people had very small icons / lines (especially on high resolution CarPlay / Android Auto devices) while using the app. We've improved the scaling behavior of these elements on different screen sizes. Besides that, in CP / AA the shown speed limit and current speed is increased in size for those big displays.

Visual settings CarPlay / Android Auto
When you disable some visual elements from the settings, these are now also applied in CP / AA. Relevant ones are:

Speed limit
Visual warnings
Lane instructions

Position indicator size
You can now also increase / decrease the size of the position indicator

Minor improvements

Better camera animations regarding tilt
Back button behavior Android on home screen
More waypoint information on skipping / resuming
Position indicator not off screen when rotating phone anymore in some situations
Improved shown original route data
Slight changes to automatic waypoint skip algorithm
Zoom level freedrive in CarPlay / Android Auto

What's next?
Well most of all, gathering your feedback and checking if everything works as expected. Besides that, the end of the year is approaching so not sure how much more massive things we will do before that
In this (and the last) updates we really try to focus on the core of the app. Previous updates had a lot of stability improvements and this one improves the navigational core of the app. My guess is, we will focus on any issues before releasing this and improving the stability further

Cheers,
Corjan

Bart De Medts

@Corjan-Meijerink great job, well done MRA-team!

Rob Verhoeff

@Corjan-Meijerink great job MRA team

RetiredWingMan

Just WOW! Looks like an incredible amount of work. Too bad my riding season is over with the arrival of winter. I'll try to do some testing in the car. Great work!

richtea999

This is why sensible people buys apps, not GPS hardware - the ability to improve and turn around those improvements in months, not years.

And, just as importantly, add or modify features because real users asked you to do it, not the 'marketing' department.

Good work Corjan, Joost.

Nick Carthew

Superb work as always #TeamMRA

Jörgen

@Corjan-Meijerink
Wow, you've been really busy the last month, well done.

Can you please explain what the difference is now when I choose a route to navigate or a track?

Hubert Thoring

@Corjan-Meijerink

Big throw and so many new things.

Thank you for that

CD130

Nice update, thank you!!

Question, I would like to pause the navigation (and the track) during, for example, a tank stop or a visit to a restaurant. I don’t want the MRA app to charge my battery unnecessarily during the break and keep hearing instructions coming out of my pocket. What is the best way to do that with the current app? Placing the app to the background is not enough, is it? So choose to stop navigation? That is very inconvenient, because you always have to restart the route. Or can that be done very quickly? Is a “pause navigation” button might be useful?

Hubert Thoring

@Corjan-Meijerink

Navigate route as track, this is the best solution incl. the new settings ..

Thank you, I'm very interested in testing it, but first in the car

Hubert Thoring

@Jörgen

To drive a planned route with via points now as a track with via points and to set the automatic recalculation to off beforehand. So the picture remains much clearer to stay on the planned path even if there are disturbances on the track.

This can now be done via the navigation settings / functions

Corjan Meijerink

@Jörgen not very much! The route calculation uses the individual waypoints and when placed correctly is the same as the track.

The track however really uses the data how the route originally created

The improvement is really to ensure that the navigation of any route or track you drive is perfect! A lot of users get a GPX file from tour operators which is a track. This then leads to unexpected results but not anymore!

Try it yourself and notice how it feels the same

Corjan Meijerink

@CD130 that’s easy: stop and resume is the way to go and works perfect

Nick Carthew

@Corjan-Meijerink I’m looking forward to testing Stop navigation on destination reached and Pause tracklog automatically a great addition to an already very capable navigation app.
I’m assuming that with these new features, I can put the bike away, go inside and take my bike gear off, make a coffee and then save the tracklog?
Whereas before, it always seemed like a rush to stop navigation and tracklog and then save.

Corjan Meijerink

@Nick-Carthew that’s entirely correct!
Do make sure the destination can actually be reached for it to stop. Otherwise it will still trigger when a recalculation happens extremely close to this destination

Dave J 0

@Corjan-Meijerink Really liking the changes but I have been trying some different settings with routes that I have to run as tracks. Where I have a circular route, the track is very different to the route. An example for this route and is similar to a number of these training routes I use for Advanced Riding with the same problem although this is probably the worst example:

As a route:

Waypoint order as expected:

Change to route as track:

The track display showing the start now at the end with nothing else (white planned route):

Waypoint order has now changed:

Not what I was expecting and thought I should highlight here.