New Beta! (v3.2.15) Android Auto!

Corjan Meijerink

The long awaited day is here
Ladies and babies, big children, little children, even the gentlemen - every single one of them, we present to you Android Auto!

The update will most likely be available at the end of today!

Android Auto
It has been promised to you long ago. The wait has been long and a lot of questions were asked about this. After almost every CarPlay related (or generic update) post on Facebook a response would be "when is Android Auto available?". That carried on for years
Today, Android Auto & MyRoute-app have finally joined in marriage.

What can you expect from this update?

An initial release which for the first time will be tested by a greater audience. Meaning that there are chances you will encounter an issue somewhere down the road
As with CarPlay, it's not finished yet. A lot of features are still missing (speed indicators, camera warnings, waypoint information etc...). We know! Now that both platforms have been released we can continue adding those features.
Important note: you must have the Beta opened on your phone when connecting to Android Auto. Launching the app from Android Auto when the app is completed closed doesn't work yet.

Have you read the above? Good!

We truly hope you are fascinated by finally having MyRoute-app available on Android Auto. We know it's not done yet and will continue adding features over the future weeks. Given the upcoming release and existing (more pressing) issues / requests we are not sure yet what the exact scope will be of this.

Landscape improvements
I'd personally like to thank @Dave-J-0, @Con-Hennekens & @StefanHummelink for their great contributions here: https://forum.myrouteapp.com/topic/4043/landscape-layout-suggestion
Thanks

Based on a fun weekend and some conversations with them, we've update the landscape UI in this update. For the full discussion, feel free to read that post. For now all you need to know: we've tried to improve the landscape experience yet again.

upcoming street is a little less wide
upcoming street can be hidden completely (go to Navigation Settings > Screen layout to configure this)
upcoming waypoint box moved to top right
added opacity to upcoming waypoint to ensure map / route behind can still be seen
speed indicators moved next to eta information
moved position indicator a little more back towards the center

In the original post, some future designs have also been shared. That really is for the future. We hope that at this stage you are even more happy with these designs implemented

Offline available routes (downloads)
When you do not have internet and you'd open "Routes" you would only see an error message. We've added a button allowing you to open your downloads. If you click "Last route" and don't have internet, you can also directly jump to your downloads.

When downloading a route, the "Make offline available" option is now the first one.

Yes, our ambition is to add full offline support (automatically) for all your routes & folders. This is however quite a lot of work and will be something for the future

Skip waypoint algorithm
In the last update we've added the feature to automatically skip waypoints. Thanks to your feedback we've made the following changes to the algorithm.

Waypoints more than 20km away will never be skipped automatically. This has been added because people enjoyed the "skip waypoint after x recalculations" but on long stretches you'd sometimes have a few recalculations resulting in undesired skips.
We improved the logic for selecting the new waypoint after triggering the auto-skip. In the previous version the algorithm would always skip a maximum of one waypoint. This was the safer option but also resulted in a very constrained algorithm. In this version, the algorithm will simply search for the next nearest waypoint when the auto-skip algorithm has been triggered

Minor issues fixed

Some setting screens could not be scrolled causing some settings to be unreachable in landscape mode
Changed the color of the route progress line
CarPlay: fixed issue where two positions would appear on the map after switching between apps
CarPlay: fixed issue where the route line & position would not be aligned properly on the screen

Looking forward to your feedback!

For those interested, tonight (20:00) we have a zoom meeting for Beta testers where we get to virtually meet each other. The meeting URL will be shared in the following post tonight: https://forum.myrouteapp.com/topic/4004/webinar-zoom-meeting

Best,
Team MRA

Jörgen

Wow, that looks like nice work. Again well done TEAM!!!

Con Hennekens

@Corjan-Meijerink said in New Beta! (v3.2.15) Android Auto!:

Haha the Friday-update on this Pseudo-Friday (due to the local Holiday tomorrow and the many people having a day off on Friday because of that). That's a blast!

n this version, the algorithm will simply search for the next nearest waypoint when the auto-skip algorithm has been triggered

Ooeh... Will the autoskip of e.g. wp5 cause the next wp to be 15 if 15 happens to be closest to wp5? I suspect a lot of problems with routes that have crossing routelines in that case...

For example this:

If I autoskip either 12 or 13, 49 will be the closest wp ahead in the route. But that would lead to skipping half the route. That cannot be the intended behavior.

Other updates and options look absolutely great. No update on the offline-map updates yet?

Corjan Meijerink

@Con-Hennekens said in New Beta! (v3.2.15) Android Auto!:

Ooeh... Will the autoskip of e.g. wp5 cause the next wp to be 15 if 15 happens to be closest to wp5? I suspect a lot of problems with routes that have crossing routelines in that case...

No definitely not! Good addition

next nearest waypoint

refers to the waypoint with actual route calculation taking the remaining waypoints into account

In the above image:

you pass waypoint 3
you continue straight (ignore 4 & 5)
you currently are at the black waypoint add icon
algorithm triggered
distance to 4 (from position) has length x
distance to 5 (from position) has length y which is shorter than x
distance to 6 (from position) has length z which is shorter than y
distance to 7 (from position) is longer! (not even visible on map)
then the algorithm will choose waypoint 6 as next waypoint.
it won't ever choose 8 as next one! Yes, that one has a shortest distance from the current position if you draw a straight line But we take the actual route calculation into account.

Hope that helps!
Great question. We are curious about the feedback.
After testing the experience is that this provides better results than the first iteration.

Bart De Medts

@Corjan-Meijerink thx 4 the update. Have a nice weekend!

Con Hennekens

@Corjan-Meijerink, Ahh! That's great! I am relieved about that
(your message and me adding the example crossed, but you understood exactly what I meant). Thanks!

Corjan Meijerink

@Con-Hennekens we sync well
Looking forward to the meeting tonight

Con Hennekens

@Corjan-Meijerink, Haha, yeas we do!
Still one question about the example I added above: Let's say at WP13 I decided to turn right, instead of left towards 14. Would the algorithm direct me to WP49 when I hit the route between 48 and 49?

Corjan Meijerink

@Con-Hennekens No for sure not!
The distance from your position to 14 would still be shorter than to 15 so it will most likely reroute you to 14 (unchanged)

If WP 14 would not exist, the following would happen (after recalculation passing 13):

position to 15 distance x
position to 16 distance y which is shorter (at least it seems to be)
position to 17 is shorter again
position to 18 is more!
rerouting to 17

If however any of those waypoints would be via points or the distance from recalculation to 15 would be greater than 20km the algorithm behavior would be different Also at least 2 recalculations need to take place before the algorithm may even start etc etc etc....

Con Hennekens

@Corjan-Meijerink, Great thinking!

Stefan Hummelink

@Corjan-Meijerink ooohhh a very promising algorithm! Can't wait to test it this sunday.

Next up: the notorious positional delay ? #Daretoask.

Corjan Meijerink

@StefanHummelink is it mentioned?
Status unchanged - internally we are working on some improvements but the core lies with HERE and we are still hoping they can improve the behaviour.

Bart De Medts

@Corjan-Meijerink Is it an idea to make the navigation arrow slightly forward by default? There are well-known navigation apps that do this

Corjan Meijerink

@Bart-DM smart boy This is exactly what we already do. One of the solutions we are working on internally is to move your location forward even more but that's not as easy as it may seem. You still want the position indicator to be on the road, take turns into consideration, account for speed etc

Stefan Hummelink

@Corjan-Meijerink said in New Beta! (v3.2.15) Android Auto!:

@StefanHummelink is it mentioned?
...still hoping they can improve the behaviour...

Ehhhhh ... Quite honestly do not know what to answer to this rather scary statement.

Back to the upside of this great update. ️

Corjan Meijerink

@StefanHummelink hahaha, no worries. It is top priority for us.
Yet, it's not that interesting for testing. Once fixed, it's fixed!
Other things require feedback and therefore move up in the release chain.

Koen VH

@Corjan-Meijerink Thanks again for this wonderfull update! The skip waypoint algoritme will be tested thoroughly

Frank 23

I can't update to the newest version. Last updates were successful. But the app doesn't give me the option to update this time

Oneplus Nord, android 12

Bart De Medts

@Corjan-Meijerink No one said it would be easy

Corjan Meijerink

@Frank-23

New Beta! (v3.2.15) Android Auto!:

The update will most likely be available at the end of today!

Let's give it a few more hours. iOS is available, Android is still processing.