Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Should this be a map or 500 maps?

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 115 posts

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#41

Post by leeoniya »

jorisboris wrote: post #29
nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

I’m still looking for a map which let me optimize for “stopping as little as possible” which in practice means avoiding traffic jams and traffic lights. I notice this makes me drive more relax, and especially with a baby it’s way easier to keep the baby asleep

or "fewest turns".

i would rather drive an extra straight 0.25 miles down a major road than to zig-zag through tiny side streets while trying to carefully pay attention to unfamiliar street names and/or constant nav app directions.

i've had google maps instruct me to take four or five additional turns to save a couple hundred yards of driving.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#42

Post by arsome »

nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

Even when driving the best Google maps can do is avoid highways. OsmAnd is great but it doesn't solve the routing issue to my knowledge. If you know of something that solves that one please let me know.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#43

Post by 12907835202 »

nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

The biggest thing for me with maps is the refusal to allow multiple tabs on phone.

If you're the passenger on a road trip and doing the navigation you're unable to use maps to make plans for tonight or tomorrow.

Okay the driver could be nav, but now they also need to be the music, and everytime you the passenger wants to use it to look for petrol on route or change music you have to ask their code or hold it up to their face. Plus now you see all their notifications.

Even without being on a road trip, on a desktop i'd be making plans in multiple tabs before making a decision. On a phone it's a nightmare when it could be so easy.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#44

Post by dataflow »

codetrotter wrote: post #39
dataflow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another This might be a computational cost thing. Modern routing algorithms preprocess the graph to find the optimal route orders of magnitude faster than you normally would without preprocessing. If you let each person customize the graph then such queries would be much more costly. Then again, I'm sure there are lots of other complications already and that most users woul…

Hire some game devs that have worked on path finding in AAA games. They will find a way to partially pre process the map data in such a way that on-device computation can then let the user pick and choose what roads to favor and what roads to exclude. And as an added bonus they’ll be unrelentingly optimizing your map application to the point where the UI will run at 144 Hz ;)

Game routing is not remotely similar to real world routing. Neither in scale, nor in other aspects like road traffic or incorporation of human preferences.

In any case, I'm not suggesting it's impossible, just costlier than people imagine when they ask for the feature.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#45

Post by poloniculmov »

jorisboris wrote: post #29
nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

I’m still looking for a map which let me optimize for “stopping as little as possible” which in practice means avoiding traffic jams and traffic lights. I notice this makes me drive more relax, and especially with a baby it’s way easier to keep the baby asleep

Waze sort-of does this, it tries to keep you moving by taking lots of left turns and side streets. I hate it :).

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#46

Post by navane »

aa-jv wrote: post #38
eCa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OsmAnd is awesome, I use it especially when walking in new cities. For cycling though, I’m a happy user of cycle.travel[1]. [1] https://cycle.travel/map

>walking in new cities I do enjoy digital life, but you know what else rocks, apropos walking in new cities[0]? Custom maps, printed. Its fun to look at the little piles of maps I've made for myself over the years, from Frome to Rome, Berlin to Pristine .. In fact, I think I prefer printed maps over digital, for personal adventure/navigation needs. ([0] Disclaimer: Got navionics and predict wind running on multiple t…

There's a castle in France, near Dijon, in which one wall, about eight meters high and five wide, is covered with a detailed map of all the area that belonged to that castle at one point in time. It was so detailed you had to stand close to it, two or three feet, to read it. I have never seen so much information in one map.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#47

Post by moomoo11 »

dataflow wrote: post #34
nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

> It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another This might be a computational cost thing. Modern routing algorithms preprocess the graph to find the optimal route orders of magnitude faster than you normally would without preprocessing. If you let each person customize the graph then such queries would be much more costly. Then again, I'm sure there are lots of other complications already and that most users woul…

Those overrides could be stored locally and the maps service could still return the same optimized graph. The client device can then swap out and override it and do the calculation on device.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#48

Post by wiredfool »

eCa wrote: post #22
nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

OsmAnd is awesome, I use it especially when walking in new cities. For cycling though, I’m a happy user of cycle.travel[1]. [1] https://cycle.travel/map

My experience of cycle.travel is pretty good -- it finds routes over small roads that I've already chosen in the past when I look locally.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#49

Post by PoignardAzur »

codetrotter wrote: post #39
dataflow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another This might be a computational cost thing. Modern routing algorithms preprocess the graph to find the optimal route orders of magnitude faster than you normally would without preprocessing. If you let each person customize the graph then such queries would be much more costly. Then again, I'm sure there are lots of other complications already and that most users woul…

Hire some game devs that have worked on path finding in AAA games. They will find a way to partially pre process the map data in such a way that on-device computation can then let the user pick and choose what roads to favor and what roads to exclude. And as an added bonus they’ll be unrelentingly optimizing your map application to the point where the UI will run at 144 Hz ;)

> Hire some game devs that have worked on path finding in AAA games.

I think you're seriously overestimating how many AAA games do any kind of fancy pathfinding beyond "just use A*".

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#50

Post by NeoTar »

netsharc wrote: post #18
nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

A crowdsourced map with a collection of "favorite routes" would be an interesting idea, although some people (including me) hate trodding down beaten paths. I suppose these are mostly on websites/specialized apps, eg. for hikers.

Strava has a global heat-map for running, cycling etc. although I believe it is a subscription-only feature. There is also your personal heat-map which is cool to see if you use the app enough.
Post reply on HN