Streetcomplete: Map orientation: to direction of movement

[deerwood]

I tested the compass mode in StreetComplete ... does not work for me at all! Probably because my smartphone case has magnets to close/open it.

As I am using OsmAnd+ all the time for navigation, I know (and love) their "Map orientation: to direction of movement", obviously not influenced by nearby magnets. I believe it works by using GPS positions (with Kalman filter for smoothing).

With that one always sees what's ahead.

Please add this feature, it would help a lot e.g answering the cycleway quests. And it would be nice for users without compass.

[rugk]

That is basically https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/issues/988, I think.

Just seems you want to make it optional and not the default?

[ENT8R]

@deerwood Does it work but the map is always spinning around or does nothing happen if you enable the compass mode?

[deerwood]

@ENT8R it works essentially, display is rather "nervous", but my driving direction is most often not from bottom of screen to top, as wanted and usefull, but arbitrarily left/right, right/left, backwards (top/down) or any other direction. See the short video I made:

http://tugendbol.de/streetcomplete/Alster-20180430-215134.mp4

Note, that the compass symbol top right points to north correctly; probably because it is tied to the map and not showing my phones compass direction.

And yes, I think this feature request is similar #988, exept that I ALWAYS want to have that mode on, even with slow speeds. As said, because of my case using rather strong neodym magnets NO compass app works on my phone.

But OsmAnd+ demonstrates, that the GPS based direction detection works very well, max 20° deviation even when moving slow. They also dampen a lot more

[rugk]

Exactly the same as I requested I think, now. And AFAIK I did not actually limit it to slow speeds.

I just thought you want it optional as a setting.

[deerwood]

Just let's have 3 map orientations (as in OsmAnd):

• do not rotate (north always up)
• to compass
• to direction of movement (GPS based)

That way the user can choose what works best for him.

[ENT8R]

to direction of movement (GPS based)

So you want this to be calculated? I think this is too complicated and pretty difficult for low speeds like walking...

[deerwood]

@ENT8R yes, I want it to be calculatet. And I don't think it is too complicated, Googling for "calculate direction between two coordinates" gives plenty of results e.g. https://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html#bearing.

And in OsmAnd it works reliably, see the video I recorded below.

I walked slowly (4 km/h) the green path, starting left bottom in direction NNW, made a sharp turn to WSW, turned 180° and walked back the same path.

Video: http://tugendbol.de/streetcomplete/OsmAnd-GPSDirection-20180501-224848.mp4

Notice how stable the display is. This is, what I want to have in StreetComplete too.

[rugk]

That looks great. As such, that thing would be a great feature for StreetComplete.
And maybe one would anyway only enable it for higher moving speeds. If you want to suggest that, one could also name the setting "driving mode" or so.

And to get to that neodym magnet thing again: You always carry some with yourself? So that is your actual problem there?😁
Btw as you can see from my other issue, this also happens without them in some cases.
So an option would certainly be fine.

[westnordost]

Whoever is interested is free to experiment around with adding an option to switch to direction-of-movement mode. I am not sure if it can work out on low speeds and unstable GPS signal (the signal from the video is very stable).

[deerwood]

I'm not an app developer, but a user of SC. Thus it would be hard for me to help implementing this feature (I work with databeses, SQL, PHP, Perl etc). So I ask for help.

@rugk yes, the magnets are always with me; in my phones case;


And yes, that is the reason, why I can't use the compass mode in the first place. North is most often, where the case magnets tell the phone sensors.

[mahdi1234]

Would be great to add this to be usable when using bycicle ... I tried today, but app is bit cumbersome to use when on bike as map issues appear too late/unexpectedly and well I'm usually not in mood to turn around, but if I'd see it in advance, I would stop and make the change :)

[rugk]

@westnordost, if you don't want to implement this by yourself better mark it as "help wanted".

[westnordost]

Basically everything that has no high priority for me is.

On June 9, 2018 8:46:40 PM GMT+02:00, rugk [e-mail] wrote:

@westnordost, if you don't want to implement this by yourself better
mark it as "help wanted".

[zyphlar]

This seems to be working somewhat. My compass is always quite off but once I start moving the streetcomplete map seems to orient itself.

Edit: it seems I was just lucky or using a different app, it's actually still compass only and buggy as stated previously.

[lenod]

Just a remark on this topic: already in osmand the default is to use direction of movement. If I swap to compass mode, it gets about as shaky as in SC. I reckon compass is too sensitive for this usage.