Kind of terrifying since I use maps pretty much exclusively for places I haven’t been to yet, so I’m not totally unfamiliar when I go there
Gotta get a quest to drop a POI out there
You could make it a “mode” of sorts. Like a map overlay that will temporarily cover everything you havent been to.
This would actually encourage me to explore new areas of my city.
I’ve been doing exactly that with an app called Fog of World.
5 years of progress so far.
$30 👀 I’d need a lot of convincing…
Oh I got it on sale I think. But it’s worth it to me tbh, for sentimental value.
C$40 😵💫
€25
25.- chf as well. Which surprises me a lot.
Poor Bumgarians just joining the zone :(
What?
25.- chf?
It’s actually cheaper over here?
In the last 5 years, I’ve left my state one time that I remember
Holy shit. Even in my own country I’d be miserable. If I were American I’d probably have punched my ticket after 5 years in one state.
Depends on the state tbh. Texas is like the size of France. There’s a lot of places to go even within that state and varied geography and climate.
You’ve been through my little town :)
This may be a newb question… but, how you do dat?
As in, how do you pull all of your gps data out of google maps?
This app uses it’s own tracking. But supposedly there’s way to export your Google Location history into a standard format like KML or GPX which Fog of World can import.
Do you drive for work?
I used to be a trucker yeah. The lines in Canada and some of the northeast/Florida personal trips though
What about Streetcomplete? You explore and help others at the same time…
Pikmin Bloom does exactly this
You should have to fill it in by climbing a big tower
Alain Robert way ahead of us all on that one!
And then not google.
someone should make PR in CoMaps or OwnTracks for this feature
Please add fast travel for places you’ve been in the next patch
Like a train station?
Like a train station?
Honestly, I’d be fine with a fast travel sign post as long as worked as intended.
Honestly, I’d rather have them remove all timed quests. Those are the ones that suck the enjoyment out of my travel experiences.
Anyone aware of an offline local alternative to https://fogofworld.app/ ?
There was some confusion regarding what I meant by “offline”.
Offline meant off the internet. What I actualy meant, was that I can log my gps coordinates, cool. But I’d love a geographic map app that would be able to display those in a “fog of war” styled map, without internet connection.
I was under the impression that fog of world was collecting users’ data. Another user suggested the possibility of opting out. That’d be great. A fully open source android implementation of the concept would be better, but hey, I have work tomorrow…
Dawarich has support for this. Be aware it is under very active development and has semi-frequent breaking changes though (No data loss, just manual steps to upgrade).
For example, here’s my recent trip to Austin for the Counter-Strike Major:
And with regular routing:
It technically works offline because you can record your location and load it afterwards, but I use it by ingesting my location that is tracked by Home Assistant
Hey, exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, and sorry for the late reply.
The github link tells me access denied
Hmmm, it works for me. Here’s the raw link in case it helps: https://github.com/Freika/dawarich
How do you expect to get positional tracking while being offline?
Why would you need an Internet connection to use GPS?
I didn’t say you need internet connection. But you do need a satellite uplink. So, I wouldn’t call that offline. Clearly, many others do so maybe I’m wrong.
Nah, GPS isn’t a two-way thing. There’s no way for the GPS system to track devices.
Your phone figures out where itself is using the satellites as markers, the phone doesn’t emit any signals for this. It’s offline.
Basically the way it works is GPS satellites broadcast a very accurate time signal, (and occasionally data about the satellites exact orbit). Your phone sees this and uses signals from at least four satellites to find it’s location. It does this by measuring the delay in the signal between them. (Due to the speed of light, each signal will be delayed slightly). Knowing the delay in the signal you will know how far away you are from the satellite, and knowing the exact time along with it’s orbit info will tell you where exactly the satellite is. But knowing that you’re 13,000mi away from a satellite doesn’t help much. But then if you look at the other signals you can see you’re 16,000mi from another satellite, and so on which when you use 4 satellites will leave you with one possible spot you can be.
Jaw drop moment for me… I did not know that.
I’d have probably expected that your phone automatically sends the device ID, but that’s of course not necessary.
Is this what people think? That you need an internet connection tion to use GPS?
Man not everyone had a moment in their lives to stop and think about it. And it wasn’t taught in school. No need to act condescending.
You’re inferring a tone where there isn’t one.
I was asking if this is a common misconception as I had assumed the userbase here was generally pretty tech savvy, and confusing GPS with internet seemed particularly strange.
That’s what I thought. I figured things like the original garmins had a quantity unlimited but very narrowly usable data plan, like old kindles. I did know that gps was invented before the internet was widespread, but I figured that today it was like fax machines, where the vast majority don’t actually have a landline connection anymore and use the internet instead.
Based on this comment section, I gathered that it was something else, but still didn’t expect it to be fucking radio.
Hey don’t feel dumb. There’s a billion things the smartest person on the planet doesn’t know.
It’s a pretty clever system honestly, I found it fascinating.
I don’t feel dumb, lol. It’s very far from my areas of interest. I’m sure I’ve got more incorrect opinions about all sorts of fields I don’t think much about. The important thing is, I know how to research.
You also didn’t open with “how do you expect it to work” without actually knowing how it works.
I wouldn’t call a satellite uplink “offline”.
There is no “uplink”, eg transmission of data from the client back to the satellite.
Navsats and OpenStreetMaps?
A GNSS.
GPS via Satellites is offline! All satellites do(*) is transmit down to the Earth’s surface. Those signals will exist whether there’s a receiver there (ie. Your phone) or not. A GPS works by detecting those signals (ideally it will get at least 4 different ones for best accuracy) and calculating your location by triangulating it based on the signals (**). No upload on your end is required, it’s very similar to how radio works.
(*) As in, all they need to do is this. Specific satellites have different features for different jobs and specs. But all they have to do to make GPS work is transmit.
(**) I mean “triangulate” as in the principle of triangulation, as in being able to determine the geography of a point via the topology of it to other known points. It’s not actual triangulation with satellites because a fourth one acts as a correction factor – we’re dealing with signals going the speed of light after all. But that isn’t important for whether or not GPS needs to upload anything to work – it doesn’t.
Fog Of World really isn’t so bad. For some reason it makes you back up to Dropbox or Onedrive but I suppose you could just not hook them up and keep it all offline. It’s better than handing your data to some random company, I doubt Dropbox/Microsoft are going to analyze some random app’s data like this to track you.
I was under the impression that fog of world had a sort of ranking/competition where they would gather and compare maps of users. Can you opt-out of them getting your data, yet having the cool map display your exploration?
Had that (for OpenStreetMap) on my long list of project ideas, including quests you could take to some random monuments. Maybe one day.
Combine that with Street Complete and you have a game
There is an app of fdroid and google play called street complete. Its basically quests to fill in local missing data on openstreet map
You have reminded me that StreetComplete exists. I used to use it a while back, but for the last few years, I lived in an area that was already pretty thoroughly mapped. However, I would wager that where I live now is more sparsely documented; I’ve only recently moved here, and StreetComplete could be a nice way to become more settled.
Street complete is great for learning a new area, and there are always things to update. A business changed or whatever
Had that (for OpenStreetMap) on my long list of project ideas
haha, same. Ok, I kick it from my list and you do it.
I expect contributions!
If you’d write it with the 1 programming language I’m good at, I promise to do at least 1 pull request. 😉
Deal. Need to first finish one large project before committing to something new again.
I would absolutely love that. Fuck fast travel, let me explore!
same,
would be nice to see where you have exploded,
wonder if google has an API to get that info from your location history and make a web app that shows you how much you’ve explored
Dawarich is self-hosted, foss, and lets you track your location history and import from Google or a GPX file, and also you can use the OwnTracks app and connect to it to automatically sync.
would be nice to see where you have exploded,
I don’t think it would be nice to see where people exploded, to be honest.
A map that only knows my home PC, work PC, and the 2 routes in-between?
What else would you need it for?
I already know the 2 routes.
like i need to tell google more about me
Doesn’t need to be made by Google. It could be self hosted. Be the change you want to see in the world 😉
it IS self-hosted. Look up Dawarich.
you can request your data from Google (not sure if there’s an api), and use that data to make you own map
Location data is one of the things that you can export through Google takeout , I believe — though I’m not sure what format that would come in.
I don’t imagine it would be too hard for a dedicated nerd who is procrastinating other work to write a thing to parse that data and view it in a map based on something more open, like Openstreetmaps.
i know you can get the data through Google takout. but if there’s an api, it would be more user friendly and you could make an app
Fog of World has existed for a long time
Does that work without gsf/google maps?
How do you add this to the Google Maps Android app?
Does this exist as Open Source with OSM instead of Google?
Yes
Do you have a document or site to reference?
Check the comment from a bit under in the post : dawarich looks promising !
Ah, thanks
I guarantee Google already has a fog of war map of every place you’ve ever been
I doubt it but I’m willing to play. How?
I want that
OK, let me get this correct. The idea is to make the map not show places you have not been, the map that one uses to tell you how to get to places you have not yet been?
Am I missing something here, do people use google maps to go to place they have been already? Why?
traffic conditions
That has also kinda confused me, but might be my area. Does the traffic conditions change your route? does it stop you from going?
There are like 3 different routes that make sense for me to get home from work, depending on where there’s traffic
Ah, here the map data is never that quick. Its tells me there is traffic in an area normally like 2 hours after it is relevant.
Wow that’s crazy. In the UK Apple Maps and probably others will offer to re-route me mid trip if it finds a faster route. Plus is insanely accurate if I leave home at 06:45 for a 39 mile trip it will say arrive 07:56 and sure enough I’m usually within a few mins.
There are 2 missing streets (as in they exist and I drive on them often) within a 1/2 block of my house and about half the speed limits in my area are just wrong (causing poor routing in weird ways). I have also had it off by 20 or more min on a few trips (also likely due to the bad speed limits). Other issues like u-turning to your destination (mapquest days flashbacks) due to I think just not having any info on where entrances to parking lots are.
I literally ignore it when it tries to re route me.
Like the other guy said. I also have 3 viable routes to work so I change depending on traffic and some of those routes have their own variations.
I live close to a ring motorway so I can get on to work and drive east or west and there is a two mile difference over 40 miles. Or I can take the road route and save a lot of stop start on the motorway and takes a little longer but is less miles.
I guess it is dependent on how much of a shit google gives for your area. Around here, I think the last time they took any data was 10 ish years ago.
Edit: Just checked my house, May 2013 was the last update on my street.
Traffic estimates don’t depend on when they last visited your street. They actually harvest that data from Android and other Google maps (and Waze) users speeds on the road in near real-time. So if you have people on your road chances are Google can tell how fast roughly half of them are going and algorithmically determine if that’s on foot, bike, car, etc to calculate traffic estimates.
Yes, it is real time tracking. But it still is wrong in my area.
Good thing its not my mess to fix.
some people are dogshit with directions, or it’s a place they went once.
People are that bad with 3d space? Really?
Should we be concerned?
I think maps can be used for other stuff than just navigating. You’re quite right that this would be useless for actually navigating (which is probably the main purpose of using a map or other navigation software), but it could be a fun concept for looking back on things.
I don’t use Google stuff as much nowadays, so they might have gotten rid of it (knowing Google, I wouldn’t be surprised), but I remember that one of the sections within the Google maps app was a “Timeline” section. I used that section a few times to check whether I actually went to a particular appointment that was scheduled a month or so prior, or to check which restaurant I ate at when I was last in [city]. I also found it fun to look at the overview of things, like being able to see the pins corresponding to the silly road trip I took with friends a few years ago. It’s nice to look back every now and then.
I have some anxiety just thinking about going though my own recorded position from years ago. Like I know they are collecting it, but that is too much.
