| Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
 | Written by mavg 48 months ago | |
| I'm under the impression that tracks display at a lower time resolution, i.e. the track lines are not smooth as anymore as before. A bit like as if most of trackpoints are ignored and only those sampled every minute or so are used to display tracks. Furthermore tracks no longer display at all at higher zoom levels. Did you change anything? If so, why? | ||
| Re: Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
 | Written by gregor 48 months ago | |
| I see the problem. You are right. I guess a bug sneaked in. It will be fixed early next week. Sorry for the inconvenience. | ||
| Re: Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
| Written by mavg 48 months ago | |
| Thanks for the information. | ||
| Re: Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
 | Written by ilmu 46 months ago | |
| Hi Gregor, I have this same problem now. Was the bug fixed? Thanks, ilmu | ||
| Re: Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
| Written by gregor 46 months ago | |
| This bug was fixed a while ago. I just forgot to update this thread. What you are seeing is probably a feature. Maps adjust track detail based on the zoom level. This is how TripTracker optimizes the performance of maps. If you zoom in you see more and more track detail. Because of performance limitations of browsers and the performance of Google Maps we needed to also limit the absolute number of track points displayed on the map to: IE6 - 1000 IE7 - 2500 Opera, Safari and Firefox - 10000 Google Earth also has a limit how many track points it can chew so we also needed to limit KML exports to 50000 track points. Note that the limit only applies to track points displayed on a map. Complete track is still used for geotagging. There is also a known bug in Google Maps where at some zoom levels the track disappears completely. With some workarounds we lowered the probability of this happening but it's still quite common when displaying really long tracks. We know how much dedication is needed to log the whole trip thoroughly like you do. Because of that we built an easter egg in TripTracker for our most dedicated TripTrackers. If you append string "TripTracker.net" to your user agent in your browser the track is displayed at higher resolution (50000). This way you can see how well the maps perform on your computer. I suggest using a good computer and Firefox 2 or Safari 3 when doing this. See this link how to modify user agent in Firefox: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1135/firefox_change_user_agents_access_content In Firefox you need to append the string to the "general.useragent.extra.firefox" (e.g. Firefox/2.0.0.12 TripTracker.net) so Google Maps still recognize the browser. With time we will probably increase the resolution of tracks displayed and continue working on the algorithm for selecting track points with most information. | ||
| Re: Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
| Written by ilmu 46 months ago | |
| Hi Gregor, Thanks for reply. I can certainly see a huge improvement when viewing with Firefox instead of IE. However, it appears that zooming in does not show more and more detail? Instead, it appears the track detail is adjusted for each track and it stays the same regardless of the zoom level? Regards, ilmu | ||
| Re: Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
| Written by gregor 46 months ago | |
| Hi Ilmu, I am afraid I don't know what you mean by adjusted for each track. If you zoom into a specific portion of a track like winding road you see that more you zoom in more accurately track follows the road on the satellite imagery. I hope this answers your question. | ||
| Re: Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
| Written by ilmu 46 months ago, edited by ilmu 46 months ago | |
| Basically I mean it doesn't work as you describe it should :) (and I agree it should work like that) What I mean is that it appears the track detail is adjusted to the maximum points for each browser(possibly for each track separately, if there are more than one?), and it is not changed dynamically with the zoom level. Have a look at this sample track I created http://triptracker.net/trip/3619/, zoom in very very close to the most southern end. You'll see there is a serpentine road. Firefox shows it much more accurately than IE. If it adjusted the detail level dynamically, they should appear the same if you zoom close enough, because there will be less than 1000 track points visible anyway. Hope this helps! BR, ilmu | ||
| Re: Resolution of GPS tracks | ||
| Written by gregor 46 months ago | |
| Ok. Now I know what you mean. :) You are right. As I said the browsers are limited to the absolute number of track points. E.g. IE JS engine unfortunately cannot chew more than a certain amount of track points on slower machines. You can play with changing the user agents and will quickly see the performance problems on some browsers. New generation browsers and also better computers will fix the problem eventually. | ||