Custom Maps 1.5 beta 1 has been released to Play Store

[Marko Teittinen]

Hello all Custom Maps users!

I have just released Custom Maps 1.5 beta 1 version to Play Store. You should be able to update soon.

This first beta release has very few significant user facing updates. The main reason for this first beta version is to migrate the code to newer APIs.

The app no longer supports any devices running Android version older than 4.4 (KitKat). If you install it from scratch, it will also request the permissions it needs at run time. This version still cannot actually run without getting those permissions, so the migration to requested permissions is not complete. My plan is to eventually allow map creation without requiring access to location. However, without access to user location, displaying the maps is not really that useful.

Also, the Google Map used in the map image alignment process is now accessed through the more modern API v2. Unfortunately Google Maps API v2 does not support custom map overlays well, and when you scroll the map in preview mode, you will notice that the overlaid map image trails the Google base map a bit, but settles correctly once the motion stops. It may not be possible to fix that issue even for final launch version. The new Maps API allows now toggling the Google Map mode between road map, satellite view, and terrain view. Previously terrain view was not available.

The app has got a minor facelift in the form of getting colored title bars and light colored backgrounds for the screens. The tiepoints are even added using a new "material-like" round plus-button. The map tiepoint image snippets are 60% larger now giving you more context when you are aligning the tiepoints. And pinch zooming works now in all the map views.

Finally, the map alignment is now computed a bit more accurately than before. I created a new Matrix library that uses double precision values instead of normal "floats", so when the geo coordinate to image coordinate conversion is done, the results are slightly more accurate. I don't think it is really noticeable in vast majority of cases. But I had some map images where the geo coordinates assigned to some tiepoints ended up being displayed ~5 pixels off the assigned image point. Since many map images are not exact in the first place, I don't think that really mattered, but I am pleased that now those errors don't occur anymore.

That's pretty much all the new stuff that I can think at this point.

Let me know your thoughts about (and any problems with) the new version.

Happy mapping!

Marko Teittinen

Custom Maps developer

[Doug Schwartz]

It took me a while to figure out how to obtain the beta version, and for the benefit of others, you need to sign up here:

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.custommapsapp.android 

It fails to be able to share maps on Android 9, Xiaomi phone.  This fails from both the list of maps and from the dialogue when in a map.  Screenshots:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/jJw8jZVBDHD1AZ1u9    This works fine on Android 7, Samsung phone.

The much larger tiepoint image snippets are a nice feature.

Thanks,

 

Doug Schwartz

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