7 ms·

Have you had any problems using downloaded maps in Gaia when there is no service?

tony_cannistra 4y ago
I work at Gaia, though not on the mobile dev side of things. We have an active ticket for this and are currently looking into the root cause -- you're not the only one who has experienced this issue, although it seems to be sporadic.
- julienchastang 4y ago
  I am glad to have stumbled upon a GaiaGPS developer. I would describe myself as a GaiaGPS power user (I have a pro subscription) and I have a love / hate relationship with the app. My main issue is that bugs and feature requests don’t get addressed and is starting to have the feel of Abandonware. Track cropping still has no undo and recently was also buggy — the crop would not “stick”. (I ended up hand editing the GeoJSON, something that created its own problems.) This is an essential feature that should work correctly especially when you drive away without finishing the track — something that I think happens to a lot of users. Also, track way points sporadically don’t seem to “attach” or “anchor” to tracks — they just end up free-floating some of the time. My broader concern is the acquisition by Outside Magazine is not going smoothly, they are not a tech company and the managers there probably are more concerned with the bottom line than maintaining a technically viable product.
  - DMell 4y ago
    >My broader concern is the acquisition by Outside Magazine is not going smoothly I'd be curious to know how this directly impacted Gaia development. It's a tool I rely on essentially every day in some pretty harsh environments so I second this concern.
    - tony_cannistra 4y ago
      I left a brief note on this in a reply to the parent comment, if you're interested.
  - kilolima 4y ago
    Isn't Gaia's business model to charge for access to the maps we've already paid for with our taxes (such as USGS topographic quads)? So one shouldn't have stellar expectations over their acquisition.
    - julienchastang 4y ago
      In addition to various GIS layers, they also have Nat Geo Trails Illustrated maps and IGN maps for France, both of which I have found immensely useful.
    - tony_cannistra 4y ago
      > charge for access to the maps we've already paid for with our taxes No one is gate-keeping these taxpayer-funded resources, which is sortof what you're implying here. It costs money to process, host, and deliver these taxpayer -funded maps to people, especially offline. If you're a legacy user of Gaia, I'd encourage you to give the app another shot. Originally Gaia was the best way to view USGS quads on your phone. Since then, we've invested a ton of resources and engineering into building a vector topographic map based in OpenStreetMap, which I think is a huge value add for backcountry users. We give that away for free. But if all you're looking for is USGS topos, I'd use Avenza.
      - ftkftk 4y ago
        I hadn't tried Gaia before today. Gave it a whirl and looks like a great tool for my backpacking trips. I am a paper map and compass kinda guy but this seems like a convenient addition, especially for trip planning. Mapped out the next boy scout troop hike in just a few minutes, the way routes snap to hiking trails is really nice. Thanks!
      - kilolima 4y ago
        ESRI and the USGS provide WMS tilesets of USGS topographic quads. So a generic WMS viewer capability with the ability to save cached tiles offline in Gaia could provide that functionality without incurring additional bandwidth costs. Except of course, users might prefer these maps to the in-house ones that you charge a subscription for. The subscription model has distorted the smartphone map app ecosystem, just like it has the rest of the software industry. For the record, OSM maps lack the detail and reliability of the legacy USGS 7.5 minute topographic quads. For that matter, the most recent USGS topographic maps are themselves almost as bad as OSM! For best coverage I would recommend the 1990s series or earlier. ( https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-do-us-topo-maps-differ-historical-usgs-topographic-maps https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-do-us-topo-maps-differ-histori... ) For Android, OSMAnd is good enough for navigation and Qfield can load any GIS vector or raster layer from a desktop QGIS project.
  - tony_cannistra 4y ago
    hey, I'm sorry that you've been experiencing that behavior, it sounds frustrating. I'm not the best person to help you with them, though -- I'm a geospatial data / cartography engineer. If you're willing to reach out to them, our support team can probably give you a hand, or at least document your issue to make it easier for us to fix. w.r.t the acquisition, we've seen some fairly dramatic highs and lows. The 20% layoff earlier this year was definitely the lowest low, but the whole org was affected, not just Gaia. On the flip side, we've been working really hard on developing a roadmap that centers on stabilising and enhancing the bedrock features that our users have come to expect, and that are sometimes less than perfect. This is something that Outside PM's have been really pushing on. I'm enthusiastic about that focus, because it's been sorely needed. The tl;dr is that the forces that have caused some of the user experience challenges of late were in play long before the Outside acqusition, and if anything Outside is providing the resources necessary for us to commit to fixing them.
- zmj 4y ago
  Happy Gaia user here, thanks for your work! The core topo functionality works great for me online or offline in RMNP and the surrounding area. One question if you're able to comment - what's up with the satellite snow coverage layers? I tried to use those to scout for a hike in October, but both most recent and cloudless were from 2021.
  - tony_cannistra 4y ago
    thanks, I am glad to hear it! I assume you're talking about our "fresh sat" layers -- in some places the recency of the imagery in those layers is unfortunately dependent on some rather stochastic factors. These factors are usually (but not always) correlated to location on the earth. We get the latest imagery taken from the satellites (Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8/9) nearly as soon as it's acquired, and then apply some quality filters to it which either accept the imagery for processing or reject it. It's entirely possible to get repeatedly unlucky in that regard, where for a given location no imagery that passes our quality filters has been taken for a long time. This especially happens a lot near the poles, or in very cloudy places. are you willing to share where you were looking that you experienced this issue?
    - zmj 4y ago
      Sure, it was in north central RMNP - the north slope of Fairchild Mountain and the saddle between Fairchild and Hagues Peak. I checked again and FreshSat has since been updated - 10/13 and 10/18 are the dates on the layer. Thanks for sharing the filtering process, that makes more sense how a long gap can occur.
mikestew 4y ago
Not parent commenter, but use Gaia offline maps on a regular basis (at least once a month). I do not recall ever having a problem with them. My consistent experience: no cell coverage, pull up Gaia, map is displayed.
DMell 4y ago
I personally have not but I know a couple of individuals that have.
carderne 4y ago
I’m a heavy Gaia user, always offline. I make sure to go on airplane mode and hard-reload the app, and it generally works great. If I have week signal, or don’t reload it, or anything like that, it gets confused and constantly freezes. The offline route creation is very iffy though.

I work at Gaia, though not on the mobile dev side of things. We have an active ticket for this and are currently looking into the root cause -- you're not the only one who has experienced this issue, although it seems to be sporadic.

julienchastang 4y ago
I am glad to have stumbled upon a GaiaGPS developer. I would describe myself as a GaiaGPS power user (I have a pro subscription) and I have a love / hate relationship with the app. My main issue is that bugs and feature requests don’t get addressed and is starting to have the feel of Abandonware. Track cropping still has no undo and recently was also buggy — the crop would not “stick”. (I ended up hand editing the GeoJSON, something that created its own problems.) This is an essential feature that should work correctly especially when you drive away without finishing the track — something that I think happens to a lot of users. Also, track way points sporadically don’t seem to “attach” or “anchor” to tracks — they just end up free-floating some of the time. My broader concern is the acquisition by Outside Magazine is not going smoothly, they are not a tech company and the managers there probably are more concerned with the bottom line than maintaining a technically viable product.
- DMell 4y ago
  >My broader concern is the acquisition by Outside Magazine is not going smoothly I'd be curious to know how this directly impacted Gaia development. It's a tool I rely on essentially every day in some pretty harsh environments so I second this concern.
  - tony_cannistra 4y ago
    I left a brief note on this in a reply to the parent comment, if you're interested.
- kilolima 4y ago
  Isn't Gaia's business model to charge for access to the maps we've already paid for with our taxes (such as USGS topographic quads)? So one shouldn't have stellar expectations over their acquisition.
  - julienchastang 4y ago
    In addition to various GIS layers, they also have Nat Geo Trails Illustrated maps and IGN maps for France, both of which I have found immensely useful.
  - tony_cannistra 4y ago
    > charge for access to the maps we've already paid for with our taxes No one is gate-keeping these taxpayer-funded resources, which is sortof what you're implying here. It costs money to process, host, and deliver these taxpayer -funded maps to people, especially offline. If you're a legacy user of Gaia, I'd encourage you to give the app another shot. Originally Gaia was the best way to view USGS quads on your phone. Since then, we've invested a ton of resources and engineering into building a vector topographic map based in OpenStreetMap, which I think is a huge value add for backcountry users. We give that away for free. But if all you're looking for is USGS topos, I'd use Avenza.
    - ftkftk 4y ago
      I hadn't tried Gaia before today. Gave it a whirl and looks like a great tool for my backpacking trips. I am a paper map and compass kinda guy but this seems like a convenient addition, especially for trip planning. Mapped out the next boy scout troop hike in just a few minutes, the way routes snap to hiking trails is really nice. Thanks!
    - kilolima 4y ago
      ESRI and the USGS provide WMS tilesets of USGS topographic quads. So a generic WMS viewer capability with the ability to save cached tiles offline in Gaia could provide that functionality without incurring additional bandwidth costs. Except of course, users might prefer these maps to the in-house ones that you charge a subscription for. The subscription model has distorted the smartphone map app ecosystem, just like it has the rest of the software industry. For the record, OSM maps lack the detail and reliability of the legacy USGS 7.5 minute topographic quads. For that matter, the most recent USGS topographic maps are themselves almost as bad as OSM! For best coverage I would recommend the 1990s series or earlier. ( https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-do-us-topo-maps-differ-historical-usgs-topographic-maps https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-do-us-topo-maps-differ-histori... ) For Android, OSMAnd is good enough for navigation and Qfield can load any GIS vector or raster layer from a desktop QGIS project.
- tony_cannistra 4y ago
  hey, I'm sorry that you've been experiencing that behavior, it sounds frustrating. I'm not the best person to help you with them, though -- I'm a geospatial data / cartography engineer. If you're willing to reach out to them, our support team can probably give you a hand, or at least document your issue to make it easier for us to fix. w.r.t the acquisition, we've seen some fairly dramatic highs and lows. The 20% layoff earlier this year was definitely the lowest low, but the whole org was affected, not just Gaia. On the flip side, we've been working really hard on developing a roadmap that centers on stabilising and enhancing the bedrock features that our users have come to expect, and that are sometimes less than perfect. This is something that Outside PM's have been really pushing on. I'm enthusiastic about that focus, because it's been sorely needed. The tl;dr is that the forces that have caused some of the user experience challenges of late were in play long before the Outside acqusition, and if anything Outside is providing the resources necessary for us to commit to fixing them.
zmj 4y ago
Happy Gaia user here, thanks for your work! The core topo functionality works great for me online or offline in RMNP and the surrounding area. One question if you're able to comment - what's up with the satellite snow coverage layers? I tried to use those to scout for a hike in October, but both most recent and cloudless were from 2021.
- tony_cannistra 4y ago
  thanks, I am glad to hear it! I assume you're talking about our "fresh sat" layers -- in some places the recency of the imagery in those layers is unfortunately dependent on some rather stochastic factors. These factors are usually (but not always) correlated to location on the earth. We get the latest imagery taken from the satellites (Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8/9) nearly as soon as it's acquired, and then apply some quality filters to it which either accept the imagery for processing or reject it. It's entirely possible to get repeatedly unlucky in that regard, where for a given location no imagery that passes our quality filters has been taken for a long time. This especially happens a lot near the poles, or in very cloudy places. are you willing to share where you were looking that you experienced this issue?
  - zmj 4y ago
    Sure, it was in north central RMNP - the north slope of Fairchild Mountain and the saddle between Fairchild and Hagues Peak. I checked again and FreshSat has since been updated - 10/13 and 10/18 are the dates on the layer. Thanks for sharing the filtering process, that makes more sense how a long gap can occur.

mikestew 4y ago

Not parent commenter, but use Gaia offline maps on a regular basis (at least once a month). I do not recall ever having a problem with them. My consistent experience: no cell coverage, pull up Gaia, map is displayed.

DMell 4y ago

I personally have not but I know a couple of individuals that have.

carderne 4y ago

I’m a heavy Gaia user, always offline. I make sure to go on airplane mode and hard-reload the app, and it generally works great. If I have week signal, or don’t reload it, or anything like that, it gets confused and constantly freezes. The offline route creation is very iffy though.