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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 relati

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
      I encourage you to check out some more modern OSM maps, like ours :)
- jmtulloss 4y ago
  This person has clearly not actually used Gaia in any significant capacity and is instead taking cheap shots with the hopes of getting upvotes from others that have not used Gaia. Gaia is far from perfect, but this characterization is so contrived that it can't be taken seriously.
  - kilolima 4y ago
    Gaia GPS on iphone requires a subscription to save USGS topographic tiles for offline use. That's an artificial limit on functionality using a publicly-funded resource.
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.

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
    I encourage you to check out some more modern OSM maps, like ours :)
jmtulloss 4y ago
This person has clearly not actually used Gaia in any significant capacity and is instead taking cheap shots with the hopes of getting upvotes from others that have not used Gaia. Gaia is far from perfect, but this characterization is so contrived that it can't be taken seriously.
- kilolima 4y ago
  Gaia GPS on iphone requires a subscription to save USGS topographic tiles for offline use. That's an artificial limit on functionality using a publicly-funded resource.

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.