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> GPS accuracy on cell phones just isn’t good enough. Is this true? Not good enough for what? They say further down that gaming and rideshare companies are sho

by wand3r 3y ago

> GPS accuracy on cell phones just isn’t good enough. Is this true? Not good enough for what? They say further down that gaming and rideshare companies are showing interest. So is that their customers? Embedding their technology into apps to better stalk 3rd party humans in the real world? This seems to an outsider like an insignificant problem that only applies to the least scrupulous companies, but maybe I don't understand.

deleted 3y ago
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lopis 3y ago
It really isn't. If you go to wilderness, away from phone signals and wifi networks, which are already used to improve accuracy and speed in the cities, GPS just isn't enough. But then again, gaming and rideshare companies only care about users in cities, so I'm not sure what their interests are.
- Kirby64 3y ago
  How is it not enough? Lock times are worse, sure, without aGPS but unless you're in the middle of a dense forest GPS should have no issue locking pretty much anywhere.
- tekla 3y ago
  What the hell are you talking about? GPS works just fine in 0 connection situations. I used it just fine in airplane mode and it got a fix within 10 meters.
throw0101c 3y ago
Japan launched their own satellites that have a high angle in the sky because of all the urban canyons that they have in major cities: > Instead, their ground traces are asymmetrical figure-8 patterns (analemmas), designed to ensure that one is almost directly overhead (elevation 60° or more) over Japan at all times. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-Zenith_Satellite_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-Zenith_Satellite_System This is also partly why more GPS signals (L2C, L5) were added: multiple signals at different frequencies from the same satellite allow for detecting atmospheric and multi-path issues: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_III#New_navigation_signals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_III#New_navigation_s... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Modernization_and_additional_GPS_signals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Modernization_and_...
seagor 3y ago
It depends on your use case if current mobile pne GPS is good enough. Rideshare companies lose millions of dollars because drivers end up on the wrong block, wrong side of street, wrong level of an airport and have to circle. Automotive companies very much want to use mobile phone GPS to enable collision avoidance with pedestrians and bikes but there are way too many false positives. Fitness tracking can be wildly inaccurate for tracking accurate paces and fastest known time (leaderboards). On our end we don't ever store or compute a user's location just the error correction. The user's device determines their location and they decide who they want to share that location with. There is definitely problems with unscrupulous companies aggregating data and that is the antithesis of what we've worked to architect. There are tons of wonderful use cases that don't require stalking people. Making drone delivery more resilient to outages. Better search and rescue capabilities. Under the hood there is a powerful relative distance metric that gives us an even more precise distance between devices. Which opens the door the interesting location based gaming mechanics - like playing a game of digital tag. Hope that helps provide some context and our philosophy on privacy.
ianburrell 3y ago
Especially when L5 signal is rolling out and significantly more accurate with multi-band chips.

by wand3r 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lopis 3y ago

It really isn't. If you go to wilderness, away from phone signals and wifi networks, which are already used to improve accuracy and speed in the cities, GPS just isn't enough. But then again, gaming and rideshare companies only care about users in cities, so I'm not sure what their interests are.

Kirby64 3y ago
How is it not enough? Lock times are worse, sure, without aGPS but unless you're in the middle of a dense forest GPS should have no issue locking pretty much anywhere.
tekla 3y ago
What the hell are you talking about? GPS works just fine in 0 connection situations. I used it just fine in airplane mode and it got a fix within 10 meters.

throw0101c 3y ago

Japan launched their own satellites that have a high angle in the sky because of all the urban canyons that they have in major cities: > Instead, their ground traces are asymmetrical figure-8 patterns (analemmas), designed to ensure that one is almost directly overhead (elevation 60° or more) over Japan at all times. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-Zenith_Satellite_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-Zenith_Satellite_System This is also partly why more GPS signals (L2C, L5) were added: multiple signals at different frequencies from the same satellite allow for detecting atmospheric and multi-path issues: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_III#New_navigation_signals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_III#New_navigation_s... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Modernization_and_additional_GPS_signals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Modernization_and_...

seagor 3y ago

It depends on your use case if current mobile pne GPS is good enough. Rideshare companies lose millions of dollars because drivers end up on the wrong block, wrong side of street, wrong level of an airport and have to circle. Automotive companies very much want to use mobile phone GPS to enable collision avoidance with pedestrians and bikes but there are way too many false positives. Fitness tracking can be wildly inaccurate for tracking accurate paces and fastest known time (leaderboards). On our end we don't ever store or compute a user's location just the error correction. The user's device determines their location and they decide who they want to share that location with. There is definitely problems with unscrupulous companies aggregating data and that is the antithesis of what we've worked to architect. There are tons of wonderful use cases that don't require stalking people. Making drone delivery more resilient to outages. Better search and rescue capabilities. Under the hood there is a powerful relative distance metric that gives us an even more precise distance between devices. Which opens the door the interesting location based gaming mechanics - like playing a game of digital tag. Hope that helps provide some context and our philosophy on privacy.

ianburrell 3y ago

Especially when L5 signal is rolling out and significantly more accurate with multi-band chips.