Online/Live map

[thebruce0]

A few other points playing around... lots to take in

1. Love the speed of loading new caches. That's a huge plus, IMO.

2. If loading from the map center and there's an overlap of already-loaded caches, does it re-load those and count towards the daily limit? (I presume so per the API method)

3. On changing a search option, the load runs again automatically; I didn't expect that as I was just modifying an option and was then going to change the location of the map to run the search there, not right where it was when I hit "Done". Can it not auto-run the search if it's just the search options that's changed?

4. Coming from Geosphere, we had loads of use cases of various search strategies we might use to populate an area we're caching in, usually affected by what we wanted to see, or wanted to avoid.  For example, if there's a powertrail in an area, a standard radius search would get flustered by such a high density of caches in one spot that we may want to ignore. Or we want to grab only the caches along the trail and not the whole region.  So we requested a few other search options than just map-center-radius.
...Without getting too complicated for now:
* Can we have a kind of limit to map dimensions toggle? For example, I might zoom in to a stretch of a trail and perform a search to get just the caches within the map I'm looking at; or, knowing there's a dense trail and I want the park a few blocks away I might center there and keep the map out of frame so that I'm not loading the 100 caches on the trail along with the sparser ones nearby that I do want.  The map limiter made it easier to load caches / pan map / load caches / pan map / etc... I recently did this for a major 4 day road trip, eventually importing 11000 caches into Geosphere along our driving route, highly customized (more flexible than the driving route PQ feature Groundspeak offers, though admittedly more time consuming).

5. I do notice that the "..." apears in the load icon when the next search would expand from the same center point, and disappears when the map is panned indicating a new search. Is there a limit to the distance the search will progress? Not sure if that's an API thing. In Geosphere the option to load the next 20 or 100 caches at a time would continue until all caches are loaded that were within the map window when that search process began (even after panning, it wouldn't reset until you began a new search)'

6. The "X" to clear the map - I irked when I hit it and didn't get a confirmation after loading a large area... just lost my entire scanning and search accidentally, so now I have to do it all over again, using more API calls.  Can there be an "Are you sure?" confirmation before clearing out perhaps hundreds or thousands of map pins? /:)

...

A couple little more complex features, based on some stuff that Cachly doesn't have (and may not, at least for a while) which I find quite useful:

7. Geosphere doesn't use the exclusive 'Navigate to Cache' method that a number of apps employ - instead you choose a cache item to select as the current 'Target' (overrides the pin colour to red instead of the cache type's).  In doing so, it provides a bit more flexibility, such as easily choosing a center point for searches, filtering, listing, distance viewing and whatnot. It also means it's easier to visually spot where your target cache is in relation to other caches nearby, instead of showing a map with only the cache being navigated to.

8. Zoom options - having a Target cache makes this more relevant, but Geosphere allows you to quickly select a zoom region. * Your current location (pretty standard), the extent of map items (zoom out to see everything currently visible), the target cache (like current location but at the target pin), and current-location-with-target (easily see for navigation, and also allows to set the view so the zoom will auto-adjust while you move closer/farther from it - great for driving and hiking).

 

I'll post more as more comes to mind Trying to be 'open minded' about the fundamental differences in use between geosphere and cachly (not a bad thing, just different). There are loads of features I love in Cachly that Geosphere doesn't have which I want to use, but it means rewiring my thought process from the ground up to come at the caching career (which Geosphere contains) from a different use methodology ;P

[Nic Hubbard]

Wow, a lot to digest here. First off, if interested we have a semi-public bug/feature tracker if you are interested in being a part of. It might be easier to discuss individual features there. Just contact me through the support option in Cachly so I can get your email.

That being said...

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

2. If loading from the map center and there's an overlap of already-loaded caches, does it re-load those and count towards the daily limit? (I presume so per the API method)

Cachly won't show those pins/caches twice, but there is no way in the API to exclude loading of specific GC codes. (This is only relevant with the Clear Map on Refresh option to off)

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

3. On changing a search option, the load runs again automatically; I didn't expect that as I was just modifying an option and was then going to change the location of the map to run the search there, not right where it was when I hit "Done". Can it not auto-run the search if it's just the search options that's changed?

I wouldn't change the default way this works since it has been like this since day 1. But I will for sure consider making it a Settings option.

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

4. Coming from Geosphere, we had loads of use cases of various search strategies we might use to populate an area we're caching in, usually affected by what we wanted to see, or wanted to avoid.  For example, if there's a powertrail in an area, a standard radius search would get flustered by such a high density of caches in one spot that we may want to ignore. Or we want to grab only the caches along the trail and not the whole region.  So we requested a few other search options than just map-center-radius.
...Without getting too complicated for now:
* Can we have a kind of limit to map dimensions toggle? For example, I might zoom in to a stretch of a trail and perform a search to get just the caches within the map I'm looking at; or, knowing there's a dense trail and I want the park a few blocks away I might center there and keep the map out of frame so that I'm not loading the 100 caches on the trail along with the sparser ones nearby that I do want.  The map limiter made it easier to load caches / pan map / load caches / pan map / etc... I recently did this for a major 4 day road trip, eventually importing 11000 caches into Geosphere along our driving route, highly customized (more flexible than the driving route PQ feature Groundspeak offers, though admittedly more time consuming).

This does sound like an interesting feature. Once you get signed up for the bug tracker it would be easier to flush out the details of this there so I can ask questions about this individual feature.

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

5. I do notice that the "..." apears in the load icon when the next search would expand from the same center point, and disappears when the map is panned indicating a new search. Is there a limit to the distance the search will progress? Not sure if that's an API thing. In Geosphere the option to load the next 20 or 100 caches at a time would continue until all caches are loaded that were within the map window when that search process began (even after panning, it wouldn't reset until you began a new search)'

When the ... shows in the refresh icon it is pulling 50 more caches from the previous search. For example, a search might actually return 4000 results but the API only allows 50 at a time to be retrieved from the server.

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

8. Zoom options - having a Target cache makes this more relevant, but Geosphere allows you to quickly select a zoom region. * Your current location (pretty standard), the extent of map items (zoom out to see everything currently visible), the target cache (like current location but at the target pin), and current-location-with-target (easily see for navigation, and also allows to set the view so the zoom will auto-adjust while you move closer/farther from it - great for driving and hiking).

Cachly does have this option. When navigating to the cache there is a button with a target on it.

[thebruce0]

32 minutes ago, Nic Hubbard said:

When the ... shows in the refresh icon it is pulling 50 more caches from the previous search. For example, a search might actually return 4000 results but the API only allows 50 at a time to be retrieved from the server.

Ok so theoretically you can keep adding to it until you've reached 4000. That was more just a matter of curiosity Geosphere would have the same API limit to the search, it just adds the map boundary as a limit if you use the Map search option rather than the Current Location/Home/Target center point.

 

33 minutes ago, Nic Hubbard said:

2 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

8. Zoom options - having a Target cache makes this more relevant, but Geosphere allows you to quickly select a zoom region. * Your current location (pretty standard), the extent of map items (zoom out to see everything currently visible), the target cache (like current location but at the target pin), and current-location-with-target (easily see for navigation, and also allows to set the view so the zoom will auto-adjust while you move closer/farther from it - great for driving and hiking).

Cachly does have this option. When navigating to the cache there is a button with a target on it.

Right, on the dedicated navigation page; I was more referring to having the 'Target' selected, which can be viewed on other maps, so you can zoom to the extent of the target from your current location while still seeing other caches. I'm not a fan of (in any app, not specifically this one :)) a dedicated navigate view to a single cache, where if you leave you have to go back to the cache and navigate again. The target selection that's 'sticky' in Geosphere was a huge plus, imo, with the option to view the target in a Navigate module. But again, that's a bigger divergence from the use mentality of Cachly and other similar apps. Not a big deal.

[Nic Hubbard]

1 minute ago, thebruce0 said:

Ok so theoretically you can keep adding to it until you've reached 4000. That was more just a matter of curiosity Geosphere would have the same API limit to the search, it just adds the map boundary as a limit if you use the Map search option rather than the Current Location/Home/Target center point.

Yes, this is correct.

[MrGigabyte]

I too really miss the map boundary limit that I used all the time in live searches in Geosphere. That is item #4 that thebruce0 mentioned. I too used all the time for caches along a route. It was very quick to Search, pan the map, new search and preserve the previous caches. This way I knew I only retrieved the caches that I could see on the map. If there was a power trail coming up, I would just pan or zoom in to avoid it. Very quickly, you can plan an entire long trip and only have the caches loaded that you wanted. Then export the same caches a GPX file for the GPS and you are good to go. 

As well, I miss the Target option (#7 in thebruce0's list). I was so used to using it I took a while to get used to not having it. It was a huge time saver if you want to read about other caches without having to try to figure out which was the original one you were going to goto. 

I am glad to report though, that the rewiring of my brain is coming along nicely.  :-)

 

[Nic Hubbard]

14 minutes ago, MrGigabyte said:

I too used all the time for caches along a route. It was very quick to Search, pan the map, new search and preserve the previous caches.

You can toggle the Settings option "Clear Map on Refresh" so that caches don't get removed from the map when you refresh it. It won't limit to just the viewable area, but it will only load 50 caches at a time.

15 minutes ago, MrGigabyte said:

I am glad to report though, that the rewiring of my brain is coming along nicely.  :-)

Glad to hear this!

[MrGigabyte]

Yes I know about "Clear Map on Refresh" as I suggested that feature to you. That is not what we are describing.  In Geosphere, the map boundaries are a filter.

If I load caches in an area, Geosphere ONLY loads caches that fit that area.  So, you can control how many caches you load by using the map zoom. In Cachly, you get 50 caches based on the center of the map including those that fall outside that current map view. This would result in (in my usual usage) hundreds of caches I do not want to load. 

[Nic Hubbard]

Just now, MrGigabyte said:

Yes I know about "Clear Map on Refresh" as I suggested that feature to you. That is not what we are describing.

Sorry, so many people and so many requests, hard to remember who suggested things.

1 minute ago, MrGigabyte said:

If I load caches in an area, Geosphere ONLY loads caches that fit that area.  So, you can control how many caches you load by using the map zoom. In Cachly, you get 50 caches based on the center of the map including those that fall outside that current map view. This would result in (in my usual usage) hundreds of caches I do not want to load. 

This would need to be a new feature option that is added to Search Options. Will add that to our feature list.

[Attila_G]

On 7.2.2017 at 5:23 PM, thebruce0 said:

7. Geosphere doesn't use the exclusive 'Navigate to Cache' method that a number of apps employ - instead you choose a cache item to select as the current 'Target' (overrides the pin colour to red instead of the cache type's).  In doing so, it provides a bit more flexibility, such as easily choosing a center point for searches, filtering, listing, distance viewing and whatnot. It also means it's easier to visually spot where your target cache is in relation to other caches nearby, instead of showing a map with only the cache being navigated to.

I miss this "Target" option too. ;-) Would be great to have a switch to "show all caches with the target cache in another color" or "show only the target cache" on the map.