New Locus Map 3.40 starts navigation with your favorite app preset

The autumn is here, the main season is over. Nevertheless, we haven’t given up our jobs. On the contrary…

During the last weeks and months, we’ve been working on the huge tasks we had set in the spring of this year. At that time, we couldn’t have imagined the amount of work that was awaiting us. Together with some changes in our team, some new colleagues came, some left, the work hasn’t been proceeding as fast as we had expected. Nevertheless, we are moving forward. Slowly, but steadily.

What are we working on now?

There are a few essential projects we are running through. At the moment, if everything goes smoothly, we are planning their release for the next spring/summer season 2020.

Route database

We are building a database of routes that you can use as an inspiration source for your hiking or biking trips. You will be able to select among hundreds or thousands of tips for trips in areas you don’t know or in your neighborhood. In the beginning, the public database will be filled by renowned publishers. Among others, e.g. the German guide publishing house Rother. This database will be available, of course, in our Locus Store.

New design and user interface

Locus Map‘s design has changed a few times but always just slightly. The main UX elements have always stayed almost the same. The reason was, a typical Locus Map user is a conservative person and each alteration going deeper into Locus functionality resulted in many controversial reactions. Nevertheless, building the new Locus Map 4.0, we resolved to make more significant changes. We made some inner surveys, did a few ergonomy analyses and comparations with competitive apps. Recently, we are beginning to see the first results of these efforts (just wait a few more weeks for them :).

What comes in the latest version?

Simultaneously, the “old” Locus Map development is going forward too. Implementing the new map core completely changed the internal app work with the map data. It enabled overlays of various map formats and coord systems, improved legibility of many maps on current full HD screens with automatic resolution optimization.

In this newest Locus Map version, we polished the app UI – we unified details of screens, panels, and colors all over the app. And, we added an option to link app presets to navigation:

Navigate with your favorite app preset automatically

Imagine: you’re sitting in your car setting out to hunt for some caches. You’ve just selected the first treasure box and want to start navigation to it. But, Locus Map is set to your hiking preset – hiking map theme on, cursor centered, display automatic turning off, etc. Never mind, tap the cache on the map, select Navigate to, then choose a car profile and GO. Locus Map resets itself to your car preset – road map theme on, the screen always on, cursor down, map rotation on, hardware compass off, etc. Of course, when you get to your target and the navigation stops, Locus Map re-sets itself back to your original preset. Fast and easy, isn’t it?

How to set it up?

Go to Locus navigation settings > Link to presets. There are three options for the three most common ways of transport – walk, bike and a motor vehicle. Tap Motor vehicle and select an appropriate preset from the list. Do so with the walk and bike as well. Easy peasy. And how it works? See the short video:

Goodbye GPSies!

All of you, who used GPSies.com (a great public route database), have been informed by its provider that the service was merged with Alltrails.com. Unfortunately, this merger means the end of GPSies integration in Locus Map. The new provider isn’t interested in such integration. Understandably, they need to push their own app forward.

As the saying goes, everything bad is good for something. This is another motive and inspiration for us, to put more energy into our own route database project mentioned above. So, keep fingers crossed for us!

Photos by Wilfried Santer and Helloquence