AlpineQuest & OfflineMaps

you said previously, perhaps in an email, that you see AlpineQuest as primarily a raster tile-store app. however, with all of the major competition now fully supporting mapsforge vector maps, i hope you will now see this is an important feature.

specificly i am looking to be able to use the OpenAndroMaps (http://www.openandromaps.org/en/) versions. these maps and their associated render themes provide excellent general-purpose topo maps that are a tiny fraction of the filesize of similar raster maps. they certainly cannot replace some of my most used raster maps, but do allow me have at least basic topo maps of all of the areas i commonly visit without needing multiple MicroSD cards. however, having these maps combined with my tracks and other more detailed maps in a single app is essential and thus i've increasingly had to abandon AlpineQuest in favor of the alternatives.

i also realize this is not a trivial feature to add. however the mapsforge format is open source, and there is ample free code available to help reduce development time substantially (specifically for the Android platform even). i noticed that the MOBAC project (which develops at glacial speed) now even supports reading this format. i would also imagine that the OpenAndroMaps website is surely driving quite a bit of traffic to your competition.

the overall features of AlpineQuest, except for this major omissions, have made it my favorite topo/GPS app for a long time and i'm looking forward to the new 2.0 interface, therefore i really hope to see this feature added.

thanks!

Hi again,

I don't really know what to tell you because I do consider supporting vector maps, it's just that until now I haven't found the time to work on it (also because I do not consider this feature as high priority, true).

My point of view is (still) that vector maps have very few benefits compared to the amount of work (initial and support) they require, and also bring lot of drawbacks... I also do not see why someone really interested in vector maps and raster maps couldn't use two different apps for that (since the data needs to be stored twice anyway, and you can switch app in a sec on Android devices).

With vector maps, all the map generation process is done on the device, so anyway the raster version will be stored at some point (the generated cached images, if a cache store is used) which will also use space, in addition of the initial vector data. This generation takes more time, more memory and more processor, so more battery. Even more when no cache is used. And the resulting map quality is far less better that server side generated maps. I mean it's perfect for car GPS, but there is still a long way to go for topo maps. All of the map requests I get are still for raster maps.
More technically, mapsforge will double the app size and complexity and much increase used memory (so much assets are needed to generate the maps, like icons, themes, etc). Even the small mapsforge demo app makes my S5 crash from times to times (but it's true that I'm quite impressed by some of the abilities it offers)...

So be sure that I keep that in a corner of my head, but right now I cannot unfortunately give you a release date.

i totally get that you can't give a release date for a feature that you aren't even sure you want to implement yet! i also realize that i'm being selfish here and trying to convince you to do what would make the app better for my particular use cases - but i think there are plenty of other overlanders/Jeepers/OHV-ers that would benefit as well.

i'll make another reply later to address some of your points. just know that the only reason i hope to influence the future of the app is that it really is my favorite off-highway mapping/gps app by far. no app can be perfect for everyone, but with AlpineQuest there are currently only 2 areas that i see as just not working for me (lack of vector map rendering and easier manual track/route creation when pre-planning trips).

thanks again for looking!