Invisible clients - do they still exist?

[fvwazing]

Long time ago - when horses could still talk and all the trafficreports in Waze came from Venezuela - there existed an option in the client to operate Waze in an "invisible mode", at least on the iPhone-client that was the case. So you could Waze around identified by an id, or anonymous, or invisible even. I think that option was shed from the iPhone-client at the version 2.x. But... since some time, I can see trafficjams popping up in (a small part of) my area without seeing a Wazer move around the map - as if the invisible Wazer returned. Or... more than 1 invisible Wazer returned, because the jams pop up kilometers apart.

Are there any clients alive today that still support the invisible-feature? Did anyone else notice such phantom-jams popping up?

Aachen, Germany, with phantom-jams

001.PNG (126.25 KiB) Viewed 1670 times

(I know, it says "no service", which usually suppresses the showing of Wazers. But that is because I lost connection before I could make this screenshot. My word, there were no Wazers moving visibly around in Aachen at the time)

[petervdveen]

I did notice traffic jams updates 30 seconds ago, but I couldn't find any wazer near it.
I never saw any invisible option..

[fvwazing]

Invisible Wazing existed maybe until some time in early 2010. There is another explanation possible: maybe Waze does not show ALL the Wazers driving around, effectively turning random Wazers into invisible Wazers. But that effect would be distributed evenly over all of my area; I see the above described phantom-jams mostly in the centre and eastern parts of Aachen... hence I suspect a single invisible Wazers to be active there.

[petervdveen]

I'm sorry. They are a little bit big..
But here you can see the traffic jams in this same area did update a few seconds ago, but there is no wazer near the traffic jams.

[fvwazing]

...exactly. But 1 more word of caution: Waze-generated trafficreports (the red lines with avg speed) are "updated" (getting less slow) every couple of minutes, until they disappear. No wazer needs to be around for that - but to appear - pop up for the first time - there should be a Wazer on top of it (or very very close).

[dmcconachie]

Anything to do with the traffic data baked into iOS5 now!?

[gettingthere]

Anything to do with the traffic data baked into iOS5 now!?

Do you think Apple would be kind enough to give Waze it's traffic data? You know Waze won't pay for it!

My guess would be that you just are not seeing the Wazers on the map who's Waze application is reporting traffic. Although the screenshot above with multiple traffic jams all updated at the exact same moment seems somewhat suspect...

I have noticed while driving Wazers in front of me will sometime disappear for a couple of minutes in-between their location being refreshed. Some you will see them, they will be gone for a while, and they will come back later in a different location.

Also, as eluded to above, if you lose data connectivity to Waze's infrastructure for even a fraction of a second, all of the Wazers on the map will disappear. The traffic reports stay.

[fvwazing]

Anything to do with the traffic data baked into iOS5 now!?

Well, that would be quite a surprise! This is indeed how it would manifest itself... would it?
But... why would Apple happily fork out those data (if indeed it exists) to Waze? And why in the world would part of Aachen be testbed for such a function?

Or there is so much lag that the Wazer reporting the jam is long home by the time I see the jam appear. Or Waze hides some Wazers due to some overload somewhere. Or we do not look right.

Or a cuckold BB- or WM-client with invisible-wazing-option still build in is driving around here. Only that could explain why the phenomenon is local...

[dmcconachie]

Anything to do with the traffic data baked into iOS5 now!?

Do you think Apple would be kind enough to give Waze it's traffic data? You know Waze won't pay for it!

No idea, just throwing ideas out there!

[gettingthere]

Or a cuckold BB- or WM-client with invisible-wazing-option still build in is driving around here. Only that could explain why the phenomenon is local...

We know for sure there are older clients out there. Since these folks keep posting in the forums asking for updates!