Invisible clients - do they still exist?

[fvwazing]

There's also the possibility of secondary traffic sources (eg Total Traffic Network in the US). I've seen a road "closed" with a TTN notice sitting on top of it. It was closed by setting the average speed to 0 for overnight construction that actually closed the road.

Highly unlikely that any secondary traffic source will cover backalleys in Aachen, Germany - apart from, maybe, the Legendary Apple Locationdata. But then it would cover more than just a part of Aachen, wouldn't it? Also, Total Traffic covers roadclosures - not live trafficspeeds.

[fvwazing]

I noticed that, when sufficiently zoomed out, there can be too many Wazers for the client to display properly. In that case typically only the top-left corner of the screen is populated with dozens of Wazers; the client seems to receive the Wazers sorted by their coordinates and at some point it runs out. But I never noticed that behaviour when zooming into a small region, and I would not expect the client to run out of space for Wazers if there only 4 or 5 in view.

[fvwazing]

I am reviving this thread because I am currently witnessing strange thigs in Aachen again - this time not in the morning, but late in the evening. Without 1 Wazer in sight I saw a lot of jams appear within minutes. Some of those are in opposite directions, almost all are on major roads. Moving at the speed indicated 1 Wazer would need 2 hours to drive that stretch - but happens within minutes. Weird enough?

[gerben]

I have my old WM phone lying around somewhere with Waze 1.x. I will look it up and try to set it to invisible.

[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.

[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!

[gettingthere]

As I never saw a BB-version close, is there an option for invisible Wazing in there? And... does Waze still honor that - or is invisible Wazing shut down centrally in the system?

I have no idea. Someone with one of these older versions will have to confirm or deny.

[gettingthere]

There's also the possibility of secondary traffic sources (eg Total Traffic Network in the US). I've seen a road "closed" with a TTN notice sitting on top of it. It was closed by setting the average speed to 0 for overnight construction that actually closed the road.

That's interesting. I have never seen any report from Total Traffic Network give anything other than a traffic report PIN. No flow rate.

Also, all flow rate traffic reports show as reported by Waze vs. a Wazer or third party traffic service. At least as I have seen in the United States.

[gettingthere]

I've noticed that Wazers are not where the live map shows them.

This is actually good. There is no need for other Wazers to be tracking your exact location.

You can still click on other Wazers to see their stats, ping them, and have a general idea how many people around you are using Waze.

[gettingthere]

The other thing to consider is that the number of Wazers continue to grow. It is possible that in your area that are now more active Wazers at once than there used to be. Surely Waze is not showing all Wazers in the client. That would be more of a load on their infrastructure to keep them all updated, for every (more) Wazers.

We can't expect Waze to show every Wazer. They need to keep the routing and traffic avoidance working. Those are more important features to be focused on.

So you may have been seeing more or all of them in the past, but not anymore.