Get a sneak peek at whats next for Permanent Hazards on our April 7th Office Hours!

Post Reply

Cellular data restrictions, and the issues with using Waze.

Post by aaronsta
Hey.

Waze is great. I loved using it;
for nearly one year, every drive, it became routine.

The thing that drew me into Waze was the fact that I could contribute to my ultimate goal of mapping out the whole of my state; (Western Australia, about 2,530,000 km2) And it was big; but there was one problem.
I felt useless; I wasn't achieving anything.

I would painstakingly add landmarks, and roads, and ensure every little detail was correct (But wasn't rewarded with points appropriatley, as people who would simply draw big lines of roads, out of alignment from the true location of a road, and add few details (Quite commonly with incorrect naming schemes) would get more.

Now I don't want to sound like a spoilt child, but that just isn't fair.

But that's fine, points are not that important; my goal is to map my state. The only problem is there is 163,000 km of road in W.A.. Only around 19% has cellular coverage. (With Telstra, other networks use the systems Telstra has established, and pay fees for using cellular towers, as a result most other providers have substantially lower coverage)

Not to worry, Waze works offline; I can still get points when I drive down these roads, and map them out with that pave tool; as if, Waze doesn't do much offline. (Not to mention navigation, if roads exist outside cellular areas, and you navigate there using Waze, it becomes very buggy)

Okay, so they don't have a cache system that works offline, it would be great if even a basic system existed, but that's fine, because there is still another way to map out roads outside cellular covered areas. (Even if these roads can't be used due to many issues that arise when using roads outside cellular covered areas.) I can use their Bing maps overlay, and make some roads when I get to a computer. Awesome!

Again, as f***ing if. Bing maps has an astoundingly poor quality outside major metopolitain areas, and that is usually out of date by 5 years or more (After it's first and only fly-over, done by some Wright brothers aircraft back in the Jurassic era) (Even in metro areas aerial images are out of date by many years). Okay so I can't map any area that 1) Has no cellular coverage 2) Is not in a major metropolitain area. That's fine, I can still map some of my state.

Okay, So I'm just going to draw this triangle shaped park here, put the name in, great! I'll just put this curved road in next to it. (Several weeks later) Looking at Waze on my phone, at a square shaped park, and the bottom left part of an octagon for my road. Okay so Waze is so bad at rendering anything other than a straight line, because it uses too much data, because the method of creating the various polygons they use is not efficient, and the alternate ways would take too much effort to implement. That's fine I can still draw out grid shaped road networks, and only add rectangle like landmarks.

No, f*** you aaronsta, Mr. Coolcat88 (Not a user) wants to change some segments of Banana Lane and the various turn restrictions and effort you put into it to Mango street, a one way road that now is positioned on the top of people's houses.

Waze to me is just comprised of many people; these people have failed to, like 98% of the rest of the population of the world, pick up many little nuances (I can list many more, I personally have found) that together have now contributed to a great problem that is not getting fixed.

Listen now, fix problems, make Waze better, good.
aaronsta
Posts: 13
Has thanked: 2 times

POSTER_ID:5442128

1

Send a message
Last edited by aaronsta on Thu Jan 24, 2013 4:59 pm, edited 6 times in total.

Post by aaronsta
I am aware that there is a large social component implemented in Waze, in order to send information to contribute to getting people to their destination in the best way possible, as well as other things such as user reports, goodies, pings, gas prices etc. I'm more than happy for Waze to have these components work only in cellular regions. I'm also aware that mapping requires a cellular signal to obtain road information. In the above post it was metioned that routes now pre-load for some distance, that is amazing! I am really happy to see that, for off-line capabilities (Apart from seeing this have the option to work on cellular as-well (With an On-Off switch in the settings)), that is all that I could have hoped for, this is after-all a crowed-sourced navigation/ mapping app and not one designed for off-line use.

But I'm also aware that (For my country, and many more) there exists no base map, and therefore there are no roads for navigation/ driving to occur on for any distance pass the end of the cellular coverage. For my state, (I know other services exist in my country for other localities) there are accurate road details provided on the Main Roads and Landgate websites (State government authorities). These can assist greatly in the creation of roads in areas outside cellular covered regions.

First-off Bing is okay, in metropolitain regions. But really bad when it comes to rural towns, or other nodes or bands of cellular coverage of urbanised land away from the main metro-region. This is more what I was refering to above.

In W.A. there is many areas outside the main metropolitain area (Perth) where this will happen, as you leave one town and enter the next. The in-between area would have no cellular coverage, and therefore no Waze, this was what I was hoping for, improvement in the ability for Waze to function in these in-between areas.

Caching data, as you guys have implemented (Pre-loading!!! :) ) is amazing, and I am hoping for an expansion in the ability for Waze to function here, by allowing user-reports to cache (I.e pings, police, traffic (Both user and automatically generated) etc.) and for it to be sent, when a cellular connection is recieved. Likewise to the amount of kilometres, and navigation if started in a cellular covered area. Then, if no connection is received after a certain time (I.e 30 minutes) This data (Kilometres / user-reports / traffic) would be void, and not sent. (Also allow for adjustment in traffic dispersion) - I do still however expect navigation/ mapping to work outside these regions for a distance of say 100km in advance of the user.

At present there exists no way to map these in-between regions. Bing maps (As above) is horrible to use (outside the metro area), due to poor quality imagery.

It is my belief that this particular issue (In-ability to have any Waze mapping in areas of poor aerial imagery coverage) can be fixed by implementing a method to allow the addition of overlays into the map. (Overlays being an image sourced from a third-party)

I am aware that Waze wishes to have only user generated maps, however this poses a great issue when the imagery source shows a town 2km2 in size to be nothing more than a white-like spec (With quality not increasing upon zoom), I cannot map that. An alternate way would be to import base-maps, though I believe this may be a lengthy process.

P.S. I was in a bit of a rage earlier more at something else that anything to do with Waze.
aaronsta
Posts: 13
Has thanked: 2 times
Send a message
Last edited by aaronsta on Thu Jan 24, 2013 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Post by aaronsta
Essentially I had 3 issues.

1. The post directly above (Offline Wazing)

2. The issue with people, not familiar with correct editing technique, or not giving a care messing up work I had done, even when I was an area manager (Though it occured rarely as an A.M.) (Have not edited in a while, not sure if still have privileges, Waze Update Map down currently.) This is not that big of an issue, as I can progress up the ranking, in order to lock roads that frequently get altered incorrectly.

3. Polygons. I would make sure that the objects I mapped were geographically accurate, however this was not reflected in the app. As, in order to minimise data usage on phones, the data was simplified. So quite often rectangular shapes would have alternating nodes dis-counted, and one of the nodes dis-counted just happened to be the one on the corner that made up the shape (Thus making odd shapes. (I.e I had a T shape turn into an inverted trapezium shape, rectanges into triangles, etc.) . I would really love to see this resolved.
aaronsta
Posts: 13
Has thanked: 2 times
Send a message

Post by aaronsta
Thanks a-lot daknife for the reply! I will keep trying to use waze and see what happens from there. :D
aaronsta
Posts: 13
Has thanked: 2 times
Send a message

Post by AndyPoms
First off, please watch your language - you did a pretty good job with the **s, but missed a few.

Second, with the release of version 3.5.3 (current version) on both Android & iPhone, Waze now "Preloads route when connected to WiFi" - See iPhone 3.5.3 official feedback thread or Android 3.5.3 official feedback thread.

Waze will work offline, however it can only handle being offline for short periods of time. The app requires a data connection due to the amounts of data Waze is sending back and forth (traffic data, reports, etc).
AndyPoms
EmeritusChamps
EmeritusChamps
Posts: 7223
Has thanked: 65 times
Been thanked: 990 times
Send a message
https://www.waze.com/wiki/images/f/ff/W ... 00k_6c.png
Waze Champ & Forum Moderator
USA Country Manager
Senior Area Manager: State of Connecticut
Wiki: Editing | Best Practices | FAQ

Post by Daknife
Hmm, to be honest the only time I've seen anything like problem number three, was when someone would come in and adjust the map, or when the creator of the road tried to do it with the pave tool, which gives notoriously bad tracks for anything but a straight line.

I'd say that your situation, where Bing aerials are so bad would be one justification for having other resources open in a separate browser window or tab, yes I'm saying if Google or someone else has more accurate and up to date info, I'd certainly be referring to it often. You can't use automated tools like a greasemonkey script, but looking at other resources and bouncing back and forth between them and the WME would be acceptable in this case. And if you can find accurate government mapping resources there would be no concern with using those extensively in building out your maps.

I will say that you are not alone in this Down there. I've had a few chats with an active editor in the Sydney area where he expressed many of the same frustration in trying to get an accurate road system that works.

Don't give up, get back into the WME, that's where you'll have the greatest success in building the map. Take charge, work towards the 200k edit mark and get CM status where you can lock completed roads at a level that few others can change.
Daknife
Posts: 1685
Has thanked: 451 times
Been thanked: 229 times
Send a message
https://waze.com/wiki/images/3/3c/Waze_ ... 00k_6c.png
Former AM in Utah; FormerCM USA
Utah Forum: Utah Forum
Google Pixel 5 on Sprint

Post by goomesh
people, not familiar with correct editing technique, or not giving a care
Don't let this get you down, everyone deals with this from what I can see. I've been working on some stuff in my area of travels and I can't believe some of the recent (< 6 months) work that's been done by higher level editors. They either didn't care or were dumb as dumb can be because halfway reading the editing guides teaches you not to do most of the things I've seen.
Bing maps has an astoundingly poor quality outside major metopolitain areas, and that is usually out of date by 5 years or more
It's not just Bing using outdated images. I was browsing Google maps for some verification and noted a lot of their images are copyright 2007 and 2008. I'm not sure where the satellite photos originate from but it's been a long time since a scan has been done in central Florida and Alabama.
because it uses too much data
I agree there are a few performance issues that could use attention, my 3GS struggles sometimes. Without seeing the app code and the actual data coming across the link, it's pure speculation to say what's causing it. I will leave that up to the guys that wrote the app. I do know that I can't use turn by turn navigation because my GPS is never available once the nav starts. I see that red message constantly when doing turn by turn but GPS Info, Google Maps, and MapQuest don't seem to have a problem when my Waze isn't working. I am putting together as much info as I can before submitting something to support.

Just hang in there, nothing worth while is built overnight. You also have to remember that some of these issues (like the volunteers) are simply part of the deal. I just look at it like the more they screw up, the closer I get to the next edit level. :twisted:
goomesh
Posts: 13
Send a message

Code: Select all

Thanks and Happy Wazeing! 
Goom

SmartPhone=true, OS=true, Waze=true