UKC

Reading the parking location issue discussed here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/premier_posts/massonfest_2023_festival_of...

Reminded me that the RF app can often take you to the wrong location. If an approach map has a parking location on it it will take you to the correct parking. However if you click on an individual buttress the navigation tab has a open in Google maps link which just takes you to the nearest road to that buttress so in many instances could be wrong.

Is there a way to add a parking location as a crag moderator?

It doesn't seem to be a feature you can add or edit as a crag moderator 

Surely that's intended, and useful. The overview map generally has specific parking locations and you click on those if you're trying to navigate to parking. And then the location for the actual climbing might be useful to have in Google Maps when you're walking in to the crag. Remember that the Android version of the app still doesn't put a GPS location marker on the in-app map (unlike on iPhone), which adds to the value of being able to bring the crag location up on Google Maps (or whatever other mapping app you've chosen to use for the link). It is the actual crag location that it brings up in the mapping app, not the nearest road. If you do then ask for directions in the mapping app, it will have to bring you to the nearest road if you've set it to give driving directions. But if you asked for walking directions it would get you to the nearest path it knows about instead. Though the walking directions on Google Maps aren't generally very good off road, especially in the countryside and most especially for climbing trails that aren't even major footpaths, so just having the crag coordinates displayed along with your GPS location is generally the main value of it.

On a vaguely related note, one thing I do find frustrating in the Rockfax app is that there's no way to get to the crag overview page from most maps. So, for example, if I'm looking at Scout Scar in Langdale and open the overview map, I might notice White Ghyll or Stickle Barn Crag nearby. I can click on them on the map, but that takes me straight into a specific topo, with no way I can see to then navigate 'up' to the relevant crag overview page. Normally from a topo you'd use the back button to get to the overview, but if you navigated there from a map, it just takes you back to the map. The only option is to back out altogether and search for the alternative crag, which seems needlessly complicated.

I'm made a similar point about the database here -- it makes sense to me that if you click on a new crag from a map, it should open the overview page for that new crag, not the map page (you already know where it is!).

Had Similar thoughts before. Which is how I eneded ended up at some farm closer to the crag but not the actual parking on one occasion this summer after I had navigated to a specific topo through the map of another crag and clicked the open Google maps link, which I assumed would be the parking (I can see why the location as per your first point could be useful but if I think the crag requires walking directions I'll use a map especiallyas the in app maps are rubbish compared to the normally excellent maps in RF guides. Should have just used the definitive guide i had in the car instead. Lol

Anyone form RF want to respond to the feedback?

Hi Graeme

This is working as intended I think. Parking flags are for parking and buttress locations are for walking. You do need to switch Google Maps to the walking mode rather than driving though.

Puzzled you say the in-app maps are bad. Do you mean the offline Rockfax ones in Rockfax Digital? If so then I don't follow since they are always the same maps as the ones we use in the books, often bigger and covering a wider area. If you mean using Google Maps to navigate then I agree, that is pretty hopeless as a way of finding a buttress.

Alan

Hi Luke,

Just an update on the Geo Located Offline Maps. I've had people testing this for a few weeks now. I actually intended to release this within the last few days but I've been very busy.

I'll begin rolling this update out tonight, there's quite a bit of new stuff / UI changes etc within this release, so I'll probably release this slowly, just in case there are some issues I've not yet seen. It should show within the next few days.

Cheers,
Martin

If I'm heading to a new crag, I thoroughly enjoy reading into all the finer detail, such as parking spots, back up parking spots, lay of the land and directions on an os map (plenty of free online versions out there) to cross reference with any 'crag detail' i already have.

This gives me a rough/good/decent idea of where I'm heading to and boosts the 'psych'.

Maybe just me, but I imagine alot of other folk who are into the outdoors also enjoy this process too...?

Just my two penn'orth.

Cheers

Thanks for the update Alan and Martin

Regards maps i think it is how the offline maps how are presented which I find less user friendly which is frustrating rather than rubbish.

An example would be that for some crags you get presented with a zoomed out map of the area which is often too large to show enough detail to be useful on a phone screen vs zoomed in map in a books but with enough context to navigate. If you click then on the map it then seems to zoom in fully on the crag so you have to zoom out to get to a view of similar size to in the books to finally navigate to the crag. If there was a close up fixed area map the same as in the books for these crags it would be helpful when all you want to do is get to that particular crag.

Perhaps I find the open in Google maps links from a buttress annoying that they are not the parking is beause the way I usually approach getting to a crag... So of o was not using a paper guide but just the app if I was looking at the approach for a particular buttress then clicked the open in Google maps I would want it to be to the parking spot in the same way the open on Google maps link from ukc usually takes you to the correct parking (though not always as per Masson Lees). 

Once I have arrived I would use the guide/app map, directions or overview pictures. If I needed further navigation aid I would use a os map or app, as never use Google maps in walking mode.

Hope this makes sense (probably not )

I'd love to explore this a bit further. If you could produce a few examples of crags then I can try and work through your procedure to see more precisely how you are using it.

I don't think there are many crags in books that have maps which aren't also included on RF Digital. There could be some very old examples but certainly, in recent times, our map coverage has been consistent across both, especially since we started using OS and OpenStreetMap Data (in 2020).

I am trying to decide what the best approach is though since we have had some single massive maps for vast areas (see Mallorca and Chamonix - basically one map for everything). I am not sure if this works better than where we crop the maps up a bit more into smaller areas. Problems do occur when a crag appears on two maps one of which is not very useful for it since you can end up opening the not-useful one thinking that is the best map for that crag. We have a way to get around this but it does need some careful checking and isn't always perfect.

The Peak Bouldering information, due to be released in the next couple of weeks, has some of the most detailed maps we have ever produced, so it will be interesting to see how those work. I have avoided doing really massive maps in favour of smaller ones with more detail to allow better zooming down to boulder level in many cases.

Alan

sent you a email

Thanks, that'll be useful.

While we're talking about maps, has anyone told you about this behaviour:

• You open a map and it launches fully zoomed out
• You tap somewhere on the map that isn't a link and it instantly zooms way in
• The previous tap is almost always interpreted as selecting a link, so you end up getting taken away from the map you were trying to look at

It's quite irritating, and I've found the only way to reliably avoid it is to tap completely outside the map to trigger that instant zoom.

I was trying to explain that above

Good to know it's not just me. I'd misunderstood your post, thought you were just talking about the zoom rather than inadvertently navigating away from the map.

Mainly, was not getting the navigation away issue if only clicked once carefully, however I tried a few other examples and it always navigates away as soon as I try to zoom in.

Hi Luke / Graeme,

Sorry, yeah, I'm aware of this issue.

This is now sorted in the development build with testers. I have completely overhauled all of the topo, overview and offline map rendering, so there should be a noticable difference there.

Luke, I've just emailed Graeme seperately. Would you be interested in accessing the beta version to test? You can email me your Google account email address (martin at ukclimbing dot com) and I can provide you a link that will give you access to this. I've see you regularly use the app actually thought you already had testing access.

Cheers,
Martin