EOTopo 2021 Maps Out Now!

I have it on my Samsung tablet and phone (backup) It's fabulous.

Hi Tony
You might have to wait a little for Michelle.

"Also, please respect that we are not available today for support. Just had to push the buttons to release but now its time to start our weekend. Hope this helps those who've been waiting to get their nav systems ready for Easter trips. Lucky you - no holidays for us. Just more work...."

Cheers
Jim

"Eg what is 125M, 2K, 108K all mean? Is that 125 Meters, 2Km etc?

Also, what is the best scale of off line raster and vector maps?

Lastly will it do turn by turn navigation offline with the vector maps?"

Tony,

In Michelle's absence, I'll try to help you out. As a beta tester I am a bit familiar with the app - I presume you're asking about using EOTopo within the Traveller app..

In answer to your the first line of your query, in simple terms it just means you can zoom out so all of Australia fits into your screen with a low level of detail. Then as you zoom in you get more and more detail. It's like having all maps between maybe 1:100M and 1:2000 or so.

To give you an idea of the level of detail you can get, here's a screenshot of EOTopo 2021, the all-of Australia map, at max zoom, zoom level 18. On Grimes Ave between the two legs of Rheinburgers Cct there are only three suburban houses. It lacks only house numbers. If you cannot find a destination at that level of detail, well, perhaps it's not there, LOL.


Here's the same screen at EOTopo 2019's max zoom level of 15:

Quite a difference, eh?

If you want house numbers you can switch to the on-line Streets and Paths map - very good for navigating around an unfamiliar town or city.

As I said, at the opposite end of the scale you can zoom out and have all of Australia on the screen - zoom level 0.9, perhaps for very small screen phones, and you can choose any level in between with 0.1 steps or pinch zoom in gross steps as fast as you like.


Your question about what is the best scale:
You don't need to know that. Just zoom until you get the detail or coverage you want on your device's screen. The actual scale is irrelevant, unless you just want to know the number. As you zoom, the scale bar on the screen expands and contracts and changes units with your zoom, as you'd expect.

Lastly about turn by turn:
If you plan your trip to remote areas when in internet coverage the turn by turn instructions are stored in your device and will talk to you at all times, even off line and with the vector maps.

If on-line you can search for an address and navigate to that.

If you are in coverage and deviate from your stored route, the app will re-route and give you new turn by turn instructions. I have tested this on multiple occasions and it works perfectly.

If, when you're off-line you deviate from the stored route, it will not update routing (ie, turn by turn) instructions. This is because the routing engine does not live in the app, it lives in the cloud, ie on line. If you return to your planned or stored route, the stored instructions will resume from the point you return to the stored route.

One thing to note for Traveller and all navigators:
The routing engines used by the various turn by turn apps can give differing results. Sometimes the way home differs from the way to. If you run two turn by turn navigators side by side, eg the one in the car and Traveller or any other turn by turn nav program, you may get differing results. Depending on your point of view, one will be more correct and the other less so. A bit of situational awareness, rather than blind obedience of any app helps. The big advantage with Traveller's vector maps (on and off line) is you can get a hugely detailed, down to street level, map. So if a route appears weird you can zoom in and figure out your own best route.

In mobile coverage in Traveller you can select the on-line streets and paths map which gives detail down to building numbers in many places, especially metropolitan, as well as walking tracks, etc.

Hope this helps

Tony, I see I made a typo (forgot the dot) referring to the map scale of the LoRes pack. Of course it's not 175M - it is 1.75M. I've edited my description above.

For clarity. M = million. K = thousand.
With map scale, the reference is a ratio between distance on a map and the corresponding distance on the ground. The full correct reference for a map scale is 1: 1M, or 1:1K but the industry standard abbreviation just uses the end number, eg. 1M, 1K. A map scale with a lower reference number will result in a more detailed map. So back to EOTopo map pack scale references quoted. ...

LoRes 1:1,753,336 (1.75M)
HiRes 1:108,336 (108K)
XHiRes 1:1,690 (1.6K) but have modestly quoted this at 2K.

So, all you need to know is the lower the number (eg. 2K is smaller than 108K) the MORE detail/higher the resolution. Which matches the naming convention of XHiRes (meaning extra high resolution).

And for comparison, the previous max offline scale of EOTopo 2019 was 144K. Massive difference in increased zoom/map scale detail as you will see immediately.

Beautifully explained Frank, thanks

" A bit of situational awareness" Very well put Frank. :)
Dave.

Hey Bricky

Purely a guess, maybe your payment not recognised just yet???

Regards

TrevorDavid

Cheers, will check it out tomorrow.

All sorted.....great

Android has had an update released, now 6.0.1. Try that, and check the iOS release, too.

There were some similar issues with the Windows release, now up to 6.0.4 for anyone who's interested.

Thanks Frank, that resolved it!

Hi Michelle, I am very much looking forward to getting my hands on the updated maps. I do have a question before I try to download it & potentially muck things up though. In my ios version of Exploroz traveller it gives me the option of purchasing the new maps. However it appears that my Exploroz Traveller version is 6.01. Apple's App store only gives me the option to 'open' not to update. Is this simply because Apple's app store is yet to have the 6.04 version available? If so I guess I should just be patient for another day or two?

Edit - rechecked the App Store just now & 6.04 is now available.

Hi Josh ...... I'm not Michelle !!! but have you tried turning your computer right off then re-starting ?
Sometimes works wonders.

Cheers
Jim

Josh, my phone spat the dummy at 45 of 65 in the Hi Res download. I took Jim's advice & switched my phone off & back on again & got the 'Partially Installed' thing , but not the incorrect number of tiles message. It gave me the option to resume the download, & completed it OK with a final tile count of 241138.

Now dowloading the Extra Hi Res & keeping my fingers crossed - on satellite broadband which is never 100% reliable, but it's all we've got for the next couple of months & then its back to mobile phone data.

Later: All done on the phone, but the weather's closing in so will leave the ipad until tomorrow.

"The windows version doesn't seem to have been released yet. My broadband clocks in at >50 Mb/s, so it's not a connection issue. I wonder if anyone else has observed this issue and what the issue is as I thought the online version was always a vector map?"

Hi Warren,

The Windows version was released yesterday (Sunday 28th) afternoon. I got it then so it should be available to you now.

I too have found the vector maps load the system a bit more. I don't know anything about your nokia, but my "getting old" Samsung S7 256gB phone with Android 8.0.0 runs it ok, albeit with a short lag to load the first screen. After that it's ok.

My Samsung Tab S6 256gb tablet (much newer than the S7 phone) runs it smooth as silk.

I will do an upgrade on my old and retired Tab S2 128 gB tablet and see how it goes.

I did have the app and EOTopo 2019 running on a Samsung Tab A (lower spec than Tab S) and found it too laggy. Hence the Tab S's. Sadly you may be in that situation with your basic Lenovo.

I have the windows version running on a HP Envy X360 (AMD Ryzen 5, 6 core). Not lightning fast, but quite ok. On my desktop with an Intel Core i7 (octa core) it flies, but not as smooth as EOTopo 2019 when scrolling full screen widths.

Basically, I think the more processing grunt and ram the better.

Warren,

Per my FollowUp above, I have resurrected my Samsung Tab S2, 32gB (10gB free), Android 7.0, with maps on an external 32gB SD card.

It's hopeless. Very slow to start the app and load a map. Very slow to load tiles when you zoom in or out.

At normal zoom levels, say about 12.0, if you scroll off the screen it takes a long time for the new tiles to appear. It has crashed 3 times in 15 minutes - once it just closed, another it was frozen with a blue screen and the third it crashed when I tried to go from the map screen to data manager. It could be better if I freed some memory and gave it some manoeuvring room, but it is my backup for other apps as well as Traveller, so I don't want to do that. I'll probably just use EOTopo 2019 on this old thing as my backup.

I think it would be ok as a moving map display for EOT2021, but as a trip planner where you zoom and scroll a lot - hopeless.

Nothing wrong with the app or maps - they work fine in devices with enough grunt and memory, like my Tab S6, 256gB and 128gB external memory - it flies.

Sorry to say it, but for EOTopo2021 I think the writing might be on the wall for your Lenovo.

I replied separately in the thread before I saw this message. Yes, I have found the new maps a bit sluggish even on the very latest iPhone (iPhone 12).

I have the Windows version now, oddly had to force an update, usually it updates automatically. It works fine on my PC, which while now positively ancient (6yo) was in its day a top of the line Dell XPS13. I'll stick with EOTopo 2019 on the tablet and check it out on a short trip over Easter as I only use the tablet for navigating, with route planning done on the PC. If it's possible I will revert to the previous version of EO Traveller as well, as I think the tablet is unstable, as you found with the Samsung Tab 2. The new Nokias have a longer screen compared to most phones, which compensates a bit for the smaller screen size when used for navigation, so I may well just use that. I'm not too keen on spending the several hundred or more dollars on an upspec Android tablet that I wouldn't use, as I tend to be a phone or PC person. I suspect we'll buy a new cellular iPad sometime in the future as my wife uses her iPad for general browsing and to read online newspapers. While the maps are nice and I was looking forward to their release, it's all a bit of an inconvenient PIA as I'm in the middle of planning a three week desert trip and don't need the hassle.

Warren,
You should not need to worry about getting the older version as rendering the 2019 tiles from 6 is exactly the same logic as 5 (ie: I did not change anything in the renderer).

The performance of the 2021 may be slower dependent on hardware, of course we are trying to deliver the best map product with as much detail as possible and as such our vector tiles are significantly large. There is a direct correlation between tile size and detail rendered Google maps, OSM, MapBox etc the tiles are way way smaller then ours but lack the detail and outback data of course, we have the detail and want to have full offline available. So we opted to have the best product but this may mean some older devices are not as fluid as some may wish.

There is more power needed to render around the major cities with buildings and thousands of smaller streets, some of these vector tiles are closer to 1MB each and you may be rendering 4-12 tiles on the screen at once. Rendering from offline will be quicker as you can understand even with high speed internet 4 or so MB across 4-12 requests is not a 1 sec download for most. If you pan out of the cities you will see a significant difference in performance of tile loading, and this makes sense when you understand the tile data as inherently as I do and understanding the sizes of the tiles.

PS: My smallest test system from the beginning of Traveller is a Samsung Tab A8 with a whopping 1.5GB RAM and a slowish CPU. It all still works but takes ages to load up - once up though it is good enough just.

PSS: I have recently added an iPad 8th Gen to the testing kit and cost about $400-$500 but it is impressively fast. So if you are looking at iPad you will be happy. I got the wifi one and added a Garmin GLO but we use Android on our Teyes head unit in the car and all our phones.

Hey enjoy your three week trip - wish it was me. Let us know how you get on.
David
* Out from under the spinning propeller atop my head - at least for a few hours *

I have mine on an iphone XS without the issues you describe. It renders fluidly & with virtually no lag.

I have it on iPhone 11
I did delete 2019 maps
2021 works for me just the same
Zoom in to mag 18 and back out is smooth with almost no lag.
It did seem a bit laggy on my old iPad mini4 but seems to improve with a bit of use.

I had the tile count error when installing so I deleted the app Powered off then on and reinstalled
Was perfect after that

I will give it a good workout tomorrow as we head off for the Simpson or Gawler ranges or wherever the roads are open
Well done David and Michelle

I deleted the 2019 maps and restarted my phone. That seems to have helped - the gestures all work nicely now, which is great, a much nicer experience! (I did previously close and restart the app, but that didn't help.)

Rendering is still a bit slow though, especially when zooming out -- it takes bit for all the different layers to pop into existence. Panning is not very smooth either. But hey - this is small fry compared to all the map goodness I have access to.

Thanks again to the development team!

I just loaded it onto Mrs P's Samsung S20 Ultra which was the top of the line until January. It scrolls very smoothly. With a big zoom out there's a short delay, just a second or so, in getting all the new tiles onto the screen, but other than that it's smooth as.

thank you so much for this feedback.
We are so pleased that the maps are so well received.
However - it would be incredibly advantageous if our happy customers would please jump onto the app stores and post 5 star reviews so that new comers who don't visit the website can see these positive comments too. As you know word of mouth is so important.
And also, please post in all the facebook groups etc your findings. We really appreciate it.

Never. They are a different map type.

The new maps are in vector format. Ozi requires the raster format.

Michelle has said in various newsletters and release bulletins that EOTopo 2021 will not be released in raster format. The most recent you'll ever have in raster is EOTopo 2019.

Yes -

EOTopo 2021 comprises a vector mapset which is downloaded in 3 parts.

1. The LoRes pack (map data 1.75M and zoom to Level 8) is included with the current version of the app to all users. All existing and future app customer have free access to the 2021 LoRes pack.
2. For the $49.99 purchase of the EOTopo 2021 licence you get access to download the 2 additional map packs - the HiRes pack and the XHiRes. This expands the map detail and zoom to 2K (1:2,000) map scale and Level 18 zoom. High resolution, vector.

The total EOTopo 2021 vector mapset is 4.917GB, so only marginally bigger than the 2019 raster set but a whole lot more data.