Premium Maps

[Yemble]

I've just returned from a two week holiday in South West Ireland. Compared to the UK, the mapping, both paper and digital, is pretty abysmal. Although I would have liked to used AQ as my primary GPS tool, because the only available mapping was the OSM stuff, which is useless for "seeing" the terrain, I was forced to use a combination of TomTom and ViewRanger instead. ViewRanger is the only mapping tool that offers the iOS 1:50K maps in digital form, although they are not free... I spent over £40 to get coverage of Co. Kerry and Co. Cork.

The iOS maps are not great, in fact they remind me of my dad's old GBOS maps of the 1950s, all green and brown topo with no tourist info. at all. However, they were OK for planning walks with and general car travel when not using TomTom. The only decent tourist map was by XploreIt, but this was only available in paper form.

The point of all this is that it would be nice to have an option within AQ to download premium topo maps, even if there was a charge. The iOS maps would be a good starting point as there is only one competitor, ie. ViewRanger.

Is this something that you might contemplate for the future?

[Psyberia-Support]

Hi,
AlpineQuest was originally made to be a cheap alternative to softwares usually developed by regional map services, charged per area displayed, so I never spent a lot of time making research about such features... Initially AlpineQuest used only OpenStreetMap, which are far from some local topo maps, but are available freely all around the world...
I had once a discussion with a provider of German maps, but the fee for AlpineQuest was horribly high... But I guess it depends on the maps, and it could be interesting deal with some for sure... However it will require a lot of work (especially for the in-app purchase process), so if available one day, i won't be soon... We can hope that with the spread of mobile devices, more and more maps will be available online for free...

[Yemble]

Hi, yes I completely agree that AQ should promote the concept of free mapping for all, however, it is a sad fact of life that any mobile mapping application is only as good as the maps available to it.

Most of the free maps are targetted at road users, rather than hikers, the most notable exception to that rule being the OSGB 1:50K and 1:25K maps that both AQ and Back Country Navigator provide. Where the map coverage is the same, the primary differentiator then becomes the quality of the application, where AQ is clearly streets ahead of BCN.

In countries where high quality topo maps are not available free of charge, then the choice of application for hikers is more influenced by what topo maps are available and the cheapest cost. In the case of Ireland, there is only one choice, ie. ViewRanger running the (paid for) iOS maps.

So, the question remains, is it better to only provide free mapping, thus limiting the appeal of AQ in certain countries? Or is it better to offer some premium maps (at the lowest possible price) to those AQ users based in countries where no decent free maps are available for hiking?

Commercially, that is a tricky nut to crack and the setup costs could be high... but I suppose that it is the same problem that all other producers of mapping applications have had to face at some time or other.

Alternatively, we can all live in hope that global map producers have a change of heart and offer detailed on-line topo maps free of charge... but we could be waiting a long time if the current state of Irish mapping is anything to go by

[Psyberia-Support]

I'm not saying that it couldn't be good to have this kind of feature, but it's not something that have an high priority yet.

As a developer my point of view is a bit different, I must work on features that will be useful to most of users, even if some others would be much useful but for much less users.
More precisely, if we consider the case of Irish maps, only a small number of users will be interested for something that may require a lot of work (moreover not re-usable since each map providers will use there own payment systems)...

Here are the AlpineQuest (lite) figures for top countries, 7/9 countries already have topo maps available.
United States 36.59%
France 15.48%
United Kingdom 7.22%
South Korea 4.90%
Italy 4.62%
Canada 3.12%
Switzerland 2.34%
Spain 2.07%
Germany 1.90%
Others 21.76%

I agree it's a bit rude to think like that, but there is so much features waiting and requested everyday, that I must always be careful on what I can spend time on...

[Yemble]

Perhaps some sort of pay-as-you access to on-line premium topo maps (world wide) might be the ultimate answer. This would require a common application framework and a company like Google to host it... hmmm, if only I were Bill Gates...

I'm just flying kites here