Thread: Is it me or is Route Buddy awful?

Yeah, I use Routebuddy to visualize logs from my cars and to prepare materials and print maps for our navigation competitions, but the interface for geocoding and routing is kind of weird.

(PERHAPS if you have a GPS this shows up automatically, but I haven't tested it outdoors yet).

Yes, the current position shows automatically and it is quite reliable.

Another thing is the speed of routing. TomTom Go, which is much less powerful hardware is many times faster when planning a route (same route, same maps installed). I admit we have the same problem with QCar navigation module.

One way I noticed that Tom-Tom Go is able to trim down the entry process is by requiring you to enter State, then city, then street and it guesses pretty quickly about both the start and end points. By starting wide and getting narrower and narrower, it can usually pinpoint the street pretty quickly without you having to enter the whole thing.

As far as the actual speed of generating the routing, if it takes a minute or two, I don't really mind. If it took 5 minutes, well...that would be different. Even if it solved part of the route first, and then the rest took another minute or two, that would be okay.

I've done some route logic coding in the past, so I understand the possibilities can chew up a lot of processing time.

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

One way I noticed that Tom-Tom Go is able to trim down the entry process is by requiring you to enter State...it can usually pinpoint the street pretty quickly without you having to enter the whole thing.

Yep, we use the same approach. On the other hand, RB's approach with parsing natural language address makes more sense for a computer with a keyboard. It is faster to type "Philadelphia, PA" than to select "PA" from a combo or even type this into a text field and then to move to next one.

As far as the actual speed of generating the routing, if it takes a minute or two, I don't really mind.

I have not tried a long route with Routebuddy, but in QCar, a 300-400km route takes about a minute. TomTom does it in under 20 seconds. That we cannot beat it even on a Core 2 Duo 2GHz computer is simply a disgrace for us ;-)

I've done some route logic coding in the past, so I understand the possibilities can chew up a lot of processing time.

In our software, the main bottleneck is the map storage. 80% of time during the route caclulation is taken by retrieving the road network data, only 20% is the path searching calcultion as such (we use A*). We can reduce the time by tweaking the heuristic estimate function, but then we get routes that are far from optimal.

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

I just downloaded the trial of Routebuddy. It now has turn by turn route navigation with voice and I thought, well, okay...maybe now is the time to buy. I'll try it out to see if it works on my old PPC Mini.

Is it just me?

Hmm..

I think what it comes down to is not getting in touch with Support and/or reading our manual, there's an awful lot we could have done to brief you on getting the best out of RouteBuddy and at the same time understanding that what we do (and have built in a new way) is for a reason, which takes the product into the future.


Neil
------------------
www.RouteBuddy.com

Originally Posted by Jirka Jirout

Yeah, I use Routebuddy to visualize logs from my cars and to prepare materials and print maps for our navigation competitions, but the interface for geocoding and routing is kind of weird.

The iTunes style interface is weird for map work?

Of course we'll always be looking at refining RouteBuddy over time and will make improvements to the interface but we do have a map UI - and the product is on the market.


Neil
-----------------
www.RouteBuddy.com

Originally Posted by Jirka Jirout

Yes, the current position shows automatically and it is quite reliable.

The position showing on RouteBuddy is down to the signals received from the GPS device; RouteBuddy only shows the information it receives.


Neil
-------------------------
www.RouteBuddy.com

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

One way I noticed that Tom-Tom Go is able to trim down the entry process is by requiring you to enter State, then city, then street and it guesses pretty quickly about both the start and end points. By starting wide and getting narrower and narrower, it can usually pinpoint the street pretty quickly without you having to enter the whole thing.

TomTom
- Tap, move finger, tap, move finger, tap move finger, tap number?
RouteBuddy
- Type part of the address? ...and click once on the desired result.

I've done some route logic coding in the past, so I understand the possibilities can chew up a lot of processing time.

...and some, which is where all the hard code work and skill goes in to deal with this sort of data. (Which is why there are only a handful of companies worldwide in this market.)


Neil
------------------
www.RouteBuddy.com

Originally Posted by Jirka Jirout

I have not tried a long route with Routebuddy, but in QCar, a 300-400km route takes about a minute. TomTom does it in under 20 seconds. That we cannot beat it even on a Core 2 Duo 2GHz computer is simply a disgrace for us ;-)

It depends...
- Look at the whole picture, rather than just the distance and the time taken to calculate, look at the data involved and what is asked of it, viz. you are missing parts of the equation.
- TomTom use less data for a lower resolution and RouteBuddy use more for a higher resolution.

In our software, the main bottleneck is the map storage. 80% of time during the route caclulation is taken by retrieving the road network data, only 20% is the path searching calcultion as such (we use A*). We can reduce the time by tweaking the heuristic estimate function, but then we get routes that are far from optimal.

If you take a look around there's really only a handful of companies offering consumer versions of a mapping product, if it really was that easy then everyone would be doing it. If you take into account the others making map apps for mobile phones then the numbers are still small; as you know the data is very complex and so have to be the applications that use it.
----------------------------------------------------


I saw this post when it was created (a year and a half ago now) and kept an eye on it just to see what any responses would be, and also to see how far QCar would progress in that time or even if QCar would be released.

In that respect I think Jirka's honesty of the magnitude of work facing his map engineering colleague was enlightening, it's also a reflection of the time consuming, intricate and detailed work that goes into map software engineering.
----------------------------------------------------


Jirka and the RouteBuddy team last met some three years ago, back in 2006. At that time RouteBuddy had been on sale for some months and in R&D for over two years before that. I suspect, like us, QCar have been finding out that working with map data is never as straightforward as one hopes in the beginning, and as soon as one issue is tackled another one can, and often does, present itself. (Or in multiples thereof as we have suffered!)

As always, we here at RouteBuddy will continue to refine the software and add new maps, for which I'll add a summary in the next post.

Jirka, you've got my phone number and email address; whenever you'd like to catch up it would be good to talk. :-)


Neil
------------------
www.RouteBuddy.com

To summarize, here is where the RouteBuddy product line stands now:

- RouteBuddy 2.5
Can use both Road and Topographic Maps

- RouteBuddy Road Maps (Tele Atlas)
Complete coverage of all the worldwide countries that Tele Atlas offer for all continents. (Bar Antarctica! ;-)

- RouteBuddy USGS Topographic Maps
The first seven states derived from 1:24,000 scale USGS maps are now available and more will be released as soon as they have been rendered and are available from the RouteBuddy Store. Complete US coverage planned before end of 2009. (Note: There is a sample in the RouteBuddy 2.5 demo.)

RouteBuddy USGS derived Topographic Maps are superior to anything else yet derived from the same data, please refer to our 'News' article here for more information: http://www.routebuddy.com/news/index.html

- RouteBuddy Ordnance Survey Maps
We'll be releasing 1:25,000 scale maps for use within RouteBuddy in a very short space of time. The incredible detail available in these maps makes using them in RouteBuddy on the Mac ideal for many users and solutions. Sample image here: http://tinyurl.com/OS-Forum


Of course, there's much to come. ;-)


Neil
------------------
www.RouteBuddy.com