malibubts
Adventurer
Make one, or just ask anything here!
New version of Gaia GPS released
- Thread starter 1Louder
- Start date
Make one, or just ask anything here!
1Louder
Explorer
Ask away! Can't control other posts.
1Louder
Explorer
Can you provide a bit more info?
How large of areas are you trying to download? How often will you be in those areas at close to the same time? Meaning One shouldn't try to download the entire US if they are really only going to be in a given area at the moment.
I download as needed and once a year clear out all of my old maps and then download new ones as required.
Keeping waypoints and tracks is a different story. You can keep those as long as you like and can choose whether you just want to store them at gaiagps.com or sync with your device(s).
VerMonsterRV
Gotta Be Nuts
Although I do not use Gaia (yet, as I am still finishing off a sailing trip, overlanding in on the horizon) I am a developer and run a site for sailors. I ran it for 4 years for "free", which just meant I paid the bills. I put in a subscription model to help pay the monthly costs, occasionally I run into the same feedback as this thread shows about Gaia. I have been a professional developer for almost 30 years and have seen the market evolve in how to support paying for software. Lets face facts, developers are people who go to work, just like any other profession, and should to be paid for it. I don't know of any profession out there willing to work for free and somehow I doubt the people at Gaia are getting rich off this app. When I look at the "Company" page on their website I see 9 people (and a dog) working on this software, as the Aussie's say "Good on them" for taking the leap and building software that seems to fill the needs for some people.
Scoutn79
Adventurer
That really is a question that can't be easily answered. With GAIA you can download maps at different levels (IE 1:24k 1:100k for comparison) There are about 20 different levels of detail available for most maps and each level uses up exponentially more space. Then you have the ability to download more than one map style and either superimpose them on each other or just use the different maps one at a time.
For instance one topo map I have of central Colorado covering roughly 14x20 miles and downloaded at level 17 is about 800MB. Best I can tell, level 16 is close to a 7.5' map.
The western half of colorado downloading GAIA TOPO map base is 19.5G. That is just one map.
Darrell
Superduty
Adventurer
On a similar note with regards to memory.
There is also a way to download Google satellite imagery. I set Gaia up on my tablet to be able to do that. However, when I tried to download imagery at a high resolution, I was astounded at how much memory it would take. Basically, it's not usable. The smallest area uses so much memory it's useless.
It would be cool to have that high res imagery in the back country, but I discovered it's just not possible. There is also a limit to how much Gaia will let you download at one time. That limit makes downloading the imagery even more difficult since you can only download a very small area at once.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
MountainBiker
Experience Seeker
I hope the Android version is out soon!
Scoutn79
Adventurer
I have the latest Android paid version of GAIA and it is the best off road mapping app I have tried out of 4 or 5.
That being said......
I don't think GAIA is very serious about the Android version. I have been keeping in touch, off and on for the better part of a year with the techs there, about bugs with the Android version and was told that certain bugs I was emailing them about would be fixed with the new version. Well the new version came out (this was from about 4 months ago or so) and not only were the old bugs still there but new bugs were implemented making the app a real PITA to work with. I have to actually force stop the app to restart it, just closing and reopening the app doesn't work, I asked if tere was a way to revert back to the old version before the update to get rid of the new bugs and just deal witht he original ones but apparently there is no way to do that.
GAIA is the best I have found so far but the Android version is seriously lacking in competent support.
Darrell
dstock
Explorer
That's a shame about Android support, guess I will continue looking for other options.
1Louder
Explorer
A new version will be released soon. Keep checking blog.gaiagps.com for details. Once it has been released I will try to remember to post the link here as well.
snare
Adventurer
any idea on the eta of that?
Scoutn79
Adventurer
I installed the update (Android 6.7.7) a few days ago. The list for the update showed a fix to help maps load faster.
None of the many other bugs were addressed. I don't notice any difference in the speed of maps loading but I haven't used it much since the update. Sometimes, but not always, the maps would load slow when online and when navigating downloaded maps offline but not an issue when navigating while driving that I noticed.
There are many other issues more important that should be addressed IMO.
Darrell
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1Louder
Explorer
A new version, major release is coming out soon. I can't promise it will fix all issues but it is going to be a big code change overall. Stay tuned....