Map moves in the direction while recording a track
Is there any way to have the map change direction as you are recording a track. For example if you are walking to the west, the map would shift to the top as you continue walking west, if you turn to the south, the map would then turn to the south. Similar to what navigation systems use in cars and Gaia maps uses. I am converting over from Gaia and I really like the functionality of Sartopo but would really like to have this feature in the field as I am concentrating on my K9.
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Thanks for the feedback on this everyone! If you haven't seen it already, we have added Heading Up as a new feature on the mobile app. You can find more details on this blog post: https://blog.caltopo.com/2024/05/22/new-feature-heading-up/
Go test it out in the field!
Yes I second this request, it would make navigating areas easier. Only my opinion.
It’s not like it’s new, car navigation operates that way and GAIA has it as an option. I think once people used it, there would be no going back to the map only pointing north
As an option would be great! If you like it then select it. If not leave it as is.
This is my number one enhancement! Would be so useful!
Hello everyone, you'll be happy to hear that we're currently working on building out this feature! We'd love to gather some more information from everyone about this feature request.
At a high level we'd like to know:
1. What is your intended use case for this feature? Tell us about when you'll use this and how you see it helping you.
2. What are your expectations for what this feature should do and how it should work? How would you expect to toggle between 'North Up' and 'Heading Up'?
3. Many other mapping apps also allow you to rotate the map freely by placing two fingers on the screen of your device and pivoting them. Despite this being fairly common functionality, I don't see any explicit mentions of it in this thread. Is this functionality not as desirable as 'track up'?
Feel free to either respond here, or reach out to us at help@caltopo.com.
We appreciate your enthusiasm for improving CalTopo!
mikeofferman, Chesco Search, mblain62
This is also a highly desired feature for us, and I'm about to start a navigation workshop for my local outdoors club where using Caltopo on the desktop and the caltopo app are a centerprice of the workshop, with 12 participants currently signed up.
Us volunteers come from both backpacking and an orienteering backgrounds. When using a paper map, we are used to orienting the map so that "up" matches the direction of travel. As others have said, most car nav apps (Google Earth, Waze) usually work in this mode as well. I'm assuming that if you have access to the electronic compass on the device then you know what direction the phone is pointing. You already use that information to show the blue arrow and/or the "Show Heading Line" pointed in the proper direction.
So in addition to Display Options -> Show Heading Line, you could have a Display Options -> "Orient Map in Direction of Travel"
Otherwise, a lot of people get confused when they are say, walking south toward an objective and when they look on the screen, they are moving toward the bottom of the screen instead of the top. My brain is okay working with a map that's always pointed to North but other people find it confusing.
Your #3 being able to use some "gesture" or control to rotate the map. I'm not sure how useful that is. I see that the Gaia app has this feature but I've never used it personally. I'm either using it in "North up" or "Track up" . I can't speak to other competing phone apps.
Thanks Jeff! We appreciate you taking the time to provide more information about your use cases and expectations around this feature. We'll take it into consideration as we continue working on the feature.
Hi - SAR user and trainer here - allowing the choice is great (though personally I am a huge fan of north up and of not relying on orienting the map) and ultimately we want all users to be comfortable with either, at least enough to recognize them, and to know that changing mode to their preference might clear up a lot of confusion.
On the third question, I specifically think that the two-finger-map-rotate is a bad thing. We don't see any benefit to the two-finger rotation and would specifically very much prefer that it not be included (at least not by default) to prevent inadvertent map rotation during pinch-zoom, which could be more confusing and misleading than just being in the non-preferred north-vs-heading-up mode. I have been caught by it several times in Google maps.
Thanks for soliciting the feedback!
Most of the said navigational maps have the icon that when you tap it it would change modes. I think the default should be what it is in the present configuration, then if people like myself prefer the map rotate to track then we tap the icon. I to am not a fan of the finger rotate.
That's valuable feedback caver456. We've been debating 'two-finger-map-rotate' and your opinion will be taken into account in that debate. Thanks!
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