Organic maps is nicer gui and directions, i'm trying to use it more.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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And you can edit them and add places that are missing
For most people Organic Maps is the move.
I love OSMand and it has become my digital pin board of places I've been to over the years. It can do a lot (for example I have a preset with sat imagery and a transparent topo map overlay for hiking) but it can be clunky, and a lot of cool stuff is hard to find and change in the menus.
I love OSMand. It does exactly what a map should do. It doesn't have these weird user unfriendly quirks that Here and Google Maps have that make them harder to use.
I just have one problem with it, it gives some directions via notifications instead of voice, for some reason, which is baaaad when you're driving.
This is perfect! Ty
GPS (and cellular) doesn't work in tunnels, and it takes a number of seconds for it to reconnect and get GPS coordinates again once you come out of the tunnel.
This is true for all GPS apps and services.
That is true, but it did regain my GPS coordinates and continued to track my location, but the navigation instructions telling me where to turn etc. disappeared and never came back. Luckily I wasn't alone in the car so they just took over navigation for me
And it still might take a minute or two for your cellular to reconnect to gather further directions.
Some apps just might be better about the cellular reconnect side than others, I haven't tried them all.
Even then, it can take over a minute to reconnect to some cellular networks after a tunnel blackout, which may exceed the timeout of some mapping app data requests.
There isn't really a reason for the app not to fake your journey through the tunnel. It knows you're about to enter a tunnel, and it knows you will probably lose GPS signal. It should just show you driving through that tunnel until an estimated time you should exit, then if you don't reconnect in time it should pause at that spot until you catch up.
I hear ya, but it would have to be done with at least some form of red safety indicator, like..
"NO CONNECTION, LOCATION ESTIMATED"
On a side note, why don't Teslas obey the law that says not to stop in tunnels?
If I'm honest I'm actually wondering why none if those drivers were paying attention. Cars blow tyres or otherwise stop, it's not limited to misbehaving teslas. The tesla wasn't braking hard and suddenly, it just slowed down.
In my mind the drivers should have been paying more attention.
Sorry, I know we like to hate on teslas here. I still wouldn't buy one (or be a passenger).
Indeed you're right, the following drivers should have been paying more attention. Regardless, shit happens, whether it's a wet noodle or a dry chip controlling the vehicle.
How about a sideline test, send a half dozen electric vehicles through a tunnel, all on autopilot, and have the lead vehicle blow a tire. What would all the following vehicles on auto drive end up doing?
This is actually a perfect use case for a car controlling itself. Automatically applying emergency brakes is something cars (not just self driving cars) have been doing for a while now (in higher end cars).
The thing that puts me off a Tesla (other than the owned by a nazi who bought his way into government thing) is that the fatality rate is double the average, and the weird doors that unless you have been explicitly shown the emergency handle, you're trapped inside after an accident because the normal door opening latch loses power as part of requirements to not electrocute emergency personnel.
The Cybertruck is scarier, because the emergency personnel will struggle to break a window to get you out or use the jaws of life to cut you out on account of the armoured doors and bullet proof windows.
Sometimes, brakes are not the way.
Sometimes, steer the wheel hard left or right real quick to avoid a side impact.
I guess AI hasn't ever lived a day in the real world...
The benefit to cars auto braking is that cars can start braking a second before a person, with a much quicker reaction period. Plus we saw in your video how many people driving are paying attention 😅.
But this is not an argument for self driving, cars can and do have this function with the driver also paying attention for the best of both worlds.
I've been in a situation before where braking would have been the worst idea.
Like a split second later and I would have slammed into the side of the dude that backed out in front of me.
But I realized that very quickly and decided not to hit the brakes at all. I just quickly jerked my steering wheel to the left, which minimized the damages to the corners of our bumpers.
Ask AI to do that kind of maneuver on the fly and it'll totally fuck up, because AI doesn't actually know how to drive..
Let's be honest here, if it was as close as you're implying, a solid 50% or more of people would not have avoided the accident. Just look around when you're out driving and see how many people are paying that close attention. I still think auto braking is better than nothing. Remembering cars have ABS and you'd still be able to steer around as needed. Presumably the car would let you override by pressing the accelerator.
I'm being perfectly honest here, I tend to have very fast reaction time behind the wheel. But you're right, not everyone has fast reflexes in an emergency pinch like that.
Still, I'm not about to wait on the lag of computer chips and shit to just have to guess if the vehicle is going to respond the way I'm trying to control it.
I don't want lag, I want 100% realtime control.
Hell, I'm a nerd and I don't trust chips.
Edit/Addendum: I prefer older model vehicles that weren't built with spyware...
The commercial options guess where you are in the tunnel based on crowdsource speed outside of the tunnel in both directions. When you come out of the tunnel you don't have GPS service but they will continue to guess until they reconnect which is a rather nice feature.
I have had organic maps freak out coming out of a tunnel and just never reconnect.
i have been using magic earth with no issues.
Sadly traffic is not available in lots of places :(
Another vote for Magic Earth, the other providers do not have addresses past street - level in my location. No complaints at all :)
Thanks, I'll give that a try after Organic Maps. I had the same issue with no street numbers too
I usually use magic earth and i really like it. I've been trying organic maps because it was in the fdroid store but i'm not really a fan of the user interface. It's only been a few days and i think i need to mess with it more to get used to it, but magic earth was great at finding places and navigating and the user interface was pretty intuitive.
Best I've seen so far is organic maps. It's very good on local It shows you all the building numbers around you which is kind of nice. However it does not work well on long trips. And more than once I've had to download fairly large blocks of extra tiles if I'm not on an interstate.
To get you back and forth to a doctor or a dentist or a couple of towns over it's fabulous.
I prefer organic maps to osmand but neither is great. My old Garmin car GPS was in some ways better. Google's main competitor is unfortunately probably Apple Maps.
I guess buying a car GPS system is still an option 🤔
I use "HERE we go" in Germany
I used MapFactor many times during trips.
You can either download free maps from OSM or paid maps from... I think it's TomTom? Or is it Garmin? I forget, I've never used them.
Anyway the interface ain't that friendly, but there's a LOT of points of interests, and there's live traffic if you have internet access. It has a few cool features too. It can be used via Android Auto and can even use your phone screen's reflection on your windshield as a HUD!
The only caveat is you have to download the maps and they can take a lot of storage space depending how large an area you need.
Edit : yeah it's TomTom