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I've been experimenting with a route "movie" - you press play, and a little canoe moves across the screen and shows photos of your route. It was so much fun, and strangely addicting, that I decided to add it even though it isn't finished yet and still has some issues. Go ahead and play with it if you like. First calculate a route. After the calculation results show up, scroll down until you see the tab that says "Route Movie (experimental)." Open it and follow the instructions. Some of the issues I know about:
- The canoe goes directly from the start to the end of the portage (doesn't follow the portage track)
- While you can "rewind" the canoe and start the canoe over, the photos won't come back up unless you exit and reenter
- Some speed/zoom combinations may appear choppy (but it shouldn't be too bad)
- The photos at the very end of the route may not show up
- I've been testing it on Chrome. I'm not sure how well it will work on IE or other browsers right now.
It's probably not very useful from a planning standpoint, but it is still fun! Let me know if you find other problems or have any suggestions for it. Edited by user Sunday, January 24, 2016 10:29:14 AM(UTC)
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Just gave it a try Ben - I think it is a fun idea. Did you use my steering competency to model the canoe icon when it is flipping back and forth around corners on the route?! ;) It definitely reminds me of some my zig-zagging while I worked on my j-stroke last summer early in our route!
I did find that it's logic for pulling up pictures seemed off. For example, I mapped my loop from last summer (Sawbill EP, North through Cherokee to South Temperance, South to Kelly, back to Sawbill) and it started displaying my South Temperance photos when the canoe was on Cherokee. Some photos from campsites didn't seem to display at all. This isn't a complaint since you are quite clear about it being experimental. I'm just letting you know what I saw when I tried it. Overall, I like the idea!
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Thanks for trying it out. I'm not sure why the South Temperance photos showed up early. I couldn't get it to do the same thing. I could think of why they would show up late, but not early... I think I know why the campsite photos didn't show up, though. There are a couple of things happening (for now):
- Some photos I specifically exclude from the list of route photos. Periodically I go through the campsite photos and mark which ones do not show any of the lake or scenery (like a picture of a tent pad). I don't want these showing up in the potentially huge list of photos since they don't really show the route. I'm talking about the photos that are in the "Photos Near Route" tab after you calculate a route. For now I am using the same list and order for the photos, so some campsite ones will be excluded. I'll probably keep this as the default (but see my note below).
- If a campsite or area has a lot of photos, you may never see them. If photos go off the right of the screen, they are hidden. I was having problems with too many photos being shown, so I decided to only show as many as would fit on one line on the screen. I'm not sure of the best way to deal with this scenario. Any ideas? What would look best?
I am planning on adding an option that would show all of the photos from one or more albums (whether or not I have the photos marked to show on a route). This would allow you to put together an album of a trip and show a "trip movie."
I like how Google does it's satellite mode on their maps - list of pictures at the bottom, and if you hover over it, it shows the location. I want to do something like that, too. I still have a ways to go, though, before I get to this point.
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Sorry for the delayed reply. I just tried again now on the same route, same PC, etc. and the South Temperance photos showed up correctly, not early. I'm not sure if you changed anything, but it works the way I would expect it to work now. Regarding photos, excluding some photos makes a lot of sense. Last year, I specifically took some campsite photos without my gear in it for the purpose of adding them to this site. I figured that may help someone best visualize the site as they would see it when they first arrive. However, that detail isn't needed for a route overview and is probably best kept specific to the campsite. As for running out of space due to a long line of photos, would it be possible to actually minimize the map and use more screen space to show additional pictures? During the movie, the map only serves as a reference to where the photos are taken, but the real interest is in the pictures. So what if you shrank the map into one of the corners and used the rest of the window space to show a collage of photos? If there only is one photo, maybe it would just display a larger version to fill that window space. Over time, there will be more an more pictures on the website, so you could also randomize the pictures that are displayed. I'm not sure if any of this is possible, I'm just trying to highlight the exciting part of the feature, the pictures.
I like the idea of being able to create my own trip movie from albums also.
Overall, this is a fun feature I can see playing with, especially on these cold winter days, dreaming up future adventures!
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