Quote from Guido on 29.12.2020, 09:09

Understand what you mean. Scenic auto pauses when you don’t move for a longer period of time (90 seconds). There is a margin in the ‘not moving’ (to compensate for gps inaccuracies simulating movement) so that’s why at very low speeds you might go into pause too.

Auto resume initiates when you’re 100 meters away from where pause (manual or auto) was initiated. That distance is this big to account for GPS inaccuracies too. Especially in scenarios where people go indoors (e.g. to pay for gas) you don’t want the app to auto-resume because GPS signal starts jumping around indoors.

Is it that you don’t have voice while paused? (You should... if you don’t than that’s a bug)

Or are you afraid it will affect your tracking stats? If so, it won’t. There is a total ride time and a riding time. Time at traffic lights and in stand still traffic (time when paused) does not count towards riding time and is not taken into account in avg speed calculation (avg speed is based on riding time, not total time).

Quote from BikerMike on 29.12.2020, 19:01

Thanks for the fast reply. My main concern is that when passing through a congested town with heavy traffic and only moving slowly it is possible to miss a turning as I would have gone passed the turning before the voice fired back up. This happened several times on my simulation at walking pace. I am fearful as I consider congested cities to be dangerous enough without my GPS going into pause mode. The voice may not have fired up until a route recalculation perhaps as I was using a music app in background. I understand why you have pause mode for tracking and the stats. I'm not worried about the tracking stats. I'd be very happy for these to included stationary time. Is possible to have the option to prevent the pause mode so it's never an issue.

Some extra context, I was simulating being out of mobile reach which I often am so in my new phone I had no sim card, I was using a music app (Tidal) playing in the background from downloaded music, and I had ensured that the GPS was ON (using the down arrow below the time when hitting the pause / resume button and getting the pop up with GPS ON GPS Off), The phone was switched on and the scenic  app was being displayed on the screen.

Quote from Guido on 29.12.2020, 19:23

Ok. This sounds like a bug. Even when paused (when the resume button is blinking) the navigation voice instructions should continue. Not only after a recalculation. Even the visual navigation instructions (the arrow and big text on top of scree ) should update.

Let me investigate this further after the holidays. Also, for Scenic 3, I will make the auto-pause optional.

Meanwhile, I have given you premium for a month so you can test if it’s related to using credits for voice.

I don’t believe it’s related to you using a music app in the background, but perhaps also worth a try to test without.

Quote from Guido on 29.12.2020, 19:29

For clarity. The pause function pauses the tracking only. Not the navigation. (Unless you choose GPS OFF when manually pausing of course)

Quote from BikerMike on 30.12.2020, 00:25

Wow, what great feedback. In return I'll do some more testing tonight to see if the "bug" is related to the music playing and report back.

Quote from BikerMike on 30.12.2020, 07:52

I’ve been out testing scenic at walking pace again as an extreme case of traffic congestion. These observations may be useful for you to make the software more robust to extreme (poor) conditions. I did not experience any such problems when testing Scenic in the car.

I don’t believe the issue I had is anything to do with the music app as I had the same issue with every app closed down and only Scenic open on my new phone without a sim card and also on my old phone with a sim card. (But with Scenic active only on one phone at a time). 

On both phones the location services were set for Scenic to Always. 

The first testing was not touching the phone and letting the blue resume pop up and clear itself. I observed that it normally gives be instructions to turn at 60m before a junction. My observation also was that my location on the route was correct, it generally counted down the distance to the junction smoothly but would often not give me verbal instructions, which I retrospectively think was when the blue pause pop up was in place at the 60m point though I did not make this connection at the time. I frequently did not get the verbal instructions which I associated with the pausing behaviour. I also noticed that occasionally the distance to the junction at the top of the screen was not counting down in 10m steps and would jump 20-40m in one go.

I then repeated the route but every time I saw the blue pause pop up I tapped it to clear it. What I observed was the count down behaviour of the distance to the junction at the top of the screen was more often jumpy and on two occasions on each phone the count down of the distance to the junction stopped completely this happened showing between 180 m and 80 m to the junction and continued to show this same value right up to the junction. On these four occasions I did not get the turn instructions, presumably because it did not count down through the 60m trigger point. In each case my indicated position on the map progressed correctly towards the junction (see attached). I followed the route shown on the map and took the turn indicated on the map itself then shortly after turning Scenic seemed to jump back into life, recognised I had turned onto a new road and showed the distance to the next turn correctly and frequently gave me verbal instruction such as in 300m turn left onto whatever. The turning onto the next road seemed to be the trigger. Yesterday I was only following verbal instructions so the trigger would be a recalculation when it decided I had missed the turning.

I hope this helps as clearly this is a fantastic app for motorcyclists. Subject to a bit more testing in the car, I am definitely looking towards making this my reference biking app. I just wanted to test it out before I had a group of motorcyclists behind me. I’ll definitely look for the option button to disable auto-pause in Scenic 3. That would be suit me well.

Quote from Guido on 31.12.2020, 13:48

Sorry for the late reply. I will look into this in detail and respond after new year. First hunch: round trips behave somewhat different (a bit buggy perhaps). If you get the chance, try with a non round trip (where start and destination are more than 300 meters apart).

 

 

Happy new year 😁

Quote from BikerMike on 02.01.2021, 07:45

Hi Guido

I've been out testing again at walking pace. As suggested I set a single destination about 2 km away with about 6 turns. I did not notice any issues with the count down to junctions which seemed smooth. On the walk there, I let the blue pause pop up appear and ignored it until it cleared itself. It was clear that anytime the blue pause pop up was showing when I was at 60 m from the junction it would not give me a verbal instruction but the screen showed the instructions. On the way back, setting home as a destination, I cleared the blue pause pop up as soon as it appeared and I got turn instructions each time except on the one occasion when the blue pause pop up appeared just as I reached 60m from the junction. I tried to save the tracks under my rides. They appeared there but did not have any actual tracks. Hope this helps. Thanks

Quote from Guido on 02.01.2021, 08:00

Ok. This is good news. It seems that we isolated the ‘no voice instruction’ from the ‘no screen instruction’ by using a non-round trip. The round trip is currently a bit buggy, which will be fixed in Scenic 3. have a look here for more information on that: https://scenic.app/forum/topic/routing-in-the-wrong-direction/#postid-908

Now for the track not showing, which seems to be a separate issue as well. Is this the first / only ride where this happened? If so, it could be that the syncing mechanism got corrupted. Could you try logging out and logging in again? That will reset the syncing mechanism.  You will have to download the offline maps again (no credits needed for a te-download) and it is possible that you loose the ride for which no track information was stored.

Now then for the problem of this topic... ‘no voice instruction when paused’ or rather ‘prevent auto pause’. I remember now why I mute the voice instructions during pause. It's because I don’t want Scenic to speak ‘from my pocket’ when I’m, for example, inside to pay for gas. (It happened to me). Therefore I would not want to change that behavior. Seems to me that having an option to disable auto-pause would suite your needs best. Or perhaps an option to not mute the voice during pause.  Depends if you would like the pause from tracking perspective, or not.

 

Quote from BikerMike on 02.01.2021, 22:12

Ok I'll redo some testing on the tracks over the next few days after logging out and back in again and reloading maps.

I can see there are really two operation modes. 1. as you have set it up for normal riding, and 2. a mode for slow congested city riding where a settings option to disable the auto pause seems just fine. In the latter case there is an option to pause using the down arrow below the time so gas stations, lunch stops etc is well covered. So my vote would simply be a general setting to allow disabling of the auto pause. Its great to see a responsive development of an app like this. Brilliant.

Quote from BikerMike on 25.04.2021, 02:57

Hi Guido

I used scenic a lot on a recent 14,500 km road trip across Oz and back. Due to COVID we avoided built up areas as far as possible. With the pausing issue, as long as I had the screen mounted on the bike I could see my next directions even if it paused when I was stuck in traffic or road works. I would be a big fan of getting that disable auto pause option back. Non of the other issues were a real problem and it was only once or twice that the tracking on the screen seemed to pause so really a non issue. The biggest issue in Australia was it trying to take me down dirt roads as short cuts. I needed to plan routes with a map and even then ignore some of the instructions. Overall I would rank Scenic as heads and shoulders above anything else I've come across and am a total convert. I love the way you are responsive to your  users.

Quote from Guido on 25.04.2021, 08:22

Hi Mike,

Sound good and thanks for testing this thoroughly! Really appreciate the time and effort you are putting into this. Scenic 3 is progressing well. Should be ready in summer (your winter). I'm adding back the switch to turn of the auto-pause. With the new maps in Scenic 3 the dirt-road problem should also be resolved. Overall the new map provider has much better map data, and an 'avoid unpaved' switch for regular routing 🙂.