this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Hello! I'm looking for a foss navigator app for my android device, but all navigator apps I've tried (OSMand, organic map) are missing a feature: when I calculate the route from point A to point B, on Google Maps a few possible routes are displayed, and then I chose the one I prefer; on other apps only one possible route is displayed, and if for any motivation I don't want to pass from a certain street or something like this, I have no other options. Is there an app (or a way on these apps) to make it calculate a few possible routes instead of just one?

thanks in advance!

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

On Organic Maps and surely Osmand as well, you can add additional waypoints to your route to force a specific one. That's the way I do it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I also don't understand why I can't be shown 2-3 options, it's incredibly convenient. Manually adding waypoints, or manually telling it to avoid roads, isn't and it's also not the same thing. On Google I see whole alternative routes, in osmand I only see an adapted route when I make a change (waypoint/avoid), but I still only see that one route now. I no longer see the old one to compare, and switching back is cumbersome.

I don't really understand why a few options aren't shown as a default, maybe with slightly certain criteria if possible for a particular a to B. Like one avoiding highways, or hills, or just smaller roads. Maybe a shortest and a quickest, maybe one with fewest lights. If that's not possible, just show some comparable options with similar travel time? Would really improve the experience a lot.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because the processing is done on your phone, not by servers with enormous quantities of map data stores in RAM in the cloud.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

but google maps also works offline, does it store the routes in memory? is it more convenient than calculating the route locally?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

We're talking about servers storing tens or hundreds of gigabytes of map data in RAM. Your phone doesn't even have that capability. That's why calculating a route on OSM is slow and Google is fast

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

exactly! It shouldn't be too difficult to implement in my opinion, but it would be very very useful