recent geocaching update (2-12)

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 10:39 am

booooooo, I already miss the old maps, when they introduced the beta maps I could still access the old ones, they were much better, now since the update they have killed the old maps and all I can use are the new ones.

here are my choices, Mapquest, mapquest aerial, cloudmade, openstreet, opencycle, or mytopo

all of them are pretty rough, why couldn't they have a bing or google map option? now caching is going to be much harder for me, or take more time to map each one out.

sorry for ranting, but the maps ARE my GPS and they just took it away.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 10:42 am

you play without a hand held?

Joined: 2009-06-05 Posts: 2127 Location: Menominee, MI

He does. He uses the maps to help navigate.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:18 am

of my 1192 caches ive logged all were without a GPS except maybe 2 tribute caches in which I was with a group.

ive found many more with a GPS but they are not logged as a find under Muggle B, maybe a write note

and the more I use these new maps, the more bummed I am. They don't even load all the way half the time.

ugh...

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:20 am

Muggle B wrote:

booooooo, I already miss the old maps, when they introduced the beta maps I could still access the old ones, they were much better, now since the update they have killed the old maps and all I can use are the new ones.

here are my choices, Mapquest, mapquest aerial, cloudmade, openstreet, opencycle, or mytopo

all of them are pretty rough, why couldn't they have a bing or google map option? now caching is going to be much harder for me, or take more time to map each one out.

sorry for ranting, but the maps ARE my GPS and they just took it away.

While I don't really mind the new maps all that much there is one option that I don't like at all. That being the mapquest aerial it doesn't even load some of the tiles and is just plain slow.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:21 am

removed...sigh there is no delete

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:23 am

removed

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:41 am

Certainly miss the hybrid option for a satellite view - what road is that????.... it forces us to jump to the original cache page, where the old Google and Bing options are still accessible.....when that's gone, we'll need to go directly to Google or Bing and plug in the coord's.....but don't do it too much, or you'll be part of the .35%

Suppose, given time, OSM/mapquest will catch up, but who wants to wait and get wet in a whiz match. GS can spin it all they want, but until there is a replacement as good or better than what we did have, can't fully make the switch. Just an opine..

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:53 am

you can also take a PQ and upload it directly into Google Earth

WGA Member Joined: 2007-11-26 Posts: 3259

Because I'm too lazy to research it, what was the reason for this change?

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 12:55 pm

gotta run wrote:

Because I'm too lazy to research it, what was the reason for this change?

Cost

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:29 pm

~3 million a year

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:49 pm

comment removed...too much angst for a Wed.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 2:08 pm

There still is the google map view on the cache page and if you click google map in the maps section it kicks it over to Google.
I'm not happy either with the OSM maps, but over time they'll improve if we add our data, I'll miss the sat view though.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 2:09 pm

It's change folks. I'm going to embrace it (the new me hopefully). I'm just glad Groundspeak didn't make this a super-premium membership feature and charge us extra for it.

There are lots of options to export data and analyze them with your "tool of choice". Another option is linking from the cache page to Google Maps (still an option) with the full advantages of google.

I also LOVE LOVE LOVE the way PQ's now work with the maps, so I can see a quick visual of what I'm dealing with.