Suggestions for the apps

Are you missing some features? Is something hard to use or understand? If you have any great ideas for the apps, this would be a good place to discuss them.

I’ll try to keep this post updated with suggested features.

General suggestions

  • add zoom
  • better exposure of photos in low light
  • function for saving all photos (as they are deleted when they are uploaded)
  • battery save mode (turn off preview video etc)
  • audio notifications

iOS specific

Android specific

Windows phone specific

3 Likes

When mapping from a car, I miss being able to zoom. This can avoid showing some or a lot of the dash board. In a car I often have the selection between getting a lot of dash board or so much sky that the images get too dark. This could be fixed with a “crop the bottom” feature or an auto exposure that ignores the upper part of the image

When mapping in less than perfect light, most images get a lot of motion blur. A higher shutter speed would fix that. 1/150 - 1/200 should do it. Just bump the ISO / amplification right up. ISO becomes easier to remove all the time, but motion blur does not.

I would like to find a way to easily measure exposure in the lower part of the viewfinder when in driving mode on Android. Seems there is no api as in ios. Suggestions welcome!

(migrated from https://github.com/mapillary/mapillary_issues/issues/1322)

It would be really nice and quite simple to add a “copy before upload” option to the app settings. It would copy the pictures to /…/DCIM/Camera or to any other directory before uploading.

Currently, keeping a copy of the pictures taken with the application requires a manual operation: the users has to copy the pictures to another directory than /…/android/data/app.mapillary/files/mapillary
It works well, but I sometimes forget and lose my pictures. I can redowload them from the website, but it takes time, they are watermarked, etc.

Haven’t thought about zoom, but I can see it would be useful.

If you are using iPhone to capture, you can tap the screen where you want exposure to be measured. So the best option would be to tilt it upwards a little bit so that the dash isn’t visible, and then tap on the road so that exposure will be measured there instead of in the middle of the view (which would probably be the sky).

It’s a good idea about exposure settings. I’ll add to my TODO list to investigate how easy it is to measure exposure time and adjust shutter speed and ISO accordingly, even perhaps in conjunction with speed measured using the GPS.

So, for Android, I have added a multi-select in the review sequence grid that does exactly that and copies to the phone in the next release. But yes, we could enable that in general via a setting.

That’s really nice, thanks!
Could it be defaulted by a setting it would be even greater, but thanks to that new feature I won’t lose my pictures again :slight_smile:

1 Like

hi!

some kind of “battery save mode” would be nice. I mean, screen backlight off. This probably means the app should have more audible notifications so one could know imaging is still going fine. You could make one sound for every 10 pictures, another for 100 etc.

1 Like

It’s a good idea. I think the first step would be to be able to stop the preview video, I’m sure that eats up lots of battery. Audio notifications have been up for discussion internally, also another good suggestion. Thanks!

1 Like

Hi,
I use both the app for Android and for Windows Mobile.
The Android is much better (more settings available) but the main difference is:

  • the windows app “forget” some settings, for example I have to set the riding mode everytime I start a new sequence.

For the android app:
I make 90% of my sequence driving during working days and I receive or make several phone calls. Actually the sequence stops and I’ve to start a new sequence again. I’ve seen that my phone (One Plus One) can manage both operation contemporary, so I’d like to be able to take pitcure even when I receive or make a phone calls.
Maybe you may give the ability to choose if the app has to stop or continue.

Then I agree that it would be important to add some “battery saving mode”. It would be helpfull to switch off the screen and have some feedback about the fact the the app is still running. I’d prefere to have some visual feedback (for example a sign appearing every 10 picture) than an audible feedback.

Thanks a lot for your job!!

2 Likes

It would be nice to have a clear indication which photos I have reviewed and “approved” already, and which ones I still have to review. Also, when uploading photos, only reviewed pictures should be uploaded. This would allow to start uploading even if I don’t have reviewed all photos yet.

Right now I have 2193 photos in 8 sequences on my phone, taken over the day. Now I have to review all of these photos first before I can start the upload. And if I were to take any more photos first, I’d have to review those as well first!
If uploading would only consider those photos that are clearly reviewed, I could easily spread out the review over the next days, and take more photos tomorrow in the meantime.

2 Likes

@roadblock this should be fixed in Mapillary Android 1.55 with uploading of selected (and reviewed) sequences - feedback welcome!

/peter

Really like having the blue location button on the map while out and about. Even better when the map shows up too! Would like to have the ability to drop pins on this map to help plan routes.
Would also like to filter the tracks to just see my own.

Sounds good,
what device are you using @jimwatana? Feel free to raise improvement suggestions at https://github.com/mapillary/mapillary_issues/issues

/peter

@peter
When I started Mapillary I had just gotten a used iPhone 4s and had an older iPad. Since joining, I have bought another used iPhone 4s, a new iPad Air 2, and a new MacBook Air to help me do much more with Mapillary.

iOS specific:

Today I had to choose my capture mode and skip the tips page every time I went back to capture mode.
I check the map or total photos and go back to take photos and go through the process again.
This happened at least fifteen times today and is very annoying.
Shouldn’t the choose/change capture mode only appear if you press the icon currently being used? Could the tips pages be put in settings for review and not reappear after the first view?

It’s a bug, it shouldn’t work like that, and the tutorials shouldn’t even be included in the current version. We have a new version in review which removes these screens, hopefully it will be approved today.

Next version of the iOS app will (among many things) include a map view inside the camera, which should help you to map unmapped places.

Great. Thanks. The iOS app has been easy to use since the first day I downloaded it. It just keeps getting better! Looking forward to the update.

Thanks, happy to hear!

Any chance of a Mac app being made available?