ViewRanger - maps for hill/mountain walking

tombrown

My wife has asked for the Viewranger app with relevant maps for Ireland for her hill/mountain walking obsession. She is part of a club & they walk across all ranges in Ireland.

When I look at the app there is an option to buy the OS 1:50000 map for all of Ireland at 140, but is also possible to select specif areas of interest at a lower cost, which is what she wants to do.

So a few quesitons for anyoen in the kno w:

1) Is the OS 1:50,000 map the right one to be using?
2) Is there a predefined set of tiles/maps that cover the key hill/mountain ranges rather then me have to select them manually?
3) Once purchased are the maps kept up to date or do you just get a snapshot of the OS maps on the day of purchase?

thaniks

1) Yes, as it's identical to the physical map she should also carry.
2) I just download the relevant tiles. Once you've downloaded the (free) Overview map of Ireland & Altitude Data it's like doing a jig-saw of what mountains you want. You could 'walk off the map' (OSI detail) though , so some of the lower areas around the mountains might be handy also.
3) The tiles/map are permanently on your phone/device. If you changed phone you'd just download the app to it again with the same email and password and the maps will be there. NB: I did have an issue one time of the tiles not transferring automatically but I didn't have them backed up - Settings --> Map Settings --> Backups --> Include Tiles Only.

It takes a bit of getting used to and if there's someone else in the club that uses it, get them to do a crash course on what they know about it.

tombrown

Thank you

When I installed the app I got an email that suggested I should select & purchase the map portions on a PC - is that better/easier than doing it from the app?

Also it seems there is a minimum charge for adding tiles, so if she adds a couple of tiles covering, say, Karantouhil one week and then a few weeks late is in Donegal an adds tiles for there does she run the risk of paying more than if she purchased the whole lot at one time? Are there any best practices folks employ for adding tiles?

unkel

I have this app + 1:50000 OSI tiles too on my phone.

Obviously it will be cheaper to buy all of Ireland than to buy each tile separately. That said, if I remember right I spent about €15 on tiles and this covered pretty much all of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, So adding say Carrauntoohil will probably only cost you a few Euro

I wish I could get East West 1:30000 maps for this app though, far more detail. I use the East West physical maps for hiking and only really use the ViewRanger app as backup / to determine my position if I'm not quite sure where I am or to see where I am in relation to a pre-defined route or viewpoint (loaded as gpx files onto the app)

Alun

unkel wrote: »

I wish I could get East West 1:30000 maps for this app though, far more detail.

You can!

tombrown

tombrown wrote: »

Thank you

When I installed the app I got an email that suggested I should select & purchase the map portions on a PC - is that better/easier than doing it from the app?

Also it seems there is a minimum charge for adding tiles, so if she adds a couple of tiles covering, say, Karantouhil one week and then a few weeks late is in Donegal an adds tiles for there does she run the risk of paying more than if she purchased the whole lot at one time? Are there any best practices folks employ for adding tiles?

It's a while since I downloaded the app and their procedures may have changed. I've downloaded nearly everything via the app, creature of habit I suppose. I might have downloaded map portions for some European areas via the computer though. In fairness, they are very good/prompt at replying to email queries.

When I bought the full app I got 1,000 credits with the 'package' and it covered most of the mountain areas here, within reason. I've topped up the credits every now and then. 1,000 credits is a fair whack. She won't download all the tiles at the one go. She'll wait till she's going to somwhere new, maybe have an idea of the track, and then download the tiles.

PS: Galtybeg is still marked wrong on the map/app, it's 2km from where it should be. But, my understanding is that this is an OSi update issue as opposed to a VR problem.

tombrown

Thanks

So if she uses tokens to purchase tiles there is no minimum fee, is that right? (she can effectively buy them one at a time) That may be the answer then - I just ensure she is loaded up with tokens

My options are to buy 'packs' of 400, 600, 1,000 or 3,334 credits.

€7.99 for 400, €19.99 for 1,000.

NB: She won't be able to download the tiles of an area while she's on the mountain. I know it works best with WiFi but not sure about 3/4G. She'll need to plan.

Alun

You can download map tiles over 3G/4G if you have coverage, no problem, they're not that big, mostly between 1 and 2 MBytes. Some tiles, especially ones that contain lots of sea are much smaller, and ones the contain only sea are actually free

unkel

Alun wrote: »

You can!

Thanks Alun! Looks like it's all or nothing though, €55 for Dublin + Wicklow and no option of tiles. Seems expensive too as I bought the 4 laminated physical 1:30000 East West maps (covering the same area) for a lot less than that, incl. postage (€35 iirc)

And there is obviously almost zero cost of sales in letting people download stuff online...

Barry should do a substantial discount here, particularly for existing customers imho.

Alun

unkel wrote: »

Thanks Alun! Looks like it's all or nothing though, €55 for Dublin + Wicklow and no option of tiles. Seems expensive too as I bought the 4 laminated physical 1:30000 East West maps (covering the same area) for a lot less than that, incl. postage (€35 iirc)

And there is obviously almost zero cost of sales in letting people download stuff online...

Barry should do a substantial discount here, particularly for existing customers imho.

Maybe, but I remember talking to him a while back about support for Garmin GPs's, and I was surprised at how much of a chunk these people take and how little of the purchase price he actually gets from them in the end.

tombrown

Coming back to an earlier quesiton, if you buy tiles with credits, is there a relatively small per tile unit cost, or a minimum spend like there is if paying directly (~24euro miminum spend which gives up to 5000 sq.km)

You buy 'packs' of credit with Euro and those credits buy tiles. About 18 credits for a tile (of the mountain) but I've no idea what area in sq. m. a tile covers.

I'm sure if you google it or email the lads at support (at) viewranger (dot) com they'll be able to provide an answer

Alun

The OS 1:50k tiles are 5km x 5km.

If you go into Settings>Map and tick Tile purchase buttons option, it'll show how much each tile costs if you have credit. If not it comes up with a tile purchase screen which quotes the following ...

400 credits will buy 21 tiles
600 credits will buy 32 tiles
1000 credits will buy 53 tiles
3334 credits will buy 173 tiles

Now, as mentioned some tiles close to the coast that contain a lot of sea are cheaper, and ones that are all sea are free, but the above is a good guideline.

As a guide most of the Dublin / Wicklow Mts. would be about 12 tiles (4x3), The Galtys 6, Mournes 6.

Alancillhill

Hey there, using viewranger and replaced my Garmin with it.

Wondering has anybody found a source on the net to download full tiles for Ireland/uk of the openstreetmap (with altitude) ? Downloading sections on Viewranger is a bit laborious... ?
Or have I missed an easy way to do it... ?

The open maps are fine for detail for my hikes.... ? thanks.

PS. Some of you might be interested if you ebay.co.uk
Blackview 6000s (phone with ip68) for the field.

Enduro

There are a few combination out there for downloading open source maps with good contour resolution.

Two good start points:

http://www.openandromaps.org/en/
https://talkytoaster.co.uk/

It seems that Viewranger is being "merged" with a different app (Outdooractive) and will no longer be available in the same format, i.e. where you could buy tiles of whatever Discovery map you wanted. Thinking it was an improvement I went along with the advice to change on their webpage on the laptop, and now i can't get any of my Discovery tiles which I had bought, only the open street maps. The tracks I had in my history are all there, but not in the discovery map format.

The app on my phone is the same as it was, still displaying the premium discovery map tiles which I purchased. But I wonder will it go now too. It was such a fantastic app😢 .

Looks like the new Outdooractive is going to be subscription to have any kind of decent maps.