Hi everyone,
First of all, I want to apologize for not releasing an update for quite a while. That delay was first since I wasn't able to actively work on this app at the end of 2019, and secondly, since the features in this update required a lot of testing.
The main feature is that Highway Radar now supports a road graph, which allows it to understand on which street the driver is and how the roads are connected between each other. Before this update, Highway Radar only knew about coordinates and directions of the driver and nearby alerts (police, aircraft, hazards, etc.). Now it also knows about roads nearby and how they are connected, which enables me to implement many cool features.
Currently, I've implemented the following features using the road graph:
Also, this update enables me to easily implement the following features soon (those aren't implemented yet):
Besides the road graph, this update includes several other important updates:
First of all, I want to apologize for not releasing an update for quite a while. That delay was first since I wasn't able to actively work on this app at the end of 2019, and secondly, since the features in this update required a lot of testing.
The main feature is that Highway Radar now supports a road graph, which allows it to understand on which street the driver is and how the roads are connected between each other. Before this update, Highway Radar only knew about coordinates and directions of the driver and nearby alerts (police, aircraft, hazards, etc.). Now it also knows about roads nearby and how they are connected, which enables me to implement many cool features.
Currently, I've implemented the following features using the road graph:
- Street name and current PSL can be displayed in the app
- Smart low-speed muting (muting threshold relative to the current PSL, not absolute)
Also, this update enables me to easily implement the following features soon (those aren't implemented yet):
- Alert on police/hazards/cameras on the street only
- Automatically adjust alert ranges depending on road type or PSL
- Warning on upcoming hot spots from the heat map
- Show upcoming "heat" even in the arrows mode
- Alert on exceeding the PSL by X mph
- and many more features that depend on knowing PSL, road type or road graph connections
Besides the road graph, this update includes several other important updates:
- Added caching of downloadable data
Roads, heat maps, cameras, risk scores are now stored locally after downloading, this should significantly reduce data usage and make the app start faster. Data is cached using standard Android API which means it can be easily wiped by clearing app cache from the Android settings. - Added aircraft alerts sensitivity
Since Highway Radar uses a complex formula to estimate threat level for aircraft (not just distance), it is hard to find meaningful yet straightforward units for this value. That is why the sensitivity is configured as a just value from 1 to 7. Also, the default sensitivity was reduced. - Added an option to ignore unknown aircraft
Sometimes aircraft may not supply identification information or be almost out of ADS-B coverage, which may lead to missing the ownership data. Such aircraft are marked as the "Unknown owner / Unknown model" in the application. However, in most cases, this means that the aircraft tail number isn't in the database, which can happen to aircraft registered outside of the US – typical case for commercial international flights. So in most cases ignoring such aircraft should be safe; however, infrequent false missing alerts may happen. - Several UI changes
Added space for PSL sign, updated in-drive menu icon, made "Waze" button persistent (not requiring to mute first) in portrait mode, removed the word "monitoring." - One more attempt to fix app blinking
In rare cases, the application went mad and started starting and stopping every second. This could only be stopped by rebooting the phone or force-stopping the app. Investigating this is very hard since the problem happens very rarely. I found a potential cause; however, I'm still not entirely sure. I've also added detection of such case happening and automatic remediation, hope this should help. - Fixed many cases of TTS mispronunciations
Sometimes street names were mispronounced when abbreviations were used. Fixed this for many common abbreviations. More details available in the topic - Fixed a nasty bug when "Www.vvaze.com" (capital W) crowdsourced alerts hostname didn't work.
Bug description is in the topic
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