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Improve cursors on QuadHD screens

Ingo Rau shared this problem 8 years ago
Solved

The map and navigation cursors are so tiny on a QuadHD screen (e.g. Note 4, G4) that they are more or less useless. A new user might even not realize there's a center cross, but as soon as you turn on GPS you'll be expecting some kind of arrow, but can only see it with a magnifying glass.

I know I could enlarge them with an image editor, but I think that should be possible within the app. QuadHD screens are becoming more and more normal and Locus should be able to enlarge them automatically or with setting - but perhaps there is something I'm overlooking.

Replies (11)

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@Menion.

What about vector gfx and possibility to set scale factor?

because displays are getting better and better.

So we can use one gfx for all resolutions.


@Ingo In http://forum.locusmap.eu/index.php?board=42.0 you'll find some other icons.

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Btw. idea with SVG images is interesting. I'll think about it, thanks gynta

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Thx Gynta.

I still think this is a Problem, not an Idea - it's not that I want different icons, I want to be able to actually see them. Just imagine a new user trying out Locus for the first time on a Note 4 with his/her bike for navigation - he'll probably deinstall after realizing that it's no use on the road like this. He won't find anything in the built-in store - and expecting him to download some icons from somewhere and perhaps even manually enlarge them is, frankly, preposterous.

I think this is a serious shortcoming of Locus, already now and even more so in the coming years.

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Thanks Ingo, hard to say if it is idea or problem. You are maybe right and it is more a problem then idea. Anyway I absolutely agree. Currently this is stuck on fact, that i do not owe device with such huge resolution. I'll anyway improve it for sure during next months.


EDIT: hmm, in the end agree - more a problem then idea :)

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Thx, nice to see my argument being accepted ;)

Have to say my screenshot wasn't perfect, as there a differing views about the necessity of a big center cross. Should've made one with the navigation arrow - there the problem is much more obvious.

Anyway, looking forward to Menion killing the problem for good ;)

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Hmm currently there is no device I want to invest into, quite satisfied with current Z1C.


Anyway, I'm testing in on emulator and it looks a lot better on emulator. I'm because of this checking a code and seems that no matter if such huge icons exists in Locus or external icon packs, Locus should correctly rescale them to higher resolutions.


So I have to ask, you are using default cursors or some own custom?


Hmm when I'm comparing your screenshot and emulator, whole your layout looks a lot smaller. Aren't you using any tool (application) that increase/modify DPI (scaling of items) in your device?

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Hi Menion!

You got me there, I totally forgot that I played around with that. The Note4 has internal setting of 640, way higher than the physical of 515. I did set it to 550 for Locus (and when looking at the screenshots below, you'll probably agree that it's better - Samsung obviously targets elderly people as customers).

However, there is something strange going on. Look at the screenshots: With my setting, the cursors should around 20% smaller - but in fact it's 80% smaller and almost unseeable. I know, the zoom levels are different, but afaik the cursors are not affected by that.

So something is going wrong here.

Btw: Map cursors: Locus 2014; Navigation cursors: Built-in

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Hmm oki, so it starts to make sense.


Hmm, but without such device in hands and hour of time to test, it is almost impossible to fix this. Because as I see in code, all should be correct.


So for now sorry. Probably later ...

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Ok, understand. I kinda brought this on myself. ;)

But for when you're looking further into it, I made another 3 screenshots with exactly the same content: 640 dpi (factory), 630dpi and 550dpi.

The strange thing is that while the rendered map is always identical (strange, but I prefer that), everything else is scaled down just as expected, apart from the center cross which already with 10dpi less is a quarter of the size at best. There must be some variable used in the size calculation here that is not used in the calculation for all other map items.

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I'm closing this "problem" for now. In next version will be possibility to manually scale cursors in Locus in range 50 - 400%, so it will be able to scale them even with your defined dpi.

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v3.14.0: Yes, scaling works and solved this cosmetic problem rather nicely. Thx a lot!

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Perfect. In the end, I also found it useful on Xperia Z4 tablet, where I finally see center cross, so thanks too for useful idea and small push ;)

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