Scenic Map 1.5 & Canada Coverage

Scenic Map 1.5 has been released on the App Store!

There are three new apps: Scenic Map Western Canada, Scenic Map Central Canada and Scenic Map Eastern Canada. Using data from Canada's GeoBase and CanVec, these maps have amazing amounts of detail. They include streams, rivers, lakes and glaciers. There are two versions of the roads, one from Open Street Map and the other from GeoBase. You can switch between them in the Settings menu. Great care was taken to merge the features of the various data sources to produce the best possible map.

The new ability to merge data sets was used to improve the quality of the parks and other polygons in all versions of Scenic Map and You Need A Map. In version 1.5 you will see many more parks and other smaller polygon features.

The biggest new feature of version 1.5 is the revised Waypoints screen. You can now tap on a waypoint and get a list of options. You can export the waypoint as GPX and send it to another app or e-mail it. You can send the waypoint directly to Apple's Maps app where you can get directions to that waypoint.  There is also a new button in the tool bar that will let you do the same thing with the entire lists of waypoints. You can also access the entire list of waypoints as a GPX file via iTunes on your computer. There is also an organize button in the tool bar of the Waypoints screen. Tap it and you will get the option to sort the waypoints newest to oldest, ascending names, north to south or west to east. You can also reverse the direction by tapping the organize button and selecting the same sort option again.

When the app is first launched, by default the joystick gestures have been disabled. This is because these gestures are unfamiliar and can confuse first time users. The Joystick Gestures can be enabled near the bottom of the Settings menu. The tilt and scale of each preset are now unified. When you modify the tilt or scale of the map in one preset, it now updates all of them. If you prefer a different map tilt and scale for each preset turn off Unified Tilt & Scale near the bottom of the Settings menu.

GPS tracking has been improved for version 1.5. You will notice that the velocity and heading updates more smoothly as you drive. If you have iOS 6 installed, the apps will take advantage of the automatic tracking feature. This turns off the GPS automatically when you have stopped moving for some time. This will save batteries if you forget to stop tracking. If you prefer to manually stop the tracking (by tapping the track being recorded at the top of the Tracks menu and selecting Stop Recording Track) turn off the Automatic Tracking near the bottom of the Settings menu.

Scenic Map and You Need A Map version 1.5 require iOS 5.1. This change was made because first two generations of iPhones and iPod Touches are no longer supported by Apple's XCode development software.

A walk through tutorial of Scenic Map 1.5 has been added to the online documentation. It covers the basic features of the app.