point 'from' is not taken into account while creating route about osmand

[icegood]

Strange UI design. From UX point of view app shouldn't take into account current location unless it is explicitly pointed out.

[sonora]

In my mind, showing and announcing upcoming turns is always relative to where you are. I cannot think of any other justified use case(?).

Specifying a "From:" location, correspondingly, is always a hypothetical/informational action to inspect how to get from arbitrary A to B, and/or determine travel time needed for that.

Mixing the two modes, like specifying a "From:" location but then expecting OsmAnd to use that as an initial "To:" location, seems debatable. For that use case there is the explicit "Via:" (intermediate destination") mechanism.

In summary, I feel it would be best to simply make it clearer when you are in the mere "Show a route from A to B" case vs. when you have switched over to the "Actively guide me to a destination" mode?

[sonora]

The use case is simply to prepare a routing and start it later.

• You can prepare the "From - To" route to view it, and leave it displayed on screen while still on the island, if you want.
• You can also use the "Stop" button to interim hide it again. And later call it up again under "Previous Route", then start it.
• But when you tap the "Start" button, that starts the turn-by-turn guidance, necessarily from your position.

Not sure what you expect changing about this, unless the UI.

[mikehgentry]

Route from [edit: well, via] X is an explicitly chosen option, with route from my location as another available choice (and the default, if nothing is chosen). There are situations where you genuinely want it to apply (I want to follow this nice route down this river, start at this end and finish at the other), and I can't see an obvious way someone would choose it accidentally (what would they be expecting to happen instead?).

[pordini]

I think I agree.
And my use case was (at least for me) so obscure I could entirely live without it.

But the option to set a new departure point exists while in turn by turn and it does nothing besides putting a flag on the map. I think that's just a map marker, not an option that should be under Navigation.
In my view, any option should not add confusion, especially when easily accessed while driving.
I think setting a departure point could just be hidden when in "Actively guide me to a destination" mode. Especially if, like now, it does not alter the route anyway.

[mikehgentry]

Right, but you've still got the facility to find a route between point X and Y for informational purposes, just by not hitting Start. Once you've hit Start you've entered turn by turn mode, so the question is whether it makes more sense to drop the previous start point (which seems pretty arbitrary when it's been explicitly entered as part of the route) or incorporate it. I can see users saying "I want to follow the route from X to Y", hitting Start, and being confused about why X doesn't feature. On the other hand I can't see any reason you would input an X and want something else to happen once you hit Start.

[pordini]

Yeah.
With my limited understanding: once you press Start I would expect point X to become the first intermediate destination and the turn by turn instructions guide me to X, then Y.
If I don't want that I can just remove point X as an intermediate and get Y as the destination from my current position.

[sonora]

In summary, I can think of 3 potential actions we take:

• When in navigation mode, make sure that everywhere the "From:" location displays as "My position", and is not tappable/changeable.
• When on the route config screen and someone has selected a "From:" location, and then taps "Start", we could inform in a short toast message "Navigation guidance has been started, the "From:" location is being replaced by the current position".
• We could potentially enhance the caption of the "Start" button to say something like "Start navigating"?

[scaidermern]

Don't press start if you want to keep a self defined starting location. Only after pressing start, from is replaced with your current position (which makes sense).

Alternatively, use the "plan a route" tool.

[scaidermern]

Yes, no, maybe. I don't know. Can you repeat the question?
How is active routing supposed to work with a location that isn't yours?

[zipav]

OsmAnd Nightly 4.5.0#296m, released: 2023-06-27

Steps to reproduce

• Activate location access
• Navigation button
• From: Select on map
• Select the start point on map
• To: Select on map
• Select the finish point on map
• Check the result
• Repeat with with location access disabled

The route successfully changes the starting point to another one with both the location turned on and the location turned off

video_2023-06-27_18-15-00.mp4

video_2023-06-27_17-55-38.mp4

[sonora]

The UX/UI aspect is valid, but it needs to be worked out how it could be decisively improved. What in my experience is regularly not understood by users is the difference between showing a route vs. entering an actual turn-by-turn navigation, as follows:

• (1) The route is already calculated (and ultimately displayed) after a destination has been specified (and without (before) the "Start" button is tapped!)
  • At this stage, any arbitrary "From" location is considered, as selected
• (2) Tapping the "Start" button is often misunderstood as starting the route calculation, but it actually starts the turn-by-turn navigation.
  • Changing into this turn-by-turn mode happens immediately after tapping "Start", potentially before the route finishes calculating and is displayed, which may somewhat obscure this mode change.
  • The turn-by-turn mode of course always routes from your actual position, all else would not make sense.
  • While your position is still unknown (or if your GPS is off), the turn-by-turn navigation mode pauses until it becomes known and it can start

[mikehgentry]

If you select Navigation, and set a From (X) and To (Y) point, when you hit start you're navigated from your position to Y. The green 'Start' flag is still displayed at X, but ignored.

Perhaps this is the source of confusion - intuitively I would expect it to take me from my position to X then to Y (i.e. move the specified 'Start' position to 'First intermediate' in the list).

-eta this is on 4.5.3, and I think it's a regression (or at least a change of behaviour)?

[sonora]

• Yes, I guess in turn-by-turn mode the green flag line should always be reset to say "My Position". (not sure this is a regression, though).

• Whether any previously set "From:" location should be converted to the first intermediate target is debatable - could also become the source of new confusion?

• Still struggling with whether there should not be a more explicit indication to enter the turn-by-turn (navigation) mode than just a button saying "Start", and/or some more obvious way to incicate that a route is being calculated before - so unless you really meant to navigate, just wait and don't tap "Start"... 😉

[scaidermern]

OsmAnd could ask what to do when pressing start and a custom "from" has been set:

• Replace from with the current position
• Use from as the first via point

However I'm not sure if this is really a good idea. What do you think?

[mikehgentry]

I suppose there are more sensible options that could be added - 'route to the start', 'route to the nearest point', and 'route to the end' all seem fairly obvious, and I'm sure there are others.

So personally I don't think having a dialogue box does much harm, even if it is arguably redundant.

[pordini]

Wouldn't routing from "my position" to "X" just be the same as setting a "first intermediate destination"?

Today I had a route suggesting an inaccessible forest path for kilometres, while the main road was 10 metres away. In this situation, while in turn by turn, I would like to select a point near me on the main road, choose "Navigate", choose "Make this the point of departure" and expect osmand to route from that point, not from my current position.
Current behaviour was that this point of departure is completely ignored, which does not make a lot of sense.

That said, if Osmand would just route from my custom point of departure and ignore my position, as soon as I start moving it would trigger a route recalculation anyway, right?
Or, if you suppress that, there would just be a static route and no instructions which is odd as well.
Or Osmand could start giving turn by turn instructions once I have found my way to the calculated route, but that may be confusing and not expected by most users. Plus that isn't useful at all if I get lost on my way towards the route.

[DmitryAlexei]

• You can also save your route as a GPX track using Details section in navigation mode.
  https://osmand.net/docs/user/navigation/setup/route-details#share--export-actions

• After that, you can use the created GPX track for navigation and choose whether to start from the beginning of the track or its closest point.
  https://osmand.net/docs/user/navigation/setup/gpx-navigation#user-start--finish--points

[pordini]

The first seems like a good solution.

Second point: a toast might easily be missed, I think. Maybe a screen bottom dialog would be clearer, like the confirmation dialog when ending navigation.
Possibly with a timer, defaulting to current position to X, and an option to forget X and just start towards the destination? But that would introduce a new mechanic (dialog with countdown), idk if that is too confusing.

Regarding the last point: that may be a good idea anyway, to really distinguish between "Plan route" and "Start navigating".
Maybe the caption could change, something like "Calculating" while the button is serving as the progress bar, then "Start navigating" once the route has been completed.

I would also say that it may be slightly incongruous that the voice announces the trip stats after pressing start. To me, that information is part of the planning stage, so it adds to the diffusion of those two stages if it's only said in the navigating stage. Not a big deal though.

[Yogurt4]

It's not only an UX design flaw, I think.
Just think of a situation when there's no route between your current position and the desired start. (Like being on an island.) There will be no Start then.

The use case is simply to prepare a routing and start it later.

If one chooses a starting point, the routing must start from that point and not an (implicit/hidden) current position. Changing the UX label is only a sham.