New Viewer with Vector Maps
As you have probably noticed, we at Mapillary love to experiment with bleeding edge technology. Recently we showed technical implications and benefits of using vector tiles and what it means to you as Mapillary users. However, we did not give you the full picture yet as along with vector tiles we'd like to share improvements to our web app.
Contextual Views
At the beginning of this year Mapillary for iOS has gotten an update, in the spring Mapillary for Android and recently Mapillary for Windows has been updated. It has been quite some time since we have done any design rearrangements within our web application.
People use Mapillary in very different ways and it is quite a challenge to make every user happy, however we do our best! We have been hard at work with an improved context oriented design which is based heavily on the feedback from our community. We found two general ways, that work for users; either map first or photo first.
Enjoy larger visuals
On the photo view, now you can enjoy the ever growing amount of photos to see in larger size. Through this design we wanted to address one of the most requested feature, namely the full screen mode. It is even more fun to watch the sequences play. In the future, this view would serve also for improving blurs and traffic sign recognition, all in one place.
Enjoy amazing maps
In the map view, we have added a couple of new features that were not so easy and performant to do if we used regular non-vector tiles. Many users care a lot about their neighborhoods and areas where they are contributing, and they are interested in seeing how much of Mapillary's coverage they built themselves. Wait no more. In the new map view you are able to filter by username! In the example below, the map has been filtered by username and all Peter's contributions can be seen. He's got quite a coverage!
Besides this, you can also filter by date, display comments and panoramas on the map. Currently there are no detected traffic signs displayed on this new view, but they will pop up at some point!
This improved design alongside with the rollout of the vector tiles is a huge step towards the future. Please bear in mind that we are releasing this as an early preview and a future 'home' to another WebGL feature, but this is a story for another blog post.
To find your way to the new view, just press this magical button...
As mentioned, this design is still evolving, thanks for your great feedback!
Let us know how we can do better, either on twitter or through github issues!
Happy mapping, Kamil & The Mapillary Team.