Google Maps just fucking SUCKS now

[CtrlAltDel]

It's not the most egregious of flaws, but there's currently a bit of I-35 missing between Austin and Waco at certain zoom levels:

[TheGrassGuy]

It's not the most egregious of flaws, but there's currently a bit of I-35 missing between Austin and Waco at certain zoom levels:

Saw that with I-80 in PA too recently.

Also, anyone else notice that you can now get a picture of an image just by clicking on it in GSV? Not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

[ozarkman417]

Google maps now has dark mode, and while I use dark mode on most other apps, I think I will stay on light mode for this one.

[empirestate]

I've done some brief peeking around New York on the Google Maps iOS app, and I must say that I'm less than impressed with the new imagery.

While crosswalks seem to be fairly consistently represented–in my brief searches–the "exact"  street geometry appears to be far from that. Sidewalks appear and disappear in a manner that's not consistent with the ground reality. Features such as medians and sidewalks have gashes cut into them for no apparent reason–again, not reflective of reality.

For those of you familiar with Adobe Illustrator: It's like they did and auto-trace of satellite images. Some features are outlined well, and others are horribly botched and for no apparent reason. 

Yeah, it's OK I guess, but not as impressive as I'd hoped. I was expecting Zenrin-like quality, since that's what they've had in Japan for many years now. In fact, you can get much better detail and accuracy with NYC's own GIS planimetry, and it's free.

Yes, one hopes the new map style will mature and improve over time, but of course it's always disappointing when some "new" feature is already inferior to what has previously been available (cf. my theory of technological regression).

[SectorZ]

That explains why the METAR aviation reporting code for hail is GR...

Whence does it actually derive?

My mind immediately goes to Spanish.  HAIL = GRANIZA

Appears to actually be French, although Spanish is also a Romance language and naturally has a lot of similar words. France was pretty influential in the early days of aviation - just look at all the words for parts of airplanes that are obviously French in origin: fuselage, empennage, nacelle, aileron...

French also gave us the METAR codes for graupel/snow pellets (GS, grésil) and mist/light fog (BR, brume), among others.

I can confirm that any of the ones not from English specifically come from French.

[jakeroot]

Google maps now has dark mode, and while I use dark mode on most other apps, I think I will stay on light mode for this one.

I've been using it for about a week. Not sure what I think of it just yet. It isn't quite as easy to read in bright daylight, but it's much better on the eyes at night for sure.

[TheGrassGuy]

I feel like the blue lines for GSV sort of override each other. Just try getting Pegman onto the lower deck of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco to get an idea of what I mean.

[CoreySamson]

I feel like the blue lines for GSV sort of override each other. Just try getting Pegman onto the lower deck of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco to get an idea of what I mean.

Hey I've tried that too!  Another beef I have with the blue lines is that it will always put you on a minor side road or photosphere instead of the road you are trying to click on.

[jakeroot]

I feel like the blue lines for GSV sort of override each other. Just try getting Pegman onto the lower deck of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco to get an idea of what I mean.

Hey I've tried that too!  Another beef I have with the blue lines is that it will always put you on a minor side road or photosphere instead of the road you are trying to click on.

I don't think it always does, but it can happen. At least for me.

Google maps now has dark mode, and while I use dark mode on most other apps, I think I will stay on light mode for this one.

I've been using it for about a week. Not sure what I think of it just yet. It isn't quite as easy to read in bright daylight, but it's much better on the eyes at night for sure.

Update: had to switch back to auto day/night mode. Dark mode was too dark during the day, at least on my phone.

[kphoger]

Another beef I have with the blue lines is that it will always put you on a minor side road or photosphere instead of the road you are trying to click on.

Minor side road:  I can't complain too much about that one, because how does Google know which road I meant to look at?  It's just being more accurate than I was when I dropped the pegman.  Of course, knowing exactly where to drop the pegman to begin with seems to be more of an art than a science.

Photosphere:  This really aggravates me.  Especially because, most of the time, I was zoomed out enough to not even know there was a photosphere there at all.  If it isn't even visible on the screen, then Google should know I didn't want it.

[Michael]

I just went to Google Maps and the layer selection square is now a popout menu, similar to how it was in the last version of classic Maps.  I like it, since it'll be much easier than having to open the side menu and then selecting a layer from there.  It behaves more like the phone app does.  I'm not sure if I got the new design as part of an A/B test since my old version of Chrome doesn't have it.  Ideally, map/satellite/terrain would be three buttons like Maps had a long time ago, but I'll take what I can get.  When classic Maps combined the three buttons into one I hated it, but it's still better than having to use a side menu each time.  I can't help but imagine a car blinker designed like that.  First, open your blinker menu, then select from left, right, or 4-ways.  That sounds pretty stupid.



I recently tried an old version of Chromium I forgot I had kicking around, and that solved all the performance issues I've been having with Maps.  It's version 49, so it's new enough to not glitch out like my old version of Chrome.  I thought it was old enough to be using GPU acceleration on Windows XP, but it's not.  I also considered my adblocker slowing things down, but turning it off didn't make a difference.  I guess it'll remain a mystery.

[TheGrassGuy]

If you click on a business, the blue lines for street view no longer show up.

[webny99]

If you click on a business, the blue lines for street view no longer show up.

Is that what it is? I had noticed the blue lines intermittently not showing up, but hadn't associated it with clicking on a business (or presumably any other POI). It is annoying!

[TheGrassGuy]

If you click on a business, the blue lines for street view no longer show up.

Is that what it is? I had noticed the blue lines intermittently not showing up, but hadn't associated it with clicking on a business (or presumably any other POI). It is annoying!

It's fixed now.

[Roadgeekteen]

Does Google Maps still suck? It works fine for me every time.

[D-Dey65]

Yet more incorrect info on Google Maps; They think Northwest Creek in the Town of East Hampton, New York is part of the Peconic River too.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0045204,-72.258092,3266m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en


And there doesn't seem to be any way to correct this. Even if there was, they still include the Peconic River in more waterways that were corrected.

[Roadgeekteen]

As much as you might hate google maps, apple maps is even worse.

[US 41]

Going back to the beginning of this thread, the new Google Maps is better than the "Classic" GM was now and it's not even close. When they first launched it though it was a disaster.

[vdeane]

They still don't allow as many routing points as the old Google Maps did.  In fact, I'm pretty sure they've decreased even further over the years.

[Rothman]

They still don't allow as many routing points as the old Google Maps did.  In fact, I'm pretty sure they've decreased even further over the years.

Yep.  ^This.

[Scott5114]

Going back to the beginning of this thread, the new Google Maps is better than the "Classic" GM was now and it's not even close. When they first launched it though it was a disaster.

No, it's still worse, it just has more irrelevant data to mask the fact that it sucks.

[Roadgeekteen]

Going back to the beginning of this thread, the new Google Maps is better than the "Classic" GM was now and it's not even close. When they first launched it though it was a disaster.

No, it's still worse, it just has more irrelevant data to mask the fact that it sucks.

What made "classic gm" better?

[vdeane]

I actually use the business info, so I want everything to be usable, both the road stuff and the other stuff.  If that means the map has to be less "simple", fine, I'm not really a fan of the trend in computing to "simplify" and dumb down everything anyways.

[Scott5114]

Going back to the beginning of this thread, the new Google Maps is better than the "Classic" GM was now and it's not even close. When they first launched it though it was a disaster.

No, it's still worse, it just has more irrelevant data to mask the fact that it sucks.

What made "classic gm" better?

Rather than the data being rendered on the fly like it is now, it was pre-rendered and stored as image tiles on the Google Maps server. So when you panned around the map, all it had to do was download the images and display them. It was much less resource-intensive.

[vdeane]

Going back to the beginning of this thread, the new Google Maps is better than the "Classic" GM was now and it's not even close. When they first launched it though it was a disaster.

No, it's still worse, it just has more irrelevant data to mask the fact that it sucks.

What made "classic gm" better?

Rather than the data being rendered on the fly like it is now, it was pre-rendered and stored as image tiles on the Google Maps server. So when you panned around the map, all it had to do was download the images and display them. It was much less resource-intensive.

On the other hand, such systems are prone to the "missing tile problem" where all the tiles download except the one you specifically want to look at.