Phone freezes / stops / very slow after opening offline maps

Hi, new here. I have a Samsung S10 and just bought K Pro. Checked it out, it seemed to work fine. Installed offline maps for Germany, Belgium, Netherlands. Went to setting “open maps” and selected these maps. Could see the maps on the screen, zoomed and panned around a bit, it was a bit slow, and then the phone froze. Needed to do a hard restart. Restarted the phone. Started Kurviger, it build the map partly then froze again. Waited, it recovered, panning on 10km zoom level went ok, zoomed out, panning a bit more, not smooth at all, then froze again. Waited 1 minute, it recovered, I went to online maps: butter smooth… Help plz!

Hi,

Can try several things progressively and see how it works in your device:

  • Uncheck some heavy layers via menu “Map | Map layers”, like Vegetation
  • Load 1 offline map first, instead of many very large maps simultaneously
  • Or even better just the needed area (e.g. whole Germany map is > 2 GB!)

Thx, turning off vegetation helps, so far no more freeze/app crash. I notice the maps of the Netherlands pans less smooth than that of Germany, at high overview zoom level. Probably because it is more dense somehow? All in all I really would like to have the smooth experience which the online maps provide, with offline maps.

I wonder how phones less powerfull than this S10 cope with this?
Do others experience that offline maps are heavy on the phone also?

Normally on such devices there shouldn’t be any problem, since less capable ones run fine.

But depends also on current OpenStreetMap updates on offline maps data,
e.g. maybe vegetation layer got updated recently making rendering difficult?
(specially on small zoom levels)

And each country has different density of those nature area polygons, sometimes quite complicated.

For reference here is the discussion in old forum where it was first reported that vegetation layer can affect performance depending on loaded map.

Hallo,

bei meinem Honor View 20 habe ich die Vegetation deaktiviert, da ich dasselbe Problem hatte. Speziell bei mehreren Karten mit vielen Daten fing es an zu ruckeln.

Hello,

at my Honor View 20, I disabled the vegetation because I had the same problem. Especially with several maps with a lot of data it started to jerk.

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Can you try Cruiser GL and see if shows similar behavior?

Cruiser GL mit Karten von Kurviger: Austria, Czech-Republic, Germany und Poland; Hillshading aus.
Bei Zoom 20 km ist das Scrollen etwas langsamer, darüber und darunter ohne Probleme.
Der Kartenstil gefällt mir. :grinning:

Cruiser GL with cards from Kurviger: Austria, Czech-Republic, Germany and Poland, Hillshading Off.
At Zoom 20 km the scrolling is a bit slower, above and below without problems.
I like the map style. :grinning:

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It would be interesting if you can test on your device with map files from Mapsforge server too, with any of the apps. :slightly_smiling_face:

I have never seen Kurviger to freeze on any of my devices.
Kurviger Pro is surprisingly fast, even on very old devices - faster than Google maps on my older devices.
But I have to admit, that I’ve never tried huge maps like whole Germany.

I’ve tested:
Galaxy Nexus Maguro (first released in 2011)
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (first released in 2012)
Samsung Galaxy S7 (first released in 2016)

On my current device (Samsung Galaxy S7) I have opened Bayern, Austria, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Norway.
I would describe the panning speed like that:

  • Zoom level 12 and above = smooth movement.
  • Zoom level ~10 - 11 = a little bit jerky like a movie from the 1920s, but still very responsive.
  • Zoom level ~8 - 9 = a bit laggy, not smooth at all. Just good enough to move the map to the desired position.
  • Zoom level 7.9 and smaller = smooth, but you can only see motorways and bigger cities.

All map layers on, except “Gastronomy” and “Motorcycle shops”.
Hill shading off
resolution 1080x1920
Android 8.0

Manfred

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I have experimented a bit more.
As said, turning off vegetation makes a real difference.
But also the S10 display resolution makes a real difference: choosing full 3040x1440 and turning on vegetation completely and then zoomlevel ~8 makes it freeze and I need to restart the phone to recover.
Somehow Kurviger is very inefficient here: at zoomlevel 8 the map information is pretty low resolution, and when displaying that low resolution information on a high resolution display it asks for a lot of compu power. I guess that can be solved. Which is proven by the online maps, which are butter smooth on this zoomlevel and full 3040x1440. Do the Kurviger developers read this forum?

I tried the mapforge Netherlands map, same behavior, same looks too by the way.

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Same with me (Sony XZ1,1920x1080, Android 9).
I’ve always opened D, A, CH, I and SL by default (everything else is added if needed). All map layers off, only gas stations are activated now and then. I don’t need hillshading either.
And: I can’t even imagine driving with a zoom level < 15!

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Cruiser GL shows similar behavior = freezing. Cruiser (without GL) does a better job, using the same maps I downloaded via Kurviger. Maps look better too in cruiser then in Kurviger. Very similar app / menu to Kurviger I see, what is this app? Does not seem to support finding an address to navigate to, or does it?

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You bet they will! :smirk: :+1:

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Kurviger is based on Cruiser platform.
(I am their author)

Cruiser platform hosts multiple map engines, like Mapsforge or OpenGL VTM.
(I am their developer)

Which online map?
Because most online maps are just bitmap images, prepared in server and downloaded on device.
Offline maps (also Mapitlion) are vector maps rendered in real time on the device.

We have not seen such behavior, besides the known case of vegetation layer which is particularly heavy or badly defined in some areas in original map data from where the maps are created.

We practically live in this forum. :slightly_smiling_face:

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:slight_smile: Ok Devemux thx
So for online maps the rendering workload is on the server, hence more smooth.
Why would the rendering of offline maps at zoomlevel ~8 be so heavy? There is very little map information displayed in Kurviger at that zoom level.
Strange that I am the only one reporting this issue.
I use Mapilion online maps.

Not all online maps, e.g. Mapilion is a vector map (with different structure).
Online bitmap maps are easy to detect, they “seem blurry” while zooming.

Shouldn’t be, since map data are simplified in small zoom levels.
Vegetation contains many nature sub-layers and one at that area seems heavy,
at least on latest maps and at least on your device.
Need to make tests and see if / how can reproduce the situation.

So Kurviger Pro und Cruiser GL mit Austria, Czech-Republic, Germany und Poland, Karten von hier http://download.mapsforge.org/maps/v5/europe/. Kurviger 20km Zoom 9.0 minimales Ruckeln, ansonsten keine Probleme. Cruiser GL bei 20km etwas ruckeliger als Kurviger.
Kurviger Pro and Cruiser GL with Austria, Czech-Republic, Germany and Poland, maps from here http://download.mapsforge.org/maps/v5/europe/. Curvy 20km zoom 9.0 minimal jerking, otherwise no problems. Cruiser GL at 20km a bit jerkier than Curviger.

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Thanks everyone, always nice when community is being so active in testing! :slightly_smiling_face:

Cruiser GL has different map style than Kurviger, rendering more map data.

So seems that in very high resolutions (> FHD) the OSM nature polygon layers (under Vegetation in Kurviger) have rendering performance problems at small zoom levels.

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Next (Beta) version will have several stability improvements - for offline maps too. :slightly_smiling_face:

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