I’m specifically meaning the traffic mapping and collaborative reporting side of Waze and Gmaps, I know navigation via Comaps is possible but I haven’t seen anything that I can contribute to, to help others with time estimates etc.
I’m specifically meaning the traffic mapping and collaborative reporting side of Waze and Gmaps, I know navigation via Comaps is possible but I haven’t seen anything that I can contribute to, to help others with time estimates etc.
The biggest problem is scale. You need enough people to use it to even be remotely useful. Google has the movement data for so many phones that the can detect traffic problem only through the phones moving more slowly. Then there is waze where people actively add data. Even if there was an app that had the same functionality you wouldn’t get any benefit if you are the only in a 100km radius.
Waze is also owned by google.
I know. I was just talking about the amount of data that is available that is hard to reproduce in the FOSS world.
but it might have sounded like you separated these two; the point of the commenter above, i believe, was that google maps and waze now share the same data. i do believe that getting all these contributors and keeping them is the reason why google didn’t kill the waze already but is just slow-crippling it instead.
some volunteers might be happy to contribute data to waze, while they might not be as happy to do the same for google.
i do agree with your point about certain amount of data needed for the crowd-sourced functions to be useful.
How exactly are they crippling Waze?
It’s much better for input & feedback than Maps.
You can give verbal reports by phone or Android Auto/Car Play. Can give more variety of reports, eg: potholes, blocked lane, road kill. And it gives a very accurate countdown timer for how long you’re stuck in traffic. Waze is the superior app… IMHO.