Showroute wastes time showing Loudonville

[pderocco]

Whenever I use Showroute, it always begins by showing the standard starting location around Loudonville NY. When it has displayed the final tile of that, it clears the screen and starts drawing the proper map. Since I use this on a 4K screen, it always takes at least ten extra seconds to do that. I don't think the Loading Data process takes ten seconds, though, so it would be quicker if it just showed a blank screen until the route data was loaded, and it knew how to position the map.

If it were possible to know the map position from the query, before the data was loaded, it could start drawing the correct map right away, which would be even better.

My apologies if this has already been mentioned, but it's not obvious what search terms would find this issue.

[oscar]

Whenever I use Showroute, it always begins by showing the standard starting location around Loudonville NY.

More precisely, around Siena College. The webmaster is a professor there, uses Travel Mapping to help teach computer science students, and uses Siena network resources for academic and other Travel Mapping uses. The students and administration probably appreciate TM's using Siena as a default starting location.

When it has displayed the final tile of that, it clears the screen and starts drawing the proper map. Since I use this on a 4K screen, it always takes at least ten extra seconds to do that. I don't think the Loading Data process takes ten seconds, though, so it would be quicker if it just showed a blank screen until the route data was loaded, and it knew how to position the map.

I run Showroute from a laptop, and haven't noticed lag times as long as you've encountered. A related program, Mapview (which displays your travels in a state or other region, rather than a single route), lingers on Siena College a little longer than does Showroute, but not to the point of slowing down my work.

[Jim]

Oscar correctly points out why Siena is and will remain the default location for all of the maps, but I don't think the choice of location is the issue here.  It's correct that showroute pretty much always knows where it needs to be on the map from the QS parameter.  The unnecessary loading of the Siena College area is something I'm aware of, as the map setup code is shared among pretty much all places TM and the associated HDX of the METAL project need a map.  But it's never been a priority to change that since it's usually barely a flash of the default location before it starts (and quickly finishes) loading the data and recenters the map.

So anyway, I'd like to know more about how you get the 10 second delay.  The default map should only need to load a handful of tiles, so any delay seems it would have to be very short.  Even for routes with lots of waypoints, I'm seeing the route displayed and the UI active within a second, definitely under 2.  Compared to the loading and time of the data and addition of all the map overlays to show that data, I expect that the time for loading and drawing the starting map tiles is negligible.

[vdeane]

I wonder if the 4K monitor is significant.  Could pderocco have a significantly higher screen resolution than the rest of us here?  It would explain a few things, like how he's more affected by loading times than we are, or how he keeps making suggestions that would take up more screen real estate (like moving the .list tool to the left column, or changing the mapview display options to radio buttons).

[pderocco]

Yeah, I'm totally 4Ked. I expect it does have something to do with that. It looks like it is loading over a hundred tiles. But maps are awfully nice on a high-res screen, and they've gotten pretty cheap, so I doubt I'm the only one doing it.

[Jim]

I have access to some pretty big displays that I can try out.  @pderocco can you give me an example of a showroute URL where you are seeing the lengthy delays on loading?

[pderocco]

Actually, I just discovered that this is a Firefox problem. I switched back to Edge, and it loads all the tiles fast enough that it isn't a problem. But as I mentioned earlier, it is more prone to locking up if trying to load a large map area. On balance, I'll stick with Edge. But if no one else sees the problem with Firefox, then this is a false alarm, and there's something screwed up in my Firefox config.

[vdeane]

I just took a look in Firefox (normally use Vivaldi) and didn't seem to have an issue loading tiles in mapview.  I do occasionally see an issue in Vivaldi, however it's intermittent.  I assume it's an OSM issue and not a TM issue.