KayakNav v3.0

KayakNav 3.0 is in the early stages of development. It will support iOS 10.0 and newer. It includes additional features including vector based maps and performance improvements. Our vector based map server covering the entire planet is running here if you want a preview.

Preliminary testing indicates dramatic improvements to map rendering speed and memory footprint on the device.

This vector based map server does not require server side tile rendering and caching that is in place for the PNG based map tiles, so server side processing and downloads will be faster. The trade-off is that rendering of maps must be performed on the device using graphics hardware, so best performance will be achieved using the latest iPhone or iPad hardware.

The move to Vector based maps has not been straight-forward and work is on-going. Unfortunately the MapBox API used in the latest "Vector" version is not as "Open Source" as MapBox would have you believe. To use it, you can't use your own vector server and it appears that a subscription to MapBox is required to use the mapping facility.

Please see the Map Server article and check out the performance improvements by clicking some of the links like "Paris", Lake Ginninderra etc. If viewed using your mobile device, this will give an indication of expected KayakNav 3.0 map performance.

Progress:

• Implementation of a new Vector based map server and served via the SSL front end web server - completed.
• Upgrade of source code to the Vector Maps API - in progress.

Please check back here for updates.

Please refer to the KayakNav Manual for details of the core features of the current version of KayakNav.