Street View Split Screen - See As You PlotFORUMS HOME SEARCH FORUMS

We're very excited to announce news of a brand new Premium feature on plotaroute.com - Street View Split Screen.

One of the important things to consider when planning a new route, is how suitable the roads are for the activity. Are they safe enough to navigate on foot? Do they have cycle lanes? Do they have pavements or sidewalks? Are they very narrow or busy? Google Street View helps to answer these questions and has long been a free feature of the plotaroute.com route planner, but until now you have had to switch between the map and the Street View.

Our brand new Split Screen feature gives Premium members the option of splitting the screen into resizable sections, to show both the map and Street View at the same time. This gives you a ground level view of the road as you plot your route.

To activate the Street View Split Screen, click on the Street View icon in the Map Type box at top of the route planner.

Please note, this feature is only available on the deskop version of the website, so is not available on mobile devices.

To see the new Split Screen feature in action, take look at this demo video:

If you currently have a Standard account and would like to take advantage of this feature and the other benefits of Premium membership, please take a look our our Membership Options.

sadly yet another negative feature that is slowly taking away much of the ease of use that made Plotaroute such a wonderful tool a couple of years ago. If you are not premium and want to see streetview you now have to press the streetview icon at the top of the screen, read all about the new "premium split screen feature" for the orange streetview icon to appear. Once you then use streetview the icon disappears.......and you repeat the need for two clicks to get it back again.

Thanks for the feedback Trevor.  I'll see if we can find a way to display the Street View pegman by default for Standard users to avoid the need for the extra clicks.

John

We've made a small tweak to this, so that Standard users can still access single-screen Street View in the usual way without the need for extra mouse clicks.

John  

I preferred the old system (without the split screen) which was less cumbersome, is there any way I can get that back, backward step to what was easy

Hi Roger - You can view the Street View without the split-screen by dragging the split-screen divider all the way to the left.  The split-screen feature gives you the option to view just the map, just the Street View, or both.  

John

Love the split screen; I've just been planning a long distance road cycling route; I always use Streetview to make an assessment of traffic volumes; and this makes it very easy to move quickly through the route.

One observation; not sure if its a glitch or by design; if you move the map and the little gold man is no longer visible he seems to revert to the end of the route rather than stay where you left him.

Hi Brian,

I'm glad you like the new Split Screen feature, we've had some very positive feedback about it.

I can't seem to reproduce the problem you mentioned though.  The Street View pegman should move when you plot a point but not when you drag the map.  If you're able to make it happen again, can you let me know how you did it please?

John

Hi John

I use Firefox (58.0.2) on Mac OSX (10.13.3) so this may be mixed up in this somewhere.

If I open a route; zoom in part way along the route; click the Streetview split screen option; the Streetview image being displayed is the end of the route not where I am zoomed in. The previously available access to him on the left hand side has gone. This means to Streetview where I am, I now have to zoom out, grab the man, bring him back; which as you will apreciate is a bit of a pain.

His original placeholder does seem to reapear on the left hand side; and intermittently he does seem to go back; I cant repoduce that reliably.

You can keep working, keeping him close by; problem is if you click off the feature and then click back; he goes back to the end.

Ideally if you click the feature the Streeview image should be on the centre (or plotted route closest the centre) of the zoomed map image.

I hope that makes sense?

Kind regards

Brian Williams

Thanks for this additional information Brian.  Yes, when you activate the Split Screen feature, the Street View image is set by default the end of the route (unless there is no route plotted).  However, there is no need to zoom out to see the Street View pegman if you want to change its position - you can just drag it from its docking position on the left of the map to and you'll be able to drop it in a new position.  I can see that it would be more helpful though if it was automatically placed on a section of the map in view, so I'll get this changed.  Thanks again for your feedback.

John  

We've made a tweak to this so that when you activate the Split Screen Street View, it now shows the point on the route nearest to the middle of the map when, unless the end of the route is visible on the map, in which case it will show that instead. Thanks again for the feedback Brian.

John

Perfect; much easier to use.

Regards

Brian

Hi John

Is there any chance of another tweek in relation to this feature; is it possible to make the steetview image look along the road by default rather than look to the side as it does at the moment?

Regards

Brian

Hi Brian,

It should be doing this already - see this demo video:

The view should point in the direction of travel based on the last 2 points plotted.

John

Hi John

I think there may be a bug in this feature; certainly for me I always see an image at right angles to the road ahead; ie I am always looking at a hedge or the like. Happy to send some screenshots / route examples for you to look at. Please advise?

Regards

Brian

That's odd, as it works OK here, as you can see in the demo video. Can you give me an example of a route you plotted where this happens?  Also, can you let me know what browser you are using please and which Map Type and Auto-Plot settings you have selected?

Thanks,

John

I love the look of the Street View Split Screen! Well done!

But I was wondering if you could clarify how it works, exactly.

I was wondering whether the street view and the map will operate in sync so that when you start the route, the street view will automatically follow the route as the cursor follows the route or must you drag the cursor all around the route, manually.

Glenn

Hi Glenn - glad you like this feature. Yes, the Street View will automatically refresh as you plot your route when in split-screen mode, so you can see the road ahead. It won’t change if you drag the map, but you can manually choose a new Street view by dragging the pegman (below to zoom buttons) onto a new road.

You can see a demo of this in action here: https://youtu.be/jSwEHdJ6l7Q

I have already created a route and I want to replay the route with the split screen showing street view. When I hit the start button will the street view be showing at the same speed as that of the advancing cursor?   

Automatic refresh of street view during route playback insn't currenlty feasible, as internet connections aren't fast enough to download the images in time.

John