GAIA Premium offers new Overland map layer

[John E Davies]

“Ditch the crowds with our brand new overlanding map. Meet Gaia Overland, the best overlanding map you can put right on your vehicle’s dashboard. MVUM, USFS, public land boundaries – it’s all in here. Designed in-house for planning big routes, navigating tricky terrain, and rerouting on the fly, Gaia Overland is the definitive map for all of your overlanding, offroading, and motorized adventures. “

Gaia Overland: One Map to Rule Them All

I loaded the new layer into my iPad Mini 4 and my iPhone 13 Mini. I normally use the iPad for nav since it is so much easier to read, but I wanted to compare the look of the new layer vs the base GAIA Topo map on both devices...

iPad GAIA Topo:

iPad GAIA Overland:

iPhone GAIA Topo (set to the same zoom level/ scale):

iPhone GAIA Overland:

You can see how much more “acreage” is visible on the iPad. This new map looks promising, the readability is much much better, but unfortunately the MVUM road indications appear to be purely cosmetic. You are supposed to be able to select and click a road or trail and the Motor Vehicle Use Map name will appear in a pop up box at the lower left. You select and click that road or trail and it brings up the complete information box about who, what and when can use it. So the MVUM appears to be disfunctional. I have to add that layer manually, and only then does it work correctly. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having all that data built into the new Overland layer 😳

Here is how it works with the MVUM layer added.

I sent a bug report to GAIA. If someone here who has GAIA Premium can check this on their device(s), please comment, does the MVUM box appear using only the Overland layer? Thanks.

John Davies

Spokane WA

[Paul and Santina]

On my iPad Pro works like you described.
Overland provides a slightly different image (differentiates the “Upper Nancy” from “Nancy Creek”), but an MVUM box only appears when the MVUM (USFS) map is loaded.

MVUM (USFS) alone:

Overland map alone:

[John E Davies]

21 minutes ago, Paul and Santina said:

On my iPad Pro works like you described.
Overland provides a slightly different image (differentiates the “Upper Nancy” from “Nancy Creek”), but an MVUM box only appears when the MVUM (USFS) map is loaded.

Thanks, I emailed their support and was told this:

“It's something we eventually hope to incorporate, but the meta-data is not yet ready to be presented in a meaningful way.  Think of the first release as a v1, with improvements to come.”

And I said to him: “Thanks, you should definitely mention that in the map layer description. Otherwise somebody like me  is going to download a bunch of Overland maps and then get REALLY pissed when the popups don’t work out in the boonies, far from any cell signal. Because they forgot to also download the MVUM data. Which again, defeats the purpose of this new layer. But it sure is pretty. I like how the water is darker.”

I am amused at your choice of locations for your screen captures, I am a big fan of the Colville NF, my shots were from Curlew Lake near Republic. Do you live in NE Washington?

John Davies

Spokane WA

[Paul and Santina]

“I am amused at your choice of locations for your screen captures, I am a big fan of the Colville NF, my shots were from Curlew Lake near Republic. Do you live in NE Washington?”

Ha…no, I chose Washington State because that’s where you were looking. Someday, we’ll be heading that way though, and really looking forward to it. Our home base is Williamsburg, VA, and so far we’ve only camped at SPs from TN to NY. We’re still in our 1st year of camping. I really enjoy using Gaia, Avenza and All Trails when we hike. Just nice to know where we are and especially to have a record of our hikes.

[BBL]

On 7/29/2022 at 1:14 PM, John E Davies said:

Thanks, I emailed their support and was told this:

“It's something we eventually hope to incorporate, but the meta-data is not yet ready to be presented in a meaningful way.  Think of the first release as a v1, with improvements to come.”

And I said to him: “Thanks, you should definitely mention that in the map layer description. Otherwise somebody like me  is going to download a bunch of Overland maps and then get REALLY pissed when the popups don’t work out in the boonies, far from any cell signal. Because they forgot to also download the MVUM data. Which again, defeats the purpose of this new layer. But it sure is pretty. I like how the water is darker.”

I am amused at your choice of locations for your screen captures, I am a big fan of the Colville NF, my shots were from Curlew Lake near Republic. Do you live in NE Washington?

John Davies

Spokane WA

John,

This is a great post and it Colville NF caught my eye as well. I have been out there MANY times with the USAF Survival training school. Did my initials Wilderness Survival course out there and then several follow up "Exercises" where we were testing new survival electronics. Other people tested other things but electronics "was my thing" in the AF so I got to test the latest GPS, Radios, e-maps, etc.

Talk about sleeping on the ground and things getting "buggy", there are many creepy, crawly, growling things out there in that forest. 

Brian