Augmented Reality in Auckland Traffic

Latest update of Auckland Traffic (2.2) contains a new Augmented Reality View (accessed from the menu of main screen).

You should be able to point to highway and be able to see closest cameras to you.

However, we have noticed that on all HTC Trophy devices I’ve tested – compass is off by 90 degrees.

Please do let us know if you have issues with this new view and compass pointing the wrong way on your phones.

Auckland Traffic 2.0 Release

I’m pleased to announce the general availability of Auckland Traffic 2.0 for Windows Phone Mango (7.5): http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=c83af1f4-e589-e011-986b-78e7d1fa76f8

Inclusion of extra cameras did slow down performance of 1.x versions so we’ve optimised the start-up performance for both main map screen and camera screens.

Camera Screen

Cameras that are physically close together will be grouped together so that they can be seen and activated without need to zoom-in:

10 Cameras grouped toghether

Single cameras can now be pinned to start screen and will create a two-sided tile that will display traffic congestion information around that camera. These cameras will be updated every 30 minutes as long as battery saver mode is not active and there’s network connection. Activating this tile will take you to the Camera screen, which is much faster to load then whole map screen:

Multiple live tiles   Camera Screen

We’ve also optimized the main live tile image to reduce data consumption, new image is 18~19KB, compared with previous 28KB image, decreasing maximum data consumption from 99 MB/month to 66MB/month.

Each pinned camera image will also consume about 20KB for each update, consuming maximum of 29 MB/month per pinned camera image.

We would love to see your reviews of our app and please drop us any suggestions of what you might want to see in next update of Auckland Traffic.

More Auckland Traffic Highway Data

We’ve been informed that congestion data for SH20, SH20A and SH20B will be available starting November 1st 2011.

Hopefully this will not cause any problems with Auckland Traffic (full version) except for some performance hit during loading.

In the other news, Auckland Traffic 2.0, with Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) support is being tested as we speak, and we’re hoping for update to become available to all later this week.

Auckland Traffic Mango Beta 2

Since Beta 1 has expired, Beta 2 is now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace. If you would like to participate, please send us your Windows Live Id to nzbee@live.com and we’ll send you the link to Beta in the marketplace.

Good news is that it will no longer require a free developer slot on your phone and that anyone with Mango will be able to participate.

New Data coming to Auckland Traffic

Last night we’ve submitted a 1.9 update to Auckland Traffic Free, hoping that this will be our last update before Mango arrives to NZ Windows Phones. Today, however, we’ve received update from New Zealand Transport Authority which states that service that provides our apps with traffic camera information will be updated on 2nd of September 2011 to also include extra data, including traffic cameras for:

  • Hamilton
  • Central North Island
  • Wellington
  • Christchurch
  • Dunedin

We are testing impact of these changes to existing versions, but according to preliminary results existing versions of Auckland Traffic should, on 2nd of September, load without problems, but scrolling the map to any of the places listed above will give you access to those cameras as well.

We are also considering renaming the “Auckland Traffic” to “NZ Traffic”.

Auckland Traffic Mango Beta 1

UPDATE: Auckland Traffic Mango Beta 2

Today we’re making public first beta of Auckland Traffic for Mango version of Windows Phone 7.

Since marketplace, at the time of writing, does not accept Mango apps, I’ve uploaded the XAP to SkyDrive: Auckland Traffic Mango Beta 1

Deployment

To install it, you’ll need a PC with WP7 Mango SDK and you can use “Application Deployment” app that comes as part of SDK:

image

Unfortunately, this will take one of your 3 developer deployments slots.

What’s New

Mango version has been updated to support:

  • Fast Application Switching
  • Multiple and Two Sided Live Tiles
  • Background Task
  • System Tray

Fast Application Switching

In practice this means that pressing back button to return to the Auckland Traffic app will be instant, as well as task switching back to the app.

Multiple and Two Sided Live Tiles

Camera pop-up has new check-box in the top right corner:

image

Pressing this check-box will pin that camera:

image image

Background Task

App installs task agent to update secondary tiles every 30 minutes.

image

System Tray

New System Tray Progress Bar in Mango allows us to use more of screen space for the map by removing additional band that was displayed below the system tray in NoDo.

Progress messages will appear now in System Tray and swiping down on it will display your standard data:

image image

Feedback

You can post your feedback in comments or e-mail us.

Note

This is updated version of our published app, Auckland Traffic, please try it out, rate it and spread the word:

Auckland_Traffic_201173154733

Thank you for trying-out our App!