I just assumed their business model wasn't viable?.
I thought VR got bought? Did they go bust?
I assumed it was growth through acquisition.
Well it looks like the end is nearly here…
In order to focus all our effort on our Outdooractive app and website, we will be switching off access to the ViewRanger app and website.
Timing
We currently expect to switch off access to the ViewRanger app and website at the end of February 2022.
For those of us that purchased National Parks or Map Tiles though they will now be available in Outdoor Active for free but only the areas you bought and at the scale you bought.
More here and if logged in you will be asked to accept OA’s t&c to get the maps ‘transferred’
https://www.outdooractive.com/mobile/en/viewranger-map-agreement.html
I have been in denial about losing ViewRanger, an App that has served me well for years. I have logged over 2,000 points on of interest on VR of various types in that time. VR allows you to record multiple types of POI which appear on the map as blobs of different colours and different icons. Using this feature I can differentiate between different interests and places I have been or are yet to go to. Narrative can be added to each POI allowing you to record details about what is there. As far as I can see no other Mapping App has this level of functionality. To lose this data and the ability to use it will really mess me up ! Can anybody here suggest where I can go to keep using my POI ?
@Smarticus I was in denial, but recently realised I had nothing to lose by trying to engage with OA. For one thing, it's automatically transferred all my routes and tracks (~1000 in total). I'm not sure if POIs are the same, I don't tend to use them, but worth checking.
If not, I'm pretty certain you can export POIs to a GPX in Viewranger... just checked: go into POIs, 3 dot menu top right, "Export POIs". Then you should be able to import that into any service that reads GPXes (and keep it as a backup).
Unfortunately OA just offers a single type of POI marker, which is a green square that doesn’t stand out. I haven’t found any other Apps that offer similar POI functionality to ViewRanger yet. I have the GPX file but no where to upload it as yet.
I'm hoping the viewranger guys are going to work on OA to merge some of the better features. I'd send them an email and see if this is a feature they might be considering
Ah, sorry Smarticus, I misinterpreted your question. Not sure I can help you I'm afraid. Have you tried Backcountry Navigator and/or Memory Map? I don't know if either of them support more detailed POIs but they seem the most "feature rich" apps from my research into alternatives.
I agree that the detailed POIs with different icons is quite useful. I've used it to show different types of potential resupply points on bikepacking trips, and useful to be able to add, e.g. opening times. Just exported my own POIs from Viewranger (thanks for the reminder) and looking at the XML, it seems there is a <cmt> (comment, presumably) field for the description and a <sym> field for the symbol. Not sure how universal support of those is, but it seems likely there'll be an app somewhere that will at least be able to support <cmt>.
@nickjb: me too - I'm trying to move on from the spitting my dummy out phase, and look for some positives. I've been thinking of asking their support if there's a way me/we as ex-Viewranger users can engage by giving feedback/feature requests/beta testing to develop OA into an even better version of VR, which would be the ideal outcome.
