The development of Drone Scene continues!

Drone Scene
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Actually - just checked - the link in the hamburger is https://

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We’ve been busy working on some more updates to Drone Scene over the last few weeks.

Today see’s the following changes, updates and new features go live!

• Bug fix: Some map layers were being loaded twice

– Reported by @OzoneVibe

  • When you drag the map around some 3rd party data Layers were being loaded twice
    – This caused the objects to suddenly appear darker in colour (as there were now two of them)
    – It was also having an affect on overall site performance

• Force HTTPS

  • Drone Scene was accessible via plain old http, as well as https
  • We now redirect you quietly to our secure site
    – Because, well, it’s 2020 for a start

• Improve page loading times

We’ve always been proud of just how fast the Drone Scene web site is. It’s something we focus a lot of our time on and optimise wherever possible. You’ll no doubt be aware that it will load several thousand locations, layers, points and polygons on to the map within in just a second or two.

We’ve made some minor changes in the background to the caching of static assets to help it load even faster the next time you visit.

• National Trust Layers

  • Combined both NT layers in to a single selection in the Layers menu
    – We still display both the Open Access and Limited Access areas
    — But now use just a single tick box to turn them both on and off at the same time

• Improve the display of the Location Co-ordinates

– Requested by @SkyJumper

  • Changed text colour from grey to black
    – As it was quite hard ro read
  • Increased font size
    – As it was very small

• Make Co-ordinates link to Google Driving Directions

– Requested by (me)

  • The displayed co-ordinates are now a clickable link to Google Maps
  • Clicking on the co-ordinates now opens the Driving Directions page of Google Maps
    – And automatically pre-populates the destination for you

• What 3 Words integration

– Requested by @milkmanchris

  • Every existing location marker pin on the map now has a ///what3words address attached to it
  • Adding a new location will automatically attach the ///what3words link for you in the background
    – You don’t even need to look it up!
  • Clicking on any ///w3w link opens up the what3words site
    – From where you can then launch in to Waze and other satnav apps

As ever, we hope you enjoy these changes and new features :smiley:

Shout if you have any suggestions for future development!

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Thank you for all your excellent behind-the-scenes work!

The w3w integration is great!

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Thanks for the great work you do on this site, you have taken my suggestion a step further by making the co-ordinates a direct link to Google maps, great idea plus what three words.

Very much appreciated.

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I really find What3Words useful for off road stuff (hiking up mountains etc.) ///icing.on.cake :+1:t2:

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Great work guys! :+1:t2:

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As always, the amount of work that has gone into this is phenomenal and very valuable!

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Good work Team GA.

Or as we say in Wales - Dai Iawn.

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I’ve just pushed a few more updates to Drone Scene.

Nothing too spectacular this time I’m afraid, so we’ll consider this more of an interim release :blush:

• Bug fix: Locations with lots of content caused the info balloon to keep closing itself

– Reported by @Dvdjo and @macspite

  • When you clicked on a location marker pin on the map and the pin contained a lot of textual information, it would flash up the info balloon and instantly close itself again :scream:
    – We now insert some scroll bars inside the info balloon to allow any size of content inside the balloon

• Bug fix: Validate all drop down lists when adding a Location

  • A bug came to light last week whereby you could add a Location to the map without actually selecting a Region or a Category from the drop down lists :scream:
    – We now validate all form entries

• Performance: Resize uploaded images on the fly

  • Most people upload original-sized photos from their drone when adding a location
  • Drone Scene only ever displays a very small thumbnail view of a photo yet we were still presenting the full size image - squished in to a tiny box
  • This meant we were sending 40MB+ images to your browser in some cases :scream:
  • We now resize all uploaded images on the fly
    – There is a performance impact here though. Adding a new location to the map will now take approx 0.8s long than usual :grimacing:

• Increase map max-zoom level from 18 to 20

  • Not technically requested by anyone but something I picked up on in an unrelated conversation with @macspite (so thanks, Robert!)
    – We previously only supported zooming in to level 18 on the map
    – You can now zoom in to level 20
  • Note: The Open Street Map satellite map tiles that we use don’t actually offer a higher resolution tile than 18x (boooooo…)
    – Which means for zoom levels 19 and 20 you’re are essentially just zooming in on a lower resolution sat image
    — Which in turn means not much advantage in detail when viewing a Satellite base map, but a 2x advantage in detail when viewing a Road map :+1:t2:

• Update the site “favicon” icon to match the new logo

  • This is the icon that gets displayed when bookmarking / adding to your browser favourites
    – Apologies in advance, various browsers cache this icon differently and you might not pick it up for anything up to 28 days from now :grimacing:
  • Thanks Dave @OzoneVibe for the updated icon

• Removed all Weather functionality

  • Did you even know we had a Weather button? :man_shrugging:
  • Every single time the map panned or zoomed in or out we instantly fetched the weather for that location that was now visible in your “viewport”
    – This was an expensive API call that 99% of people were never even using
  • Not many people will care about the weather in a location (right now) while they’re browsing the map and looking for somewhere to fly
  • You’d normally only be interested in the weather in that location on the day you wish to fly there
    – At which point you’d (rightly) use your existing favourite/trusted weather app anyway - not Drone Scene :man_facepalming:

As ever, shout if you have any suggestions for future development, we’d love to hear them!

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Excellent work! :+1:

You’re swatting the bigs before they’ve even landed :astonished:

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Many thanks for all of this, Drone Scene is very useful indeed.

Good work!

Ned

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Cheers Rich.
But there was a massive blue notification yesterday for today covering most of England.
If I wanted to click on another zone, say an airport or NT site, it just showed the notification for the big blue zone which was for only 2 hrs today (can’t remember what it was). It seemed to override all other no fly zones (but not fly locations).
Any way around this? Or am I doing something wrong.

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It was a NOTAM.

The NOTAM layer is on by default, you can turn it off from within the map menu button.

That’s the second time I’ve seen a NOTAM cover the whole of England now, I think it was the Met Office? :thinking:

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image
image986×561 173 KB

:rofl:

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Got ya. Ta

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Yet more updates to Drone Scene tonight!

:dancer:

Missed the update last month? Details here.

Want to know what’s new this month? Read on!

FYI - There is a significant change to the login system, if nothing else, at least read that bit :clap:t2:

• Bug fix: Uploaded images were losing their original dimensions

  • I made a change last month to resize uploaded images on the fly as Drone Scene only needs to display a thumbnail picture in the info balloon on the map pin
    – However, that also resulted in a low-res, proportionately-altered image being uploaded to the matching post here on the forums
  • No more!
    – Your beautiful, full size, hi-res, un-altered image will arrive here on the forums in all it’s glorious technicolor

* Performance: Moved some 3rd party API calls to be server-side instead of client-side

  • We pull a lot of data for the map layers in from a lot of sources - in real time
    – We now pull some of the more common layers server-side
  • Just to save you a bit of bandwidth really :blush:

* User Experience: When viewing a specific location, load all other location marker pins in the background

  • In the past, when viewing a single-location we only ever loaded that map pin
    – This meant when you zoomed out you couldn’t then see other nearby locations (bad times)
  • We now display all location marker pins on the map, all the time!
    – Even when viewing a specific location (good times)

* User Experience: Change authentication mechanism to use SSO

  • Since the dawn of time you have needed to log in to Drone Scene using your forum Username and Email address
    – This was such a gotcha
    – Despite multiple text warnings, banners, and instructions all over the Login page, people simply kept on entering their username and password
    — You would, of course, it’s only natural
  • The entire auth mechanism has been re-written to use this Discourse forum as a Single Sign On provider

What does this mean for you? :thinking:

Well, the first thing you’ll notice when you visit Drone Scene now is that you’re not logged in :scream:

Fear not!

Click the Login button at the top :+1:t2:

What happens next then depends on one of two things:

  1. If you’re currently logged in to the forum over here already, then Drone Scene will simply refresh and you’ll be magically logged in to Drone Scene

  2. If you’re not logged in to the forum at the point of clicking Login on the Drone Scene site you’ll be redirected to a login / authorisation page here on the forum
    – Upon confirming your correct Username and Password (yes, USERNAME AND PASSWORD!) you’ll be magically redirected back to Drone Scene and logged in

Once logged in with either method a new cookie will be added to your browser meaning the next time you visit Drone Scene you’ll be automatically logged in and won’t need to do anything.

Gone now is the awkward login combo :clap:t2:

Replaced with a far more user friendly and far more secure login system :bowing_man:t2:

As ever, if you have… ahhhh, you know the rest :blush:

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THANKS!

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:+1:t2: :+1:t2: :+1:t2: :+1:t2: :+1:t2:

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Excellent update… made all the better when I go to this point:

And read the rest in my head like Sean Connery’s intro to Highlander

I’m not shpanishh, I am egypshian!

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Top work, as always @PingSpike!

Possible suggestion for a future iteration: filter by user added?

And on that note, is it just me, or is something up with the filters? If I apply any filter, I no longer see any sites. Tested the same result on both Android phone and PC/Chrome.

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