[WIP] TruckSim Navigator: a route advisor for your tablet / phone

[truckermudgeon]

I'm trying to build a mobile route advisor for my tablet that supports routing with lane guidance.

After almost three years later, I've come up with something that I've found usable enough for myself (I've been using it regularly for the past week!), and thought I should share

Video of me using the Navigator on my mac

If you want to preview the current state of things, and

• you play the vanilla, non-open-beta maps of ATS/ETS2
• you have a tablet or phone
• you have RenCloud's scs-sdk-plugin installed on Windows (or my cross-platform fork installed on macOS or Linux)

Then download and run the navigator client (Windows build only for now... macOS and Linux builds coming soon) and feel free to give it a go.

I'd say it works ok for the "happy path" of usage, but you may need to refresh your browser or restart the client if you run into certain errors. Would love to hear any feedback so I know what to improve.

Other Links

• maps repo: https://github.com/truckermudgeon/maps
• directions on running Navigator yourself: https://github.com/truckermudgeon/maps/ ... -Navigator

Background

My goal has been to build a route advisor that helps me feel immersed in the driving. For me, such a route advisor:

• looks like Google Maps, because that's what I use in real life
• only deals with navigation (so no readouts of the current job, fuel levels, or fatigue)
• requires manual interaction (so no automatically showing a route when you start a job)
• handles all my navigation needs, so I rarely, if ever, need to open up the game map

Some features I've implemented, to help with immersion:

• fuel stations are listed by their brand names, if available (so if you're loyal to Aron and don't care for Driverse gas stations, you can search for them )
• automatically switches between light / dark mode, depending on sunrise / sunset
• shows icons for traffic lights (mostly accurate) and stop signs (somewhat accurate)

There is still a lot that needs to be done and that I want to do (fix bugs, make data more accurate, integrate landcover data, add voice navigation using the Web Speech API, annotate all the roads in ATS so that the directions look more realistic, etc.). The list is long, and my free time is limited, but I'll continue updating the Navigator and the Slippy Map as my time allows

What's Next

I'm working on a GUI client, mostly to scratch an itch related to working on UI. Trying to figure out how to build it on Windows, at the moment:

gui-client-wip.png

Also: I'll run the public Navigator server for as long as feasible. If, for some reason I have to stop hosting the server, then people will need to build and run the project themselves

[Milan1NL]

Very nice idea! Keep up the good work

[SerPounce]

Modders never cease to amaze me! Thank you for your work! I'll give it a try.

[TwinShadow]

Wow, this is actually pretty cool. I use my tablet now and then for SimHub Dashboard which works pretty well on its own really. But those always just use the map tiles as-is and don't really do much else.

Seeing someone that takes the map information from the game, and adapt it into a Google Maps-like interface to route, search, and anything else planned for the future.... That's a step I haven't seen done as of yet. Since I play only the vanilla map, I'll see about playing around with this from time to time. And if any help may be needed to get the latest map info from newer DLC's, I can potentially be of assistance on that because I typically buy the DLC's on day one when they come out. I used to do something like that for another project that's been silent for a while now, which you can find on this GitHub repo I archived a while back.

[edit]
On another note, hopefully we'll be able to host the server itself on our own at some point. This actually would be something I could use my VPS for perhaps.

[truckermudgeon]

...
I'll see about playing around with this from time to time. And if any help may be needed to get the latest map info from newer DLC's, I can potentially be of assistance
...
On another note, hopefully we'll be able to host the server itself on our own at some point. This actually would be something I could use my VPS for perhaps.

Let me know what you think, if/when you get a chance to play with it

And thanks for the offer for getting the latest map info... I also typically buy the DLCs on day one, just so I can update my slippy map. But if that changes, I'll reach out (and btw, I have come across your project in the very early days of my slippy map project, when I was researching how best to parse map data. I ended up writing my own parser and going with vector tiles, instead of relying on the original ts-map project and its raster tiles).

Lastly: I should have all the code for running the client and server published this weekend... it's been a bit of a slog trying to get it to bare-minimum level of hackiness

[TwinShadow]

Ah yeah, I actually did play with it a couple days ago. Very neat project and actually I quite like it. Told one of my friends about it. I did run into some.... quirks but that is not the fault of navigator app itself, but because I was on the 1.58 Open Beta (which at the time of me posting this, literally just got pushed to the main stable branch on Steam). It was rather amusing to see the driver icon off the main path in the new areas of Arizona and New Mexico. lol - Then of course it will crash whenever it doesn't recognize a depot in a city or something... but again, I was messing with this briefly in the open beta, so I expected problems and problems I got lol.

The only thing I had trouble with was getting the thing going on my tablet. Not so much as the website itself, more just trying to figure out if I could keep the screen on. I think one way you could get around that is to bundle in some sort of webview Android App perhaps and eventually iOS for users using fruit devices. (lol) But my knowledge of Android dev is very, very limited, so I'm not sure how that would work. I also use Firefox since I am no fan of anything Chromium-based, so wasn't going to touch Chrome if I could help it atm.

[truckermudgeon]

Thanks for that feedback! I just updated the server with 1.58 data, now that it's been "officially" released. Hopefully no one sees misplaced icons or crashes from unknown cities and depots any more.

About keeping the screen on: I had always been changing my iPad's settings to never sleep, but your comment has led me to learn that there's a browesr API I can use to keep devices awake automatically... so I'll make that change this weekend (and then set my iPad back to sleeping after a reasonable amount of idle time).

I also use Firefox since I am no fan of anything Chromium-based, so wasn't going to touch Chrome if I could help it atm.

Noted! I'm also a Firefox user, so you're unlikely to spot any rendering or behavioral quirks that I don't already know about

[Bandit & The Snowman]

Sublime work
I haven’t had a look at GitHub or whatever… would it be useful to put together a how-to for setting up the server with everything it takes to run this locally? Just in case, and some might prefer running their own server.

[TwinShadow]

According to an earlier post, the server software is not on GitHub... yet. But I am also looking forward to it as well.

About keeping the screen on: I had always been changing my iPad's settings to never sleep, but your comment has led me to learn that there's a browesr API I can use to keep devices awake automatically... so I'll make that change this weekend (and then set my iPad back to sleeping after a reasonable amount of idle time).

Was not aware of an API for that, but good to know it exists. That makes my comment on an app redundant lol. (but I'm also not a coder)

[truckermudgeon]

I'm hoping to have all the server code published on GitHub by Sunday or Monday.

Just to set expectations: the directions to build it from scratch and get it running are kinda involved, especially if you're on Windows. The tool I use to generate vector map tiles is primarily a macOS command line tool... but it looks like the authors provide instructions on building it in Linux, and also running it in Docker, if you're familiar with it (I am not).