UKC

My ViewRanger won’t open now and outdoor active also won’t open without me registering ( I’ve opened it before and it looked ok ) . I always get twitchy when I feel like I’m being “ made “ to do something and may look for Something else . 

Do you pay a subscription to View Ranger? 

I paid yearly for View Ranger, then when it moved to Outdoor Active I was sceptical as I don't like change. So I didn't renew. But then I needed the maps, so I checked it out properly and it's pretty good! 

I actually prefer it to View Ranger. 

The only downside is that it doesn't work when you're out of signal, but there is the option to download map sections beforehand. 

I’ve tolerated it for a week taking advantage of the free trial to get the Irish mapping. It’s very unintuitive at times but I guess it works.

The big plus of OA for me, which was the same with VR, is having one app that covers you wherever you go, UK and Europe. Important tho as Whoopdeedoo says, to download maps in advance.

I can't work out quite how VR is being withdrawn  - Mrs WV still gets full access to it, I don't?! 

Yes it is good

Perhaps Mrs WV hasn't updated the app. I don't set my phone to auto-update apps and I stopped updating VR long before the switch to OA and I still have full access to all my purchased maps, routes and tracks.

Is outdoor active app any good?

No.

Try 'Gaia GPS', was looking for something like OS maps, but free, and this was recommended to me. Been using it in Italy for past week and it's excellent, got more stuff than paid 'Kompass' app.

I can see it covera UK as well so worth a look especially as it's totally free

Edit: forgot too mention I've tried outdoor active at the same time and kept using Gaia instead.

I was pretty happy using viewranger, and have downloaded outdooractive. I must admit I haven't used OA much, because even though I have managed to connect my old viewranger account and have access to the maps I had on it while I have signal, I cannot download these to access offline without paying for a subscription, so makes the app hugely less useful for me.

From the playing around with OA I have done it seems less intuitive to me, and just not as easy to use or as good as viewranger.

I would probably pay the subscription to keep using viewranger, but currently doing everything I can to avoid paying OutdoorActive any money. I just resent paying them for reducing my access to mapping I used to have with poorer app, seeing as it is they who are responsible for making it impossible for me to use Viewranger which I was perfectly happy using. 

“ I just resent paying them for reducing my access to mapping I used to have with poorer app, seeing as it is they who are responsible for making it impossible for me to use Viewranger which I was perfectly happy using. “ 

^ this is pretty much my point . 

It is also worth asking the question as to why they took over Viewranger in the first place? It almost seems that what they wanted is to 'buy' its users rather than the app, they have destroyed the app, and I feel as if I am rewarding them for doing so if I now pay them for using OutdoorActive.

We now use Outdoor Active with the rescue team, having previously used Viewranger. I think Viewranger was far more user friendly than OA - the thing I miss the most are the crosshairs in the centre of the Viewranger screen which would always display the grid ref and altitude in the bottom corner. OA seems to be more of a social media thing than a mapping app judging by the constant messaging and "suggested trails" blurb I get.  - Then again, I'm not paying for it. 🤔

This. 
 

It’s not as good as VR but it will do, still miles better than OS Maps app. 

About sums it up to for me to.

Though I can still access my Viewranger. 

For a paid app I've been using Fatmap - the 3d function is very good 

They haven’t even done a very good job of ‘buying’ the users, judging by the way so many of us have been opting for anything but OA. 

I’d paid for the VR app back in the day, which then became the ‘pro’ version.  I’ve bought loads of map tiles over the years.  Why OA now think I’ll rent what I’ve already paid for from them, I can’t fathom.

I would have would have been happy to buy more map tiles from them, if they’d have handled the transition differently.

My money will go elsewhere in future.

As others have said I refuse to consider using it because they bought view ranger and stole it from the world. And view ranger was fantastic, I’d been using it for years. Sad times. 

While my free trial of Pro+ was active I used it and liked it, although there were a few annoying bugs. If you've got OS maps loaded then you can't zoom out to an overview of the country, you can't import GPX tracks, and for some reason the grid on mine is skewed to one side slightly on desktop and the app and I can't figure out how to change it. No way I'm paying them though after what they did to VR. I've got most of the UK downloaded through viewranger (well, the interesting bits anyway) and that's still working well on my phone. When it stops working I'll have to find an alternative, but it won't be OutdoorActive.

The worst bit of it all for me is that at least one of the Viewranger guys has been working for/alongside OA since they bought it, and has seen what they've done/are doing to it.  

I'd definitely look around rather than jumping straight to OA.  The UI is really clunky and annoying compared to VR, and even basic elements like getting a GR for where you are etc aren't that obvious (and they insist on giving every possible co-ordinate system under the sun rather than just an OS grid ref).  IT's definitely targeted more as a social media / community tool than a mapping / navigation tool and suffers massively from it.

For anyone interested and who doesn't mind a bit more involved app installation, there are ways to install old versions of the ViewRanger app (at least on Android, it seems), and you can turn off updates (or use an offline-only phone). Not sure if you can still download map tiles or not but worth mentioning for anyone that might be interested in trying this (I haven't tried it, I've got an iPhone).

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/viewranger-ressurection-android/

I used to use View Ranger, I now use Outdoor Active and my partner uses the OS app. 

I really liked VR, I found it easy to use and simple to find waypoints / points of interest. 

OA is the most un-intuitive thing ever created.  It has a lot more features than VR and its 'auto select' when plotting routes or trying to calculate distances is good - it also has some very clever features.  But I find it very hard to add points of interest and I find it even harder to find them again after too.  As I can no longer use VR I have stuck with OA and enjoy it putting up with it problems.  Its very centered on being 'social' constantly trying to push other peoples routes onto me - but that's also quite good when you need a bit of inspiration. One thing I really love about OA is that the maps never blur, I can zoom right into something and it wont blur, I found that VR did blur after a certain point. 

The OS App seems very basic, although I havent used it much, it seems to lack a lot of features of OA (which has both pros and cons). It does seem to work quite well with limited signal / data though. 

Outdoor Active is rubbish. 

Viewranger allowed you o pre-download maps (tiles) for free, and you could load several .gpx routes at the same time. OA doesn't let you do either of these things, therefore it is useless (on the free version). 

Thanks elliot.baker, I managed to bring it back using that link. 

It was a little fiddly but I managed. 

You can do that in the paid version but its fiddly and unintuitive to use. I didn't persevere with my 1 month free trial.

I never had Viewranger so can't compare, but pretty happy with OA.

I too lament the passing of ViewRanger (had about £40 worth of tiles)- I currently seem to have 'free' use of OA (with the OS maps) up to December so have been using it. One of the annoying things is that it always orientates the map in the direction you are moving. In you ViewRanger you have am option to set this feature on or off. Not so in OA - unless anyone knows a way of doing this - i.e so map is always orientated N on the screen.

I have used OruxMaps for about ten years. It used to access OS mapping via Bing maps, but the OS put a stop to that. Fortunately, I have a source of mapping, and can cut tile sets for Orux using MOBAC.

If I could officially access OS mapping via Orux, I'd be happy to pay for it. It may be that I have got used to using it, so it seems intuitive to me, but I also tried Locus and Galileo (Gaia, now, I think), plus a few others (including Viewranger) at around the same time I started using Orux, and found Orux to be by far the best app for me.

On the other hand, my colleague's 'WheresThePath' website is still the only mapping tool I know of that allows PRoW segments to be automatically added to route planning, provided the LA has made their PRoW segments available online. Bill added that feature to WtP years ago. Sadly, WtP, whilst still working, is not longer supported, and has a Google-specified maximum daily tile limit.

Tap the compass icon at the top

I use OA now. I had to click some buttons to transfer over in the correct but because I had the OS national parks maps 1:50000 on view ranger, I now get free OS maps everywhere and they scale down to 1:25000 and can download and save any area for free.

Its much less user friendly the VR but I can't say no to unlimited downloadable free OS maps! So anyone that had OS map tiles check if you can also get this because it wasn't super clear this was going to happen when I transferred over (following instructions from the no longer functioning VR app)

Hijacking slightly as someone knew the answer to one technical question. I use an iPhone and when I pinch the map to zoom in and out I frequently end up twisting it so the grid lines are no longer orientated correctly. Does anyone know if there is an easy way to return it to being north pointing up on the screen? I’ve not been able to find anything to do it. Thanks.