To start navigation from current location:

Please follow this video for a quick intro about navigating with the new interface.


Select the wrench tool menu in the top right screen corner.
Select menu item Navigate to... / Address
Enter the destination address.
Select the desired address from the search results.
Position the blue location indicator to fine tune the destination location.
Press the top button Get fastest route.
VoxTrek will now determine the current location via GPS and then determine the route.
VoxTrek is now tracking your movement and will indicate your current position on the calculated route. You will hear voice instructions for the next steps to follow.

Feet, meters or yards?

Please go to the iPhone settings and select VoxTrek. You can set the distance unit to Miles+feet, Kilometers+meters or Miles+yards

Downloading text to speech voices

Once you have used VoxTrek for a while you will want to hear announcements in a high quality text to speech voice. The default voice handles English well but to use VoxTrek in another language you need to use a high quality text to speech voice.

Try the different voices now at the Acapela Group demo website. I do not recomment to get Kenny or Nelly because they are children voices and have quite a high pitch.

Make sure you are connected via Wifi because each voice is about 20 megabytes and can take a minute to download over a fast internet connection.

To install new voices follow Menu/Voice Options.
Select a voice to purchase like USEnglish Heather.
Wait 5 to 10 seconds.
Confirm the alert "Confirm your In App Purchase"
Select buy button from the alert.
Wait 5 to 10 seconds.
An alert will open to enter your iTunes user and password. Confirm the purchase.
Wait 5 to 10 seconds.
An alert will open that confirms that the purchase was successful. Close the alert.
The tableview item of USEnglish Heather is changed with a yellow download arrow.
Select again the item USEnglish Heather to start downloading the text to speech voice.
A download view is presented with a download status and progress bar.
Once the download is complete you can select the Finished button at the bottom of the screen.
Now in the Voice Options menu select the top right button Done. The user interface will automatically adjust the language translations to correspond to the selected text to speech voice.

To download maps for offline usage:


Select Menu/ Settings/ Download Map or
Menu/Layers/Download Map (v1.7)
Zoom out or in of the map so that the portion of the map you want to make available offline is visible on the screen. Select button Download Map.

The offline map downloader starts to download tiles from the zoom level you specified for the region that is visible over the screen
Once all the tiles are downloaded for that zoom level, the zoom level is increased and the process is repeated.
You notice that each time the zoom level is increased that more tiles need to be downloaded and that downloading at that zoom level takes more time.
The downloader stops when all the tiles are downloaded at zoom level 17. If you want to have an overview map of a very large region you can download for example from zoom level 10 to 13. You just need to cancel the downloader when you have enough map details.
Please don't use to download complete countries as this puts too much stress on the map servers. Just download the cities you require. For long journeys you can use the route simulate function to cache the required tiles.

Changing the map type:

Select Tools menu -> Map Type
Now select from the 16 different available map types :-)
Google Map can not be used however when a route is active.

Map orientation indicator color legend:

When VoxTrek is started the current location is displayed. The top left button allows you to toggle the map mode.

Green: Centers the map around the current location and orients the map based on the compass bearing.
Blue: Centers the map around the current location but the North of the map is facing up.
Red: Map is in free mode so that you can explore the world.

Driving, walking or cycling modes:

Select Tools menu ->  Route Options -> Route Type
Chose the route type for the route calculation.

Changing the path layout:

Select Tools menu -> Route Options 
-> Path Width to change the path width
-> Path Color to change the color of the path
-> Path Opacity to change the transparency of the path

Route instructions:

Route instructions are in:
Tools menu ->  Route Options -> Instructions
The route instructions are dynamic which means while navigating the instructions will scroll depending on your position on the route.

Using the point of interest catalog:

Select tool menu ->  Navigate to... -> Point of Interest -> POI in city
Enter the destination address.
Select the desired address from the search results.
The point of interest catalog will appear.
Select for example Restaurant.
A list of nearby restaurants will appear sorted by proximity. Select the restaurant to display it's location on a map. The POI catalog is configurable. Select in the POI catalog Edit and then toggle the categories that should be displayed or hidden.

If you search for POI near your current location you can increase the search radius by modifying the slider in Menu -> GPS Settings, search distance.

Optimal GPS settings:

Please check your GPS settings that you can access via Menu Tools -> Settings -> GPS Settings, GPS Settings update minimal travel distance.
You will notice a better speed estimation when moving slowly as a GPS update is only received after you have moved a certain distance.



Find location by address:

Select menu Tools -> Navigate to... -> Address
Enter street name,city,country in the text fields.
Hit search on the virtual keyboard.
Select the right address from the search results to see the address on a map.
You can also set a default country in the iPhone VoxTrek preferences to avoid having to enter your country in the search bar.

Find a contact location:

Select menu Tools -> Navigate to... -> Contact
Select the contact from the contacts list.
Select the address of the contact to find.
Select the search result to see the location on a map.

Find location by US zip code:

Select menu Tools -> Navigate to... -> Address.
Enter us or usa in the country field.
Enter the zipcode in the zip code search field.
Press search on the keyboard.
Select the search result to see the location on a map.

Find location by full UK post code:

Select menu Tools -> Navigate to... -> Address.
Enter uk in the country field.
Enter the postcode in the post code search field.
Press search on the keyboard.
Select the search result to see the location on a map.

Find location by latitude, longitude:

Select menu Tools -> Navigate to... -> Address.
Enter for example 51.0,-1.1 in the street search field as the latitude and longitude.
Press search on the keyboard to see the location on a map.

How to delete the current route:

Just start VoxTrek or during navigation you can clear the route from the menu Tools -> Route Options -> Clear route
 
Entering a fixed start location:

Select menu Tools -> Route Start -> Address.   
Enter the address. Hit search.
Select the desired address.
A red cursor will appear on the map.
Position it precisely and hit the button Set Route Start.
Now indicate the destination location as explained before and VoxTrek will now determine the route from the start location to the destination location.

Indicating the Travel Via location:

Select menu Tools -> Travel Via -> Address.   
Enter the address. Hit search.
Select the desired address.
A green cursor will appear on the map.
Position it precisely and hit the button Set Travel Via.
Now indicate the destination location as explained before and VoxTrek will now determine the route from the start location to the travel via location to the destination location.

Location indicator color legend:

Cyan: Current location
Red: Start location
Green: Travel Via location
Blue: Destination location

Indicating a road block:

Select menu Tools -> Route Options -> Go Alternative -> Place Road Block.
Indicate precisely with the red cross where is the road block. Then hit the button Place road block.
To calculate a new route that avoids the roadblock
Select menu Tools -> Route Options -> Go Alternative -> Calculate Alternative
A roadblock is stored as a favorite. You can delete the favorit or edit the favorite and toggle to switch Roadblock.

Functions for visually impaired users

On the iPhone 3GS we added an angle to rotate callout just after a route has been calculated. Head North -60 means you should first turn 60 degrees counterclockwise and then proceed. Option needs to be activated in the iPhone VoxTrek Settings/Say Heading Angle.

Offline routing

VoxTrek 2.1 supports offline routing based on OpenStreetMap data. This means you don't need an internet connection to calculate a route while driving, walking or cycling. Once you have an offline city map you can search streets and point of interests.

We made sure that VoxTrek 2.0 with offline routing and searching is ready for the holiday season. Now you can plan your trips and search for your favorite sightseeing point of interests but also find and navigate to those places. VoxTrek 2.0 will save you a lot of  roaming charges.
 
Downloading offline city maps:

Select Menu Tools: Download Offline Map Data.
You get two free downloads to try out the offline map functionality. You can also get extra download tokens in the same screen through an in-app purchase.
To download offline city maps select the button Download Offline Map Data.


Zoom out from the current map. The maximum area is 38 square miles or 100 square kilometers which should be enough of an area to visit while you are abroad.
After 5 to 45 minutes you will hear a beep sound that notifies that the download and routing processing is complete. If the internet connection gets broken or you press cancel  then the download will stop but the  counter with remaining downloads will not be decreased.
If the download gets timed out (error -1001) try again a minute later as it means the the server took too long to find all the streets and POIs to send to you.


In the Menu/Offline catalog you can select which offline city is active for offline routing and searching. Once a catalog is selected only the streets or point of interests of that selected map are searched.


New route types:

In menu/Route options/Route Types you find the new offline routing types. The offline routing types can be fine tuned with your preferred  speed or importance weight by road type. You can for example avoid highways or avoid big roads while walking.

Routing features:

We have implemented a fast Dijkstra shortest path with priority queue routing algorithm that calculates routes of many kilometers in just a couple of seconds on an iPhone 3GS. We apply an edge contraction algorithm to remove nodes that have no multiple intersections.
Roundabout handling and turn by turn directions a very well implemented. Turn restrictions like no left turn are not implemented yet. Turn instructions for motorway junctions with an exit number is handled nicely.
On many occasions we beat Google directions while walking because we store more detailed city information and do a complete search for the optimal route on paths and even steps.

VoxTrek 2.0 is iOS 4 ready!

If you have an active route in VoxTrek on an iPhone that supports multitasking and you have a high quality voice then VoxTrek will guide you to your destination while  running in background. VoxTrek will recalculate the route if you have missed a turn if you use the new offline route types as no internet connection is required.


I found a mistake on OpenStreetMap
and I don't know how to fix it.

Please use the website http://openstreetbugs.appspot.com to indicate the mistake so that a wonderful OpenStreetMap contributor can fix it.

Make the world a better place:

If you want to start contributing and improve the OpenStreetMap POI or roads using Mapzen I recommend to start reading the latest information here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapzen

I can't find a POI in my area!

Please use the App Mapzen from Cloudmade to check the POIs in your area. If a critical POI is missing you can add them with MapZen!

Tip for OSM and Mapzen users:

If you actively add point of interests to OSM maps then please temporarily switch off using the cached map tiles. Set the maximum cache age to Off to always read the tiles from the Internet. The OSM tiles will then always be up to date in VoxTrek.The tiles that are read will be saved to the cache for next time when you need them. After entering POIs please reset the maximum cache age back to your preferred setting like 1 month to use the cache efficiently.

Troubleshooting:

I hear no voice?

Just press the volume increase button on the iPhone/iPad for 1 minute while you use VoxTrek. This should force to increase the VoxTrek voice volume.

VoxTrek shows no map?

Try to delete VoxTrek. Then reinstall VoxTrek to reset it to factory settings. Also allow VoxTrek to receive your current GPS location.

Can't rename Favorites?

Set temporarily the iPhone Settings / General / International Region Format to UK or USA.
Change the favorites description and save then reset the Region Format again.

What about new roads?

If roads are modified or are created in OpenStreetMaps it takes about 24 hours before the routing engine takes the road changes into account.

Help VoxTrek improve:

VoxTrek is very robust but if it crashes for some reason please email voxtrek@gmail.com all the steps, like start and end address, you have to perform to reproduce the crash and we will fix the problem for the next release.

Better translations
Let us know at voxtrek@gmail.com if you have a better translation for the menus or spoken directions. Once we have the translation we can update the menus within minutes in VoxTrek!

Please rate and review VoxTrek
If you like the new user interface please review VoxTrek on the App Store.

Become a fan of VoxTrek on Facebook
Please follow this link to join the VoxTrek Facebook community

Need more help:

Send your questions / remarks to voxtrek@gmail.com