Augmentra was formed by Craig Wareham and Mike Brocklehurst in 2004. Craig and Mike had worked together before forming Augmentra, mainly in graphics systems. They jointly recognized the potential of a mapping system specifically designed for use in the countryside. While there were several desktop and PDA application in this marketplace there was nothing for smartphones, particularly mass market devices such as those based on S60. The initial version of Augmentra's ViewRanger was launched in 2005, with ViewRanger 2 following in March of 2006.

Richard Bloor spoke to Mike Brocklehurst about ViewRanger and the development of the latest version for S60 3rd Edition devices.

Richard: How did the idea for ViewRanger come about?

Mike: It was a combination of personal interest and a perception of market interest. We could see there was a demand for PC applications dealing with outdoor mapping and dedicated GPS systems were becoming a popular, but limited, choice for outdoor enthusiasts. There were some applications for PDA, but these devices are heavy and have poor battery life compared to smartphones. We wanted to offer more than just a 'map on a phone'. So we perceived that a smartphone application that capitalized on the media and connectivity features of a smartphone, offering good battery life and quality mapping in a lightweight device, would have a market.

Richard: How did your career before Augmentra help with ViewRanger?

Mike: Both Craig and I had been working on graphics systems. Initially on 2D computer animation systems used by the likes of Warner Bros and DreamWorks, then later on 3D hardware graphics devices. Most of the work was however undertaken on Windows and Linux platforms.

Richard: Was it this experience that lead you to add the panoramic view feature to ViewRanger?

Mike: Yes, we are interested in applying computer graphics in new ways and new situations. The other inspiration for the panorama was personal experience. I go walking quite frequently and would find myself sitting on hills trying to work out what I could see in the distance. I'd often over hear other people doing the same. It can be hard to interpret contours on a map, especially when trying to identify distant objects. Guide books and information notices often have diagrams to help, but these are limited to a few specific locations, such as hilltops or viewpoints. ViewRanger produces a panorama that can be used anywhere, whether at the top of the hill, half way up or from a car.

ViewRanger also knows what the items in the view are, it isn't a "dumb" projected image. We use this information to allow people to associate photos, information and links with the features, and then share them via our server.

Richard: With a Windows and Linux background what influenced the decision to build ViewRanger on Symbian OS and the S60 platform?

Mike: Once we had identified the real potential for a smartphone based outdoor mapping system, we reviewed the market. We quickly identified Symbian as market leader and S60 as having real mass market potential. In hindsight it seems to have been the right decision. We also timed the release of ViewRanger well, with devices such as the Nokia 6630, 6680 and N90 coming to market with the power and memory needed to make the most of ViewRanger's capabilities.

Richard: How did you find the process of learning to program for Symbian OS and the S60 platform?

Mike: Our work in custom graphic development had been heavily in C and C++, so moving to Symbian was not too much of an issue. There was a learning curve however. The example applications supplied by Forum Nokia helped a lot. A couple of the early books we looked at were useful, but the Nokia Press title "Developing Series 60 Applications" was a great help. We also made use of the forums at Forum Nokia and NewLC, these proved to be a great source of information. Even so, there was still a lot of trial and error, and many late nights.

Since we started there have been some significant improvements in the Symbian OS and S60 platform documentation, although it is still patchy in places, but it is getting a lot better.

Richard: How much of a challenge was porting your S60 2nd Edition version of ViewRanger to 3rd Edition?

Mike: It was a challenge, but less of a challenge than creating ViewRanger in the first place. Most of the issues came from the change in compiler and documentation issues, mainly because subtle changes were not reflected in the documentation. The biggest issue was not having on-device debugging. When we built the first version of ViewRanger it was easy to identify where to add log messages, because we knew what code we had added and had a good idea about where any problem might be located. Porting to S60 3rd Edition basically involved taking the entire application over at once. This made identifying where to add log messages quite challenging, so problems were harder to track down. Fortunately the design of ViewRanger is modular so we could drop sections of code, which simplify the job. Even so, it basically took little more than a day to get ViewRanger running on the new hardware.

Having said that, we did have a big job in supporting the new screen resolutions and switchable landscape/portrait layouts. This was because we had chosen to use the legacy layout on the N90, as it was the only high resolution device at the time.

Lists were the only other real issue, more documentation on them would be nice.

We did the bulk of the S60 3rd Edition port in April. The documentation has improved significantly since then, with the S60 3rd Edition SDK maintenance release and various Nokia documents. The forums now have a lot more on S60 3rd Edition.

Richard: The current version of ViewRanger is not Symbian Signed, any reason for this?

Mike: We plan on getting the application signed at some point, although ViewRanger does not need any capabilities granted by Symbian Signed. The only reason we have held back is that when we first released the 3rd Edition version there were only one or two of the new devices out, but several waiting to be shipped. We want to check ViewRanger on a range of these devices before obtaining Symbian Signed, because if we should find an issue on one device we would have to get the application signed again once we had fixed the problem.

The API documentation is also a factor, because it is not complete in places. As a result we cannot be certain that what we have implemented is complete and correct. At development time it is not easy to find undocumented issues, because we don't know what the issues are. We have tested on a several devices, on various operators' networks, but there are still occasional surprises. When we do discover a problem it is almost always quick to find the answer, as we know what to look for.

That said, customer feedback on ViewRanger and its reliability has been very positive, and it has scored highly in reviews. We have adhered to the Symbian Signed principles, and believe we have produced an application of that quality. Apart from the warning at install time, users don't know the difference.

Richard: ViewRanger works with all its maps on-board, did you consider using off-board maps?

Mike: We have designed ViewRanger to work entirely self contained, except for a Bluetooth GPS unit. Although cellular reception is often better in place such as the English National Parks than people may think, there are still blackspots. So having the maps on-board is important. The size of the raster maps was also a deciding factor, as a large amount of data would need to be passed to the handset. While network data costs remain quite high on-board map data makes most sense for the customer.

We do however have two over the air features. Firstly users can update point of interest data on demand. Secondly a user can associate notes and images with points of interest, which are stored on a central server and can be shared with other ViewRanger users.

Richard: How have you approached sales?

Mike: We're selling from our website at www.viewranger.com and have a great distributor, Widget, who are building the reseller and retail channel. Widget have a lot of experience in introducing innovative GPS and satellite navigation applications to the European market - they were involved with TomTom from an early stage.

We do have a challenge with ViewRanger, because of the size of the map data. Our complete UK product requires 3Gb of data while the National Parks products involves around 700MB. This means that Web download sales are a challenge, as the data really needs to be delivered on a CD or DVD. This is part of the reason why we don't yet have ViewRanger on Handango. So our principal sales channel is through our distributor.

So far, sales have been good and feedback from customers has been positive.

Richard: So the application requires some interaction with a PC to load maps onto a phone?

Mike: Sometimes. A 1GB data card can hold our entire National Parks product and a device like the N91, with its 4GB disk, can hold all the UK maps. Otherwise it's simply a case of copying map data from the PC to the phone for the user's area of interest.

Richard: Where do you see ViewRanger going in the future?

Mike: We have a lot of development ideas, such as improving the points of interest functionality and evolving further the information content delivery aspects of the application. We also want to develop a few more exciting ideas that stem from our computer graphics days.

However, the two biggest developments will be moving outside the UK and looking at other platforms. We are already talking to some potential overseas partners and are interested in talking to others. Not only for ViewRanger products for their local territories, but for different products based on the technical platform we have created. We have considered a port to UIQ, but the range of UIQ phones is still limited. Similarly, Windows Mobile is an option and we have done a partial port, but the phones are still only available in limited volumes.

All of these developments are being driven by our goal to ensure ViewRanger is the off-road satellite navigation system of choice for consumers and outdoors professionals.

More information on ViewRanger 2 can be found at www.viewranger.com.