For me Hearthstone is a big offender of the practice - the way they gate the new cards behind an expansion pass which you have to pay for is very predatory, not to mention a portion of newest cards always form the metagame as they suffer from power-creep.
Yeah I feel like this is re-inventing the wheel - as a topographic map is a solved problem from (100?) years ago.
Regarding the learning curve - it takes a maximum of 15 minutes to understand how to read them. After you 'get it' you can visualize the flat map in 3d.
The one issue of using topo maps for city navigation is that the contour lines are sometimes hard to make out when having buildings, streets and other noise in the foreground (I'm using OsmAnd contours as an example).
The blog post itself is really nice of how it goes in-depth. The final product reminds me of those ski-resort maps that show the downhills. The final product works really well as a tourist informational map.
If you're new in town and want to go to location X, what is better? Glancing at the map and immediately grasping that the street is up a hill, or looking at a probably unfamiliar topographical map and possibly spending 5 to 15 minutes learning how to read it? I'd kill for a map like this for any hilly town I'd visit, and I know how to read topographical maps
Pebble was the best. Was fun while it lasted. [*]. I'm counting days until my Pebble Time dies and then I'll be off the smartwatch game until something else pops up that's not just a toy or a fitness tracker.
I bought a Pebble Time Round after the company went bust at knock-down price and love it. Just waiting for the app/Appstore to die. Still working OK at the moment, though.
If you get a watch with an OLED screen, it can be on all the time and lit, with a black-and-white view of the next navigation instruction on screen.
Need to make sure you've got Maps installed on the watch -- I just realised the reason mine stopped doing that was that I didn't reinstall it after my last factory reset.
>Android wear does not support a permanently on screen all the time and I would totally buy a cheap device like that just for navigating.
Buy a Pebble? I have been using a Pebble 2 SE for over a year and one of the primary use cases is so I can navigate on motorcycle.
I leave phone in my pocket. I set the route, maps sends a notification before turns and the watch picks it up. Works in full sunlight and I shake it at night to light it up.
Gets 5-6 days of battery life, I think I paid $40 for mine.
