Locations and FOV

[UdoL]

Hi Mario,
I started working with locations and was slightly irritated that the map panel shows an FOV headed straight to the north as soon as I added a location to a picture. I wanted to remove the FOV but failed. This led me straight into the mess with GPS tags because I learned that I had to delete the image direction tag. But this wouldn't help.

Meanwhile after trying around a lot and finding and reading your explanation of the GPS tags behavior here in the forum I understand much more how this all works.

Now I would like to request one feature and maybe one issue that I rather would see as a bug.

Feature:
I understood and appreciate that adding a location to a file without GPS destination data will both fill in the Created and Shown/Dest tags. It also fills the GPS Image Direction and sets it to 0.00. This triggers the Map panel to show a FOV heading to the north.
My suggestion would be that in this case the GPS Image Direction should be left empty and the Map Panel should not show a FOV.
It may be a somewhat cosmetical issue, but I'd like to keep the FOV display activated but see a FOV only for pictures that actually have meaningful FOV data.

Bug (only relevant if you dismiss my feature request):
While the addition of the location will add GPS Dest lat/lon AND GPS Image direction, the removal of the location only will remove the Dest lat/lon, but will keep the GPS Image direction. So the FOV will still be shown. I find this an inconsistent behavior. If the addition of a location adds the direction the removal should work vice versa.

In my screenshots you can see the behavior step by step.

[Mario]

I have tried to reproduce this. Setting a coordinate in the Map panel via the target marker or by dragging & dropping the image sets only the location created coordinate set. No FOV appears. Direction tag is not created or filled.

Using the "Add image direction" feature in the context menu of the marker creates a location shown coordinate at a certain distance, with a direction of 0 (north). Now the FOV appears.

When you set a created coordinate on the map panel and perform a reverse geocoding, the same happens. Apparently, the direction tag is somehow set although created/shown are identical. I'll check that for one of the next releases.

Please always use the "6. IPTC Location" Metadata Panel introduced with IMatch 2023 eight months ago for working with coordinates and location data. Setting only some of the required tags in a custom layout or somewhere else does not necessarily update all the interrelated tags that make up the structured location shown / location created tag sets.

[UdoL]

Thanks for your fast reply. I didn't mention how I set the location, sorry.

My camera set the GPS coordinates only for some of the pictures, but not for the majority of them. I took a picture with GPS data and reverse geocoded that. Then I created a location for it, again using the lookup for reverse geocoding. After that I used the 'Commands>file>Apply allocation to all selected files' menu for other pictures. I assume that at this point the same happened as you meant with: "Apparently, the direction tag is somehow set although created/shown are identical."

Thanks for checking that one for a future release!

What do you mean with the "6. IPTC Location" Metadata panel? I have IMatch 2023 but cannot find any panel with this name.

[Mario]

See TODO: New Default Metadata Panel Layouts in the very strongly recommended read Welcome to IMatch 2023!

I write these "What's New?" topics and push them everywhere from the help system to IMatch announcing them on start for a reason. This is important info and every user should read it before using IMatch 2023.

[Mario]

I've looked into this and added a special test that checks for missing destination coordinates or the case that the distance between created and shown coordinates is zero.

In that case, the ImageDirection/ ImageDirectionRef tags are deleted. This is the only way to do this since the value 0 is a valid direction and there is no flag in metadata to indicate that a direction is invalid. As soon as the user creates a location shown with a different set of coordinates, the FOV is displayed again and the ImageDirection/ImageDirectionRef tags are stored in the database.

Release note #2289

[UdoL]

Perfect - that's exactly how it should work in my opinion.
Thanks a lot for the fast fix!

[UdoL]

Sorry, Mario, for adding a question that I overlooked before.

I've looked into this and added a special test that checks for missing destination coordinates or the case that the distance between created and shown coordinates is zero.

In that case, the ImageDirection/ ImageDirectionRef tags are deleted. This is the only way to do this since the value 0 is a valid direction and there is no flag in metadata to indicate that a direction is invalid. As soon as the user creates a location shown with a different set of coordinates, the FOV is displayed again and the ImageDirection/ImageDirectionRef tags are stored in the database.

Release note #2289

This assumes that the FOV would not be shown, if there are destination coordinates identical to creation coordinates, but no direction. Im my tests that is not the case, see screenshot below.

Setting only some of the required tags in a custom layout or somewhere else does not necessarily update all the interrelated tags that make up the structured location shown / location created tag sets.

Yes, I understand and will do so. I only created this custom layout for test reasons in oder to understand how these GPS/location tags are working, i.e. what their meaning is and which dependencies they have with each other and with the map panel. I imported your new panel layouts and will use the structured tags for my productive work.

[Mario]

I referred to the next release. Not the release you use, of course.
Ive had to make changes to metadata processing, IMWS and the Map Panel implementations for Google Maps and OpenLayers.

[UdoL]

Thanks, it's completely clear to me, that the fix will be in the next reelase only

Though, in your discription of the fix you described the changed behaviour of the tags, but nothing of a changed behavior of the map panel. So it seemed to me that you could have assumed the map would as is already be working in that way, and the deletion of the direction tag would be sufficient. Sometimes even developers overlook things. I'm working professionally with software developers and such cases are not so rare ... No offense! We all are only humans.

[Mario]

The Map Panel now checks if the created/shown coordinates differ, else it shows no POV.
So it is fixed on both ends, just in case.

[UdoL]

Thanks, I appreciate your fast responses and fixes!