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[bug] PQ Find Caches Along a Route - does not contain all caches?


baracutio

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Currently I'm building some PQs based on a previously created route - as many times before. The strange thing: When I'm increasing the search radius, the amount of caches along this route drops.

 

Here's my comparison between search radius and amount of caches:

0.5km - 7 caches
1.0km - 13 caches
1.5km - 22 caches
2.0km - 31 caches
2.5km - 41 caches
3.0km - 58 caches
3.5km - 67 caches
4.0km - 77 caches
4.5km - 74 caches
5.0km - 55 caches
5.5km - 52 caches
6.0km - 49 caches
6.5km - 48 caches
7.0km - 48 caches
7.5km - 45 caches
8.0km - 38 caches
8.5km - 32 caches
9.0km - 30 caches
9.5km - 26 caches
10.0km - 26 caches

 

Looks like at 4.0km radius is find the most. But why does the search results drop afterwards? Are there some server-side limitations that I'm not aware of?

 

PQ settings:

- route is 620km long

- 1000 caches

- cache types: virtual, earthcache

- haven't found + is enabled

- other settings are default

 

Thanks for any help!

 

 

Regards,

baracutio

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Having nothing better to do on a snowy day, I decided to see if I could recreate this issue.  The route I used was Seattle to Portland and I did indeed get similar results. The number of caches included increased from 3 to 43 as I increased the distance from .2 km to 4.4 km and then fell off. At 4.6 km it was 42, at 4.9 still 42.  At 5.3 it was 31. at 5.6 it was 25 at 6.0 it was 24, at 10.0 it was 23.

 

Edited after looking at the caches included:  On the 10.0 km version, only caches from Seattle to Tacoma are selected, none between Tacoma and Portland.  The issue seems to be caused by the total number of caches along the route, not just the number of those that meet the criteria of Virtual and Earth cache types.

Edited by NanCycle
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If my memory serves me right, it has to do with the order in which the filters are applied. (there should be a forum thread about it; but iI could nit find it)

First it determines all caches along a route with the dstance given; BUT only gets a maximum of 1000 caches. Then it applies the rest of the filters, in this cahces virtual+eartcache on those 1000 preselected in the first step...

The endresult will be more or less a random selection of the caches in the filter.

 

You can test this by comparing all the earthcaches/virtuals in the complete CachesAlongARoute versus a PQ with no extra filtering in the CachesAlongARoute. They should be the same.

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1 hour ago, Kalkendotters said:

If my memory serves me right, it has to do with the order in which the filters are applied. (there should be a forum thread about it; but iI could nit find it)

First it determines all caches along a route with the dstance given; BUT only gets a maximum of 1000 caches. Then it applies the rest of the filters, in this cahces virtual+eartcache on those 1000 preselected in the first step...

The endresult will be more or less a random selection of the caches in the filter.

 

You can test this by comparing all the earthcaches/virtuals in the complete CachesAlongARoute versus a PQ with no extra filtering in the CachesAlongARoute. They should be the same.

 

That would certainly explain things. From what I remember, if your route PQ starts returning more caches than the limit, it starts to limit the results by distance along the route, not by distance away from the route as one would expect. That's why the results start to become unexpected after a certain point: the total result limit is reached, the results are reduced to only part of the route, and you no longer get the expected number of filtered caches.

 

I don't typically use this feature, but it will be good to know this limitation if I do.

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I think I just ran into this same problem. I was looking at Long Island, NY but only non-Traditional caches. None of the caches on the south half of the island are showing up. This is with the route distance set as 10 km, with 100 caches being returned.  Cutting the distance to 9 km I get 106 caches, and at 7 km I get 122 caches.

 

Seems like a serious weakness in this system.

CacheRouteGlitch.jpg

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