Release Notes (Adventure Lab®: Read to me) - January 24, 2024

[+Geocaching HQ]

Release Notes (Adventure Lab®: Read to me) - January 24, 2024

With this release (version 1.23.0), the Adventure Lab® team at Geocaching HQ introduces Read to me, a feature that allows players to listen to the descriptions of Adventures and their Locations that are provided by the Adventure creator.

Players can select the play button labeled “Read to me” to listen to either the “About this Adventure” text from an Adventure details page or the “About this Location” text from a Location details page.

 

.         

 

After a player selects the play button, the text is spoken aloud; the play button will change to the pause button

 

 

The player can pause the speech by pressing the pause button. The spoken text will stop and the pause button will change back to the play button. Players can restart the speech by pressing the play button. The reader will begin the speech where last paused if the player remains on the description screen.
 

 

Players can select the “1x” text next to the “Read to me” button to open the “Playback speed” menu to adjust the speed of speech to “0.75x” for slower speech or “1.25x” for faster speech. The selected speed will remain as the default until changed.
 

 

Adam (Captain_Cookie), Adventure Lab® Support Manager, is watching this thread to answer questions whenever possible.

Any posts in this thread should relate to features in this release. Comments unrelated to the release may be removed. Please direct unrelated comments to other appropriate threads. Thanks!

[+Pleu]

Great feature, glad to see some accessibility work on the AL-app!

[+MOSWI]

I am certain that the spoken English text will be appreciated by some, but here in Québec, Canada the spoken French text is almost incomprehensible. It actually is insulting. I wonder how comprehensible other world languages are.

It is commendable that Groundspeak is trying to stay in the forefront with technology but perhaps they should concentrate on correcting many of the minor imperfections and annoyances with the AL app before spending time and energy on a feature which is so imperfect and ultimately linguistically insulting to many.

[+Sottiwotti]

Love this! New accessibility features are always great to see!

[Captain_Cookie]

3 hours ago, MOSWI said:

I am certain that the spoken English text will be appreciated by some, but here in Québec, Canada the spoken French text is almost incomprehensible.

 

Greetings MOSWI, we appreciate your feedback regarding this feature. The Read to me feature uses your device's preferred language to generate the audio for an Adventure description or Location description. As an example, devices set with their preferred language as "English (US)" will generate audio using American English. This generated voice will speak the text according to American English's pronunciation, intonation, and other characteristics of spoken speech.

 

For an optimal experience, please ensure that your device's preferred language matches the text to be spoken by the Read to me feature.

[+HHL]

17 minutes ago, Captain_Cookie said:

For an optimal experience, please ensure that your device's preferred language matches the text to be spoken by the Read to me feature.

As a location based game this should be done automatically by detecting the phone's current location and then select the appropriate voice.

Specifically in Europe where a geocacher might traveling across several countries in one day, your manually voice selection by the user's phone settings is pretty unpracticable.

 

Happy Coding

Hans

[Captain_Cookie]

27 minutes ago, HHL said:

As a location based game this should be done automatically by detecting the phone's current location and then select the appropriate voice.

Hi HHL, thanks for sharing this suggestion. We are always interested in improving our features to better serve the community; I will share your input with other members of the Adventure Lab team.

[+HHL]

5 minutes ago, Captain_Cookie said:

I will share your input with other members of the Adventure Lab team.

Thanks for considering this idea.

 

Hans

[+HHL]

The "Read to me" button should be completely clickable, not just the dark green arrow. ;-)

[+MOSWI]

Setting my device's preferred language to match the text to be spoken by the Read to me feature is all well and good but we are a bilingual province. Some AL's are in English, others are in French and some are in both languages. This makes for a rather messy situation.  Perhaps the app could automatically detect the language and read accordingly.

[+CaracalShan]

Here, the feature doesn't seem to work on our 2 Samsung A51's... Clicking the green 'arrow' turns it into 2 vertical lines, but we don't hear anything (sound is on). On my other phone from work (a Redmi) it works.

[+Fields111]

15 hours ago, MOSWI said:

It is commendable that Groundspeak is trying to stay in the forefront with technology but perhaps they should concentrate on correcting many of the minor imperfections and annoyances with the AL app before spending time and energy on a feature which is so imperfect

Completely agree with this. There are several things to consider that turns this feature not useful widely and I think I don't need to mention them as they are logic.

Here are some small things that I think would help many people:

- Setting to chose the map theme (light or dark) independently of system settings. Although I prefer dark mode in system, this is not good for maps. Google Maps, for instance, appears has light mode. 

- Make titles of AL and individual labs selectable, in order that they can then be translated immediately.

- Trim the space character at the end of an answer, if it exists, before submitting it to validation. When inputting words the keyboard usually adds a space after each word, which is sufficient to invalidate the answer. 

[+JL_HSTRE]

17 hours ago, HHL said:

As a location based game this should be done automatically by detecting the phone's current location and then select the appropriate voice.

 

This assumes the AL description is written in the local language and that the AL seeker understands thar language. 

 

15 hours ago, MOSWI said:

Setting my device's preferred language to match the text to be spoken by the Read to me feature is all well and good but we are a bilingual province. Some AL's are in English, others are in French and some are in both languages. This makes for a rather messy situation.  Perhaps the app could automatically detect the language and read accordingly.

 

How about requiring the person creating the AL to specify what language the description is written in so there's no guesswork involved? This could also allow for a rough translation. 

[+Sottiwotti]

Doesn't seem to work on my Samsung A50. Sound is on but can't hear anything

[+Pleu]

22 hours ago, Captain_Cookie said:

 

For an optimal experience, please ensure that your device's preferred language matches the text to be spoken by the Read to me feature.

A suggestion regarding the language issue: If I could add an English version of my text it might be easier to use for tourists. Both with just logging the AL in general and to use this new feature. I'm thinking a tab to click to get the English text instead of the original text.

I'm thinking as an "add by the CO", not automatically generated text.

[Captain_Cookie]

23 hours ago, MOSWI said:

Perhaps the app could automatically detect the language and read accordingly.

 

7 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

How about requiring the person creating the AL to specify what language the description is written in so there's no guesswork involved? 

 

Thank you both for sharing these suggestions as potential additions to Read to me. I will share your thoughts with the Adventure Lab team as topics for future consideration.

[Captain_Cookie]

14 hours ago, CaracalShan said:

Here, the feature doesn't seem to work on our 2 Samsung A51's... Clicking the green 'arrow' turns it into 2 vertical lines, but we don't hear anything (sound is on). On my other phone from work (a Redmi) it works.

 

6 hours ago, Sottiwotti said:

Doesn't seem to work on my Samsung A50. Sound is on but can't hear anything

 

Any players who experience technical difficulties with the Read to me feature can contact Geocaching HQ for technical support. Please email us directly at contact@geocaching.com.

[+HHL]

Personally I wouldn't let the AL builder select the language. It might lead to a similar confusion like we have with D/T, cachesize and attributes on geocaches.

Let the app user select the wanted language. Best way seems to be a dropdown or a checkbox.

Do not clutter the app's UI. Just give us a tap and hold with the "Speak to me" button and show the language list.

That way the user sitting in Germany may choose the neighbors' language (danish or durch for example).

This would make tourplanning from home much more easier.

The list of languages within the dropdown mustn't be an endless one. Put the main languages into the dropdown selected by location.

IE: Sitting in Hamburg, EU I would like to have the main European languages (German, English, Italian, French, Spain, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian). Put the local language always on top (detected by location or better: the AL's description language) inside the dropdown. A user located in Texas might be pleased with English, Spain, Portuguese and French. ;-)

 

Happy Coding

Hans

Edited January 26, 2024 by HHL
typo

[+Gill & Tony]

I'm planning a trip to New Caledonia where both adventures are in French.  I speak English.

 

Will the speak to me feature do an on-the-fly translation for me?

 

 Repeating a previous comment:  the whole button should be sensitive, not just the arrow.

[+HHL]

45 minutes ago, Gill & Tony said:

Will the speak to me feature do an on-the-fly translation for me?

You could check it by just trying it out.

[+Gill & Tony]

14 hours ago, HHL said:

You could check it by just trying it out.

Once I managed to move the map to the middle of the Pacific and find New Caledonia (Why isn't there a "move to location" feature?  Seems a much more useful feature than this speak to me) I did try it out.  It doesn't translate (which would be useful) and the French pronunciation (even to my schoolboy French ears) is horrible.

 

 

[+HHL]

24 minutes ago, Gill & Tony said:

Why isn't there a "move to location" feature?

It's there. Just tap the magnifying glass, type"new caledonia" (or whatever location you want the map to be moved) and you're done.

 

Hans

Edited January 28, 2024 by HHL

[+Gill & Tony]

1 hour ago, HHL said:

It's there. Just tap the magnifying glass, type"new caledonia" (or whatever location you want the map to be moved) and you're done.

 

Hans

Well, I must be going blind or something.  I have never noticed that before 

 

Makes life a lot easier.  Thanks for pointing that out.

[+HHL]

10 hours ago, Gill & Tony said:

I have never noticed that before

So did I some times ago. A magnifying glass seems not to be the obvious tool for dragging a map to a specific point. I guessed it was invented to search the AdventureLabs itself in a given distance. Actually it should do both (like the search tool with the browser does).

But this is now going to be off topic. ;-)

 

Hans

Edited January 29, 2024 by HHL

[+Landsharkz]

This is a great feature and we're happy to have these read to me/us as we make our way to the next stage of the AL.

We travel globally and log AL's, so hopefully having my device set to English, will mean that other languages in an AL are translated to English, saving me having to copy-paste everything into Google Translate!  

https://travel.landsharkz.ca/category/upcoming/
Antarctica and Brazil are FULL, but we have space on the Inca and Panama cruise (Santiago to Fort Lauderdale through the Panama Canal!), and all our Asia cruises this fall!

Edited January 30, 2024 by Landsharkz

[RuideAlmeida]

6 minutes ago, Landsharkz said:

Antarctica and Brazil are FULL...

 

Would be amazing (and respectful) if you could correct "Sãu Paulo" into "São Paulo".

[+HHL]

On 1/24/2024 at 11:53 PM, HHL said:

The "Read to me" button should be completely clickable, not just the dark green arrow. ;-)

This was added with today's latest app update. Thanks a lot.

 

Hans