[Bug] GPS Jumping - repeatable - not drift
Samsung Galaxy S9+
About 10 versions ago, maybe longer, a feature was added, which had the side effect to cause GPS to spontaneously jump 50 to several hundred metres from where you are standing when GPS reception is excellent, and with excellent 4G connectivity.
Does a depleted battery make the bug worse?
No, the bug happens frequently between a full charge and near empty charge.
How severe is the reported problem?
Pretty severe considering that it prevents core play
Actions that cause the bug include
Using XMPs
Using Ultra Strikes
Deploying Resonators
Glyphing
Linking
Deploying mods
Asking around seems to indicate that many people are encountering this problem.
How is this not a drifting issue?
Good question, by standing in an open park, with no buildings, trees or anything else within 100m.
I would suggest someone from Niantic go to Cupid's Span, to replicate this issue, as it is in an open park, and use a high end mobile, such as the Samsung Galaxy S9+.
Cupid's Span is a well known portal.
Although I have never been there.
Worse yet is, that this bug affects other games and apps from working properly, including Wizards Unite.
When Ingress is the only app open;
Closing down Ingress and restarting, does not help.
Restarting my mobile, does not help
Does the problem persist when other games, such as Wizards Unite is the only app running?
I have proven that when any other game is running, the GPS jumping does not happen.
Has the issue been reported and tickets raised?
Tickets have been raised on at least two separate occasions, with the most recent being last night.
Support aims to provide prewritten answers to close the ticket.
Providing more info, results in more prewritten answers, to the point of "we have raised this to our development team".
Unsure if it is actually recorded as an issue due to support wanting to close issues as fast as possible, without properly reading them.
I can provide more information, but will only do so via PM, due to the nature of this bug.
Comments
prime needs gps location smoothing like redacted had.. that could help.
I'm pretty sure Prime already has location smoothing, which cannot be turned off. It's quite annoying at times. It means that when I stop walking at a portal, the scanner carries on moving for another minute afterwards. I can put 8 resonators on a portal, then it tells me it's out of range when I try to add the mods. Then I have to walk rather too far towards the portal before the scanner picks up that I have moved.
it cant have, because on same phone with redacted my gps never jumped and drifted like this.. so what else can it be then? if it has then it does a pretty terrible job at smoothing then...
As I stated, other games, including Wizards Unite, do not jump around, when they are the only app running.
When Ingress is a background app, it seriously affects other games, including some minor jumping, not the 200m of Ingress Prime
I've experienced the jumps as well. They're fairly repeatable -- there are spots I can go (ones with a large amount of visible sky) that will trigger frequent jumps a hundred meters or so, consistently in the same direction. Other spots don't show it at all, and (not that this isn't nearly tautological) Redacted did not exhibit the bug, nor do any other apps with fine location.
My pet theory, given that I can most often trigger this on bridges crossing over water and other places right near a waterline, is that the game (or some library it's using) is snapping me back to the land, perhaps when GPS confidence margins widen out momentarily, as they normally do, to include the land.
This, by the bucketload. Getting a decent 1-in-7-out deployment with Prime is an utter pain in the rear end compared to with Redacted.
Open areas are where it hits me, middle of open space and parks. It seems like it wants to jump towards the nearest wifi location, even with wifi off. Restarting does not help,
Since the Didact update, my scanner is too unstable to play. My location jumps as much as 1000 yards. It never calms or settles. My scanner is very rarely accurate.
I have been unable to play for almost a month. When I power up Ingress, my location is often wrong. In the rare event my location is accurate, it jumps erratically the moment I start to move.
I have reset my phone twice in an effort to fix the issue. Nothing has worked. I use several GPS based apps. Ingress is the only one with an issue. I even tried deleting all other GPS based apps. I've wiped my phone and installed only Ingress.... nothing works.
All of my other GPS apps work flawlessly. Paylocity, MapMyRun, AllTrails, Geocahe, Waze, SkyMap, SamsungHealth, FordPass, OBD-Link, Obsidian4, Torque, TrackBuddy, etc, etc.
Its not my device. Its not my software. It's Niantic that is causing this. My phone is a Samsung S9+. Maybe after 6 years, it's time to quit Ingress.
@WreckitRallph I use the S9+ as well, it has the unfortunate problem of being too accurate, outdoors, accuracy of less than 1.5m
It is impossible to drift 1000 yards/several hundred metres with sub 1.5m of accuracy.
To top it off, during Christchurch Hexathlon, many I talked to had the same problem, showing that it is a bug, and is repeatable regardless of which high end device people use.
Most of areas we were playing in were large open areas, free of obstacles.
I hope @NianticBrian @NianticCasey spend lots of times on GPS issues in Prime.
I have seen jumps also very often.
Usually location jumps about 100-200 meters and stays there 10 secs to up to 2 minutes.
Prime restarts does not seems to fix the incorrect location.
It seems to jump always to same local place, stays there awhile and then jumps back.
Maybe jump location has a cellular base station and ingress uses that location as backup when it thinks there is no GPS location?
Several times I also have Sport Tracker active on background but there is no location jumping seen on Sport Tracker map.
Ingress location jumps happen regardless of whether Sport Tracker is active or not on background.
Example 1:
In certain area location jumps very often to same place, about 150 meter off.
Even on different days the location jumps exactly to the same place as previous day.
Example 2:
Picture 1:
Ingress location is off by about 100 meters, green arrow shows the correct location.
In this case Ingress location jumped to wrong place about 3-4 times and longest stay at incorrect location was about 2 minutes.
Even Ingress restart did not fix the issue.
Picture 2:
At the same time during Ingress location jumps the Sport Tracker was on background.
Sport Tracker location data is correct and no jumping seen on Sport Tracker map.
Samsung S8
Android 9.0
2.43.4
I hope @NianticBrian @NianticCasey listen on agents feedback and work hard on GPS jump in Ingress Prime soon.
> It seems to jump always to same local place, stays there awhile and then jumps back.
> Maybe jump location has a cellular base station and ingress uses that location as backup when it thinks there is no GPS location?
I did noticed a location jump exactly to the same place where there is a cellular base station antenna, looking like this:
I hope @NianticBrian @NianticCasey work hard and spend lots of time to relese update for fix bug with GPS jump.
yeah when it happens for me there is never any logic why i suddenly drift, even if i stand still and good gps lock still u can bounce away like a feather in a storm suddenly.... makes no sense it was never this bad in redacted i dont get it whats causing it.. but its so annoying when it happens
It is still ongoing with even 2.46