Knowledge Sharing/Falcon snapper View history

How does GPS error impact Falcon?

The higher the GPS error, the more guesswork Falcon will need to do. If there are multiple roads close together such as in the city, Falcon will do more guessing to determine which road to snap the driver to.[1]

Falcon snapping to unconnected segments

Falcon will not jump to a segment that is not connected unless:

  1. Falcon does not know where you are, in which case, it will try and find the nearest segment to the driver. This is a fail-safe mechanism.[1]
  2. Where there is a fork in the road, the roads run parallel and reconnect ahead - snapper could jump between these apparent unconnected segments. Even if the reconnection is 10km away, it is still connected, and Falcon will still hypothesise the connection.[1]

Investigating snapping and beacon issues

For staff to investigate, the minimum requirement is debug logs. There is user documentation on how to enable debugging and submit logs on the help website.[1]

Falcon and Tunnels

In a tunnel with no Waze beacons install, the Waze app should use dead reckoning to estimate the speed and position in the tunnel uUnless a GPS signal is received. GPS signals are not expected in a tunnel, thus Falcon is forced to hypothosize that the driver is above ground and will be snapped to roads on the surface.[1]

Car Play and Android Auto GPS Issues

Car Play users are expected to have issues with Waze in tunnels with no beacons. Even if there is no GPS signal, Car Play provides a "fake" GPS using the Apple maps road trace. As mentioned above, Falcon is forced to hypothosize that the driver is above ground if a GPS signal is detected. Waze has a case open will Apple regarding this issue as of Oct 2021. Android Auto can, sometimes, do the same but Waze is working on this problem internally.[1]

Elevation data point

Falcon has the ability to factor elevation above sea level as an additional data point. This data is currently not available on the Waze map for Falcon to use and therefore is not enabled. Waze will investigate importing topographic data to the map in the future. This is expected to improve snapping on multi-level roads.[1]