Still strange results at long distance trips
I tried making a longer route within Maps Assistant and it seemed to be OK. Could it be because yours is mostly over water?
What Maps Assistant cannot do is show a return trip by the same route (here London to Mexico City and then to my hometown)
Nor, as far as I can see, can one zoom properly let alone pan while the route is displaying. Maybe too much to expect in this version, but worth considering for future release eh Peter?
That is a limitation of Apples MapKit framework. Due to the distortions of the Mercator projection of the globe surface onto a flat surface, the size of the area has a limit. Trying to project an area that spans half the globe, would lead to distortions that are no longer acceptable. that is why Apple limited the size. Nothing I can do about it at the moment.
Maybe there will be other solutions in the future, but for now I still have quite a few other things that need to be taken care of…
After a lot of trial and error, I have managed to create an animated map, with a zoom-in and all the waypoints added to my satisfaction: I created the route in Google My Maps and converted it to GPZ. Since the Maps Assistant does not yet allow the import of waypoints with their names, I had to add them in within FM6b itself.
I cannot yet do a number of things in v6b that I usually do, including placing an opaque background behind my text additions and using my own snippets, so have converted the map to mp4 for use within FM5 and eventual posting to my YouTube account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG247ViStlgOP5yTlP710Ww
To get opaque background for a text layer: Go to Options>Text>Effects>Background, and use a “Box” background for your text layer. Then choose the color you want - it obviously must be different than the text color 
I think we are talking at cross purposes here Peter. In v5, I can set the opacity of the background. In my slideshows I set it at 50%. This means that the image still shows behind the text box:
In v6b, all I can see is a slider that will change a black background to a shade of grey, but the original image does NOT show behind the text:
I have uploaded a map animation to my Dropbox account. It can be viewed here. Any comments welcome on how it might be improved:
Update: today I tested a gpx file containing my trip through morocco. I wonder why so many additional tracks are created that are not drawn in google earth…
Hi willyman, would you please send me this GPX file so I can debug the issue
I sent it by email to news@boinx.com
Hi willyman, since I‘ve tested the Maps Assistant for a couple of routes, it works quite well for long distances too. Did you tried the „curve“ option including the ability to add additional waypoints an that?
Hi, Londinense – I tried your Dropbox link for the Northern Peru map.fms file, but all I can find are the .jpg, .jpeg, and .png files that possibly make up the slideshow. I looked in the Cache folder and the Files folder. The actual slideshow seems to be missing – or I’m just not seeing it. Sorry…
Hi Stan — In my Dropbox folder it’s an FMS file, but when I click on the link I provided I see the same as you. I recall a friend had the same issue when I sent him a file created in Standalone Player (which I see is so far not an option in v6b). Dropbox seems to break the file down in to its package contents. This is possibly because FMS is not a recognised/approved file format by Apple.
I have now zipped the file. Let’s see if that works:
I suspect that doesn’t work either. I have now placed the zipped file in my iCloud Drive to see if that makes it accessible:
Nope, listed as private and needs verification 
Thanks for your patience, Stan. I think it’s open to anyone now!
Okay, that worked 
That looks pretty good, actually. I’m assuming you flew from Lima to your first destination (Cajamarca) – that first segment shows as a straight line. I might have given it a slight curve (using that new bezier curve ability). And there’s a tiny slow-down at the very end as the track makes its way to Trujillo – I might have kept the same speed throughout. But other than that I can’t think of anything that needs to be added.
That just got me thinking. Wish there was a way to see on the animation speed curve (or even opacity, or any of the other places where a curve can be adjusted) a little triangle representing the location of the animation in relation to its full duration. Say for example you grab the play head in the time line and scrub it forward along your map slide. It would be useful to see ON THE CURVE with a display of a triangle where the scrub head is in relation to the entire duration of the frame. I think I’m going to submit that as a feature request.
Thanks for your kind comments. I didn’t actually fly from Lima but took an overnight bus, so the actual route was not important, but on the rest of the trip there are places where I took photographs other than at the main waypoints, so I wanted to make it a road trip from then on.
I guess it’s a matter of personal taste whether one uses a straight line or the bezier curve. With regards to the slowing down at the end, at the time it seemed stylistically appropriate. Also I was playing around with the software to see what it could do.
In the next few days I’ll finish the slideshow of this trip and will post a link to my YouTube channel. It was 13 years ago, so editing the photos, even though they were taken with a not very sophisticated camera, has brought back some memories!
