The Whole Story

As many of you now know, on October 1st we released Scenic 4, featuring a new map provider and redesigned UI. As you probably also know, Scenic 4 still has some bugs, and is missing some features. That sucks.

You might wonder why I didn’t push back the release until these issues were resolved and the truth is we were forced into the move much faster than we’d wanted. I’ve previously hinted at why this was in the Scenic 4 FAQs. But I wanted to take time now to share the full story behind this.

It all started around 4 years ago when our Scenic 2 map provider, Skobbler, went out of business. After vetting several alternatives, I chose HERE maps who, at that time, had a very mature framework. They were an established and competitive provider who I felt would be able to support our community’s needs well into the future. 

So, I chose HERE, updated Scenic for their framework, and thus Scenic 3 was born. 

 * Migrating to a new map provider is a big job. The map framework doesn’t just contain the maps themselves but also the route calculation algorithms and search processes. It’s basically the brain of the entire app. So in terms of impact and complexity, migration is comparable to brain surgery. With development and testing, it takes a minimum of eight months, but ideally we’d want up to a year to allow for adequate, real-world beta testing.

Just after Scenic 3 was released, I discovered that HERE maps was decommissioning the framework that I’d just spent a year migrating to. From a coding perspective, the new framework would be distinctly different.

As you can imagine, I wasn’t thrilled about this news. I’d now have to spend another year migrating to the new framework, but I decided to persevere because the old framework had served our community well and Scenic 3.5 emerged from that second migration.

However, during and after that migration, I found, and you reported, that their new framework had some problems. Among other things, the maps lacked detail, some countries were no longer available, and there were discrepancies between the offline and online calculations, making it difficult to plan routes reliably and consistently.

I reported these issues to HERE and the situation gradually improved, but it became clear to me that HERE maps saw Scenic as, to be blunt: small fry. Our app, our community, and our needs were not being prioritized. I got the feeling that motorcycle navigation did not get the focus it needed.

Because of this, I started browsing for other providers and found one that I really liked. The test results were great, the base was solid, and I started considering moving Scenic away from HERE maps. Little did I know that this choice would be made for me in the very near future.

Around that same time – March/April this year – HERE maps underwent some internal restructuring, and my account management was passed on to a third party, who would be responsible for my new contract, with the then-current one ending in June.

Here is where it gets “spicy”.

Without going into details, they basically told me that the old contract structure and prices could no longer be applied to a new contract. The new contract would essentially multiply Scenic’s monthly cost 25 times. That is not a typo. To illustrate this change, let’s suppose I had previously paid HERE maps 5,000 USD per month with the old contract; in the new contract, that would balloon to 125,000 USD and bankrupt Scenic in the first month.

I was shocked by this revelation and hardly able to imagine that this was even legal. Worse still, they only informed me of the change three months before contract-end, leaving me no time to select another provider and migrate Scenic. 

Of course, I escalated my concerns within the HERE organization, and over the following weeks, there were email exchanges, discussions, and meetings to determine a suitable path forward. We worked for a long time to try to find a solution, our prime focus being to extend our runway and give ourselves time to prepare, stopping any disruption coming to you.

Many meetings, arguments, and escalations later, HERE Maps were only able to offer a three-month extension on our contract – until the end of September. This gave me just five months to migrate to a new provider.

I had many sleepless nights, imagining that this might even be the end of Scenic, our community, my dream, and livelihood, that I might not be able to provide for my family anymore, and so on. I even sought legal counsel, but unfortunately, there was no recourse for HERE’s actions.

I’m only glad that I’d already found a map provider and tried to take HERE’s acceleration of the process as a blessing in disguise. We were able to push the change to the low season and, more importantly, didn’t want to let you all down in the long run. We decided to press forward.

In the past five months, I’ve worked non-stop to get Scenic 4 as ready as I could before October 1st. We did a lot, really a lot, to prepare for this, but had to release Scenic 4, more or less as an open beta, in the off-season. We got as many bugs squashed before full release as we could but, as you’ve seen, some still remain. The good news is that we’re still working round the clock, and Scenic 4 is getting better and more complete every week. It’s already much more stable than at launch, and before Christmas, most key features will be ready too. 

By the start of the next motorcycle season (in the northern hemisphere), it will be fully complete and ready for your next adventure. You can read more about the high-level timelines here in the Scenic 4 FAQs. We’re building some truly incredible features on this new platform too, which I don’t want to jynx by putting here!

I’m sharing this story with you to help you understand why the Scenic 4 release wasn’t as smooth as we wanted and why we’re facing the challenges we are now. With that, I want you to know that no one feels the urgency and necessity for improvement more than me, to get Scenic back to the level you’ve come to expect.

We’ve got some huge things coming up. This is a new era for Scenic and for adventurers in general. Watch this space.

Thank you for reading, and if you have any questions, leave a message on the forum, or send me a direct email through the button at the bottom of the help page.

Guido

P.S. ANDROID
The Android version has also been affected by this. After spending many hours and a lot of money on the development, Scenic Android (with the HERE maps framework) was unbelievably close to being released in the Google Play store. Now, as with the iOS version, the Android developers need to migrate Scenic to the new map framework. Because Scenic has not been released yet on Android, we are taking some more time to ensure this is done smoothly.