Would you feel afraid and worried for getting lost when you are in boundless desert, open field or Gobi, or in a dense jungle? All your worry can be swept away if you have “outdoors direction” software installed on your Apple.
The software is designed for outdoors environment. Most modern smart phones, i.e. Apple iPhone, are equipped with GPS receiver. GPS tracking uses satellite signal to pin-point your location. It does not depend on cell phone signal, nor internet connection.
Scenario 1: Visitor Mr. A and his girlfriend came to the beautiful forest in Yichun planning to visit the Wuying Pinus koraiensis Natural Reserve which is famous for the hometown of Pinus koraiensis. There were high mountains and dense forests here and no road sign. Mr. A”s girlfriend took out her Apple cellphone to start-up “outdoors orientation expert” software and built a current location with the type of “starting point”, when they were about to depart from the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain. Then they started off along the path toward the mountain. They were attracted by the beautiful scenery along the path. They highly praised the straight and tall trees with hundreds of years old and were amazed at the nameless flowers contending in beauty and fascination. Unconsciously 3 hours passed and they had proceeded more than ten kilometers. At this time the sky was overcast, Mr. A said to his girlfriend:” It’s going to rain. Let’s go back.” But when he tried to find the way they walked by, he astounded found that the overt path they walked by disappeared without notice. There were all lush grass and tall pines around them which were same in every direction and it seemed that the road was not the road. He felt scared immediately as he found them got lost.
He tried to remember the direction which they came from with his girlfriend. They walked and guessed until a slope got in front of them 20 minutes later. Apparently this is not the way they walked by and seemingly they got the wrong direction. Mr. A and his girlfriend got nervous, their thoughts were in a muddle and their memory became vaguer and vaguer. When they were at a loss what to do, Mr. A”s girlfriend suddenly reminded of “outdoors orientation expert”. Then she took out her cellphone and started-up the software. She found the location of the parking lot by “search”, and then selected it and chose “orientation” function. The software popped up with the distance between the current location and the location of the parking lot and the direction. They swirled the cellphone to make the north arrow point at “North” in the screen. The green arrow in the screen pointed out the direction they should proceed and there were 9.8 kilometers for them to get to the parking lot in linear distance. Now they could take it easy and didn’t have to remember the way they walked by. They can chose a new way willingly according to the direction “outdoors orientation expert” pointed out. They went back to the parking lot safely 2 hours later.
For detail to the url: http://www.outdoordirection.icoc.cc
**Note: The long time using GPS in the cellphone may increase the power consumption and decrease the usage time of the battery. Therefore, the backup power is necessary for this situation. Nowadays, there are so many backup powers can be used in the market.
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We welcome for the valuable suggestions and will improve and update the software all along.