moveVis 0.10.5

Revised distance calculations & handling of dateline crossings. Latest CRAN version.

New features:

• Argument cross_dateline of frames_spatial to indicate that unprojected tracks in lon/lat cross the dateline. Instead of clipping frames at longitudes -180 and 180, moveVis extends frames and connects tracks across the dateline.
• Distance calculations are now based on lwgeom
• Refined base map plotting (see additional arguments ... of frames_spatial for available options)
• Added NA handling for base maps (e.g. rasterized labels)
• Dropped dependencies

Bug fixes:

• Minor errors and warnings caused by reverse dependency changes of package sf

moveVis 0.10.4-1

Bug patch. Released on CRAN: 2020-02-12

Bug fixes:

• Major bug introduced with version 0.10.4 that caused memory overload and very slow processing speeds when using frames_spatial

moveVis 0.10.4

Publication, added parallelization, new memory settings and bug fixes. Released on CRAN: 2020-02-07

Peer-reviewed publication:

• An open-access paper accompanying the moveVis R package has been peer-reviewed by and published in ‘Methods in Ecology and Evolution’ (see https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13374).
• Reference: Schwalb-Willmann, J.; Remelgado, R.; Safi, K.; Wegmann, M. (2020). moveVis: Animating movement trajectories in synchronicity with static or temporally dynamic environmental data in R. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Accepted Author Manuscript. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13374.
• Citation: Please use citation("moveVis") to cite moveVis, e.g. when you use it in publications or presentations.

New features:

• Many computationally expensive moveVis tasks can now be parallelized, as multi-core support for moveVis has been implemented (see use_multicore())
• Added a new example data set whitestork_data, representing coordinates and acquisition times of 15 White Storks migrating from Lake of Constance, Germany, to Africa.

New functions:

• use_multicore() lets you turn on multi-core support of moveVis to increase computational time through parallelization.
• use_disk() enables the usage of disk space for creating frames. This can prevent memory overload when creating frames for very large animations.

Bug fixes:

• Bug that caused a gap between traces and paths.

moveVis 0.10.3

Bug fixes. Released on CRAN: 2019-10-06.

New features:

• Argument ext of frames_spatial() now clips all tracks to ext if ext is smaller than the extent of m.
• Argument units of add_scalebar() to switch between km and miles

Bug fixes:

• Bug that caused the scale bar distance calculated by add_scalebar() to be 0 for smaller-scale extents. Distance rounding is now iterated by digit to solve this.
• Bug in frames_spatial() that resulted in wrong plot extents when an extent smaller than the extent of m was provided using argument ‘ext’. In such a case, movement tracks are now clipped to small extents and move outside of the visible frame instead of altering the frame extent.
• Bug that causes traces to cover paths if trace_show = TRUE. Traces are now always displayed behind paths.

moveVis 0.10.2

Adding some small but practical features. Released on CRAN: 2019-04-30.

New features:

• Argument path_alpha of frames_spatial() for defining path transparency.
• Argument tail_colour of frames_spatial() makes it now possible to define the colour of the last tail element, to which the path colour is faded. Default is “white”.
• Argument trace_show of frames_spatial() for displaying the trace of the complete path (instead that it vanishes after the tail).
• Argument trace_colour of frames_spatial() for defining the colour of the trace.
• Argument na.colour of add_colourscale() for defining the colouring of NA values.
• Argument na.show of add_colourscale() to show or hide NA values in discrete background rasters.
• Argument end_pause of animate_frames() to hold the last frame, adding a pause of a user-defined duration to the end of an animation.
• Argument path_fade of frames_spatial() to define whether paths should be faded towards the last frame or not. Useful in combination with trace_show = T and when using end_pause of animate_frames().
• moveVis now stores the timestamps represented by each frame as an attribute time for each ggplot frame. Frame times can now be accessed using get_frametimes().
• add_timestamps() can now extract timestamps directly from frames, which makes defining m optional.

New functions:

• get_frametimes() lets you extract the timestamps associated with each frame of a list of frames created using frames_spatial or frames_graph.

Other improvements:

• add_colourscale() now calculates scale and legend with frame-wide fixed limits, when colours is defined as a named vector, e.g. c("-1" = "red", "0" = "blue", "1" = "green").
• moveVis now displays the approximated duration of an animation on the console, when creating frames or rendering frames.

moveVis 0.10.1

Bug fixes. Released on CRAN: 2019-04-11.

Bug fixes:

• Bug that prevented the use of equal colours for multiple individuals
• Bug that prevented the use of multiple colours per individual, e.g. colouring by behavioral segments/change points
• Bug that caused an error when using fade_raster = T in frames_spatial() due to unequal vector lengths returned by the internal interpolation function (issue #45)
• Bug that caused false time assignments or an error, if fade_raster = F and/or r_times contained time elements outside the time range covered by the timestamps of m.
  

moveVis 0.10.0

moveVis rewrite introducing a new logic and new functions. Released on CRAN: 2019-03-20

New features:

• movement data preparation, frames creation, layout/appearance editing and animation are now seperated, allowing you to customize each of these steps individually.
• any ggplot2 syntax can now be added to every single frame, allowing you to customize almost everything that can be customized using ggplot2
• to make customization easier, a variety of add_ functions wrapping pre-defined ggplot2 functions are included. For example, add_gg offers dynamic overplotting, e.g. for polygons or points that change over time
• track colours can now be provided as a colour column in your movement data, allowing segmentation coulouring or colouring based on a logic, you defined beforhand
• map elements can be positioned freely or individual map-elements can be created as ggplot2 functions
• Your animation does not have to be a fixed-size squared standard extent: With the ext argument of frames_spatial() you can define user-defined area of interest (AOI), which scales the frame extent to a specific area
• A new base map feature based on Miles McBains slippymath package. moveVis supports Mapbox (free, registration needed). OpenStreetMap and Carto (both free) as base map services. See the manual of frames_spatial() for details.
• frames_spatial() now takes the argument equidistant to define whether the map should be stretched to an equidistant (squared) extent (x and y axis representing same distance) or not (projection-native ratio).
• frames_spatial() now uses coord_sf to display projections (see details section of frames_spatial()).

New functions:

• align_move(), get_maptypes(), frames_spatial(), frames_graph(), add_gg(), add_labels(), add_scalebar(), add_northarrow(), add_progress(), add_timestamps(), add_text(), add_colourscale(), join_frames(), suggest_formats(), animate_frames(): see the README and the description of the individual functions for further details.

• subset_move(): subset movement data for a particular time span

• df2move(): simple wrapper that converts data.frames into move or moveStack objects

• view_spatial(): view movement data on an interactive map using mapview or leaflet

Deprecated functions:

• animate_move(), animate_raster(), animate_stats(), get_formats(), get_libraries(): These functions have been replaced by a new logic and new functions.

moveVis 0.9.9

Reorganizing standard basemap usage by moveVis. Released on CRAN: 2018-11-23

New features:

• Static basemaps defined through map_type are now retrieved from either OpenStreetMaps for thematic imagery or Microsoft Bing Maps for satellite/hybrid imagery. The usage of OpenStreetMaps is free. For intensive use of the Bing Maps basemap options, please provide your own Bing Maps API key through the api_key argument, after registering at Microsoft here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff428642.aspx. Google Maps services will be implemented in a future update for restricted usage using an API key.
• New baemaps options via map_type: “satellite” (default), “hybrid”, “roadmap”, “roadmap_dark”, “roadmap_bw”, “roadmap_watercolor”.
• New argument map_zoom for animate_move: Increase or decrease the degree of detail of a static basemap.
• New argument map_crop for animate_move: Define, if a static basemap should be cropped to the extent of m or if a wider extent of optimal resolution should be used.

Bug fixes:

• Major bug causing moveVis to break with each available static basemap option due to changes of the Google Maps API policies.
  

moveVis 0.9.8

Updating unit tests for CRAN checks. Released on CRAN: 2018-09-14

Bug fixes:

• Bug causing unit tests to fail on machines with different external tools available
• added SystemRequirements field in DESCRIPTION
  

moveVis 0.9.7

Windows library detection bugs fixed. Released on CRAN: 2018-09-07

New features:

• time_pos_x and time_pos_x allow to specify the location of the timestamp display
• time_size allows to specify the font size of the timestamp display
• added unit tests

Bug fixes:

• Bug causing moveVis to not properly detect installed extern libraries that can be called from the command line
• Bug causing moveVis to not use conv_dir if it contains a Windows path to a tool of an extern library

moveVis 0.9.6

video support, automatic time harmonization, bug fixes. Released on CRAN: 2017-11-01

New functions:

• get_libraries() – handles all extern libraries that are needed for video formats. Just run it to get information on what you need to install. Replaces get_imconvert(), which can still be called for code compatibility reasons
• get_formats() – outputs all file formats that can be used with moveVis depending on which libraries are installed on the system.

New features:

• moveVis supports now multiple video formats in addition to GIF, if it is linked to a video library (either FFmpeg of libav)
• animate_move() now detects temporal resolution and uniformity of timestamps automatically to determine, if interpolation needs to be applied to calculate uniform frame times per frame tick
• animate_move() now calculates and displays the final animation duration derived from the total number of output frames and the fps prior to generating each frame, so that the user can already approximate which size the output animation will have.
• added “frames_tres” to animate_move() to change temporal resolution through linear interpolation
• added “frames_pixres” to animate_move() to adjust frame ppi
• added “paths_na.hold” to animate_move() for defining how to deal with data gaps (hold or not hold last path location)
• added “time_bar_col” to animate_move() for changing colouring of the time bar at the top border of the map
• added “out_format” to animate_move() for defining output file format
• added “indi_names” to animate_move() for defining individual names vector manually
• added “scalebar_dist” to animate_move() for defining the scalebar length manually
• added “overwrite” to animate_move() to regulate output file writing behaviour

Improvements:

• it is now possible to use the ‘layer’ argument to specify one (static) raster object without specifying ‘layer_dt’, which is only needed, if several raster objects are handed over as a list.
• in some situations, the movement data extent was bigger than the cropped layer extent: this works now
• in some situations, stat animation lines were cut off, this should be resolved now
• recoding of multiple processing steps to increase processing speed and stability
• increased error handler by several errors likely to occure
• several bug fixes

Contributors:

• AniMove 2017 participants

moveVis 0.9.5

adding frames_layout, static_data etc., improvements to workflow. Released on CRAN: 2017-08-20

New features:

• RGB stats support added for animate_stats() and animate_move()
• added animate_move() argument “time_scale” to enable a time scale
• added animate_move() argument “frame_layout” for user friendly, complex layouting of the output GIF by specifiying the plot locations
• added animate_move() argument “layer_stretch”
• added animate_move() expert arguments “conv_cmd” and “conv_frames”

Improvements:

• several major bug fixes
• major animate_raster() bug fixes, reenabling use of RGB rasterStack inputs
• stats legend is now locatable using frame_layout
• fixed a bug of get_imconvert() that caused it to have issues with finding convert.exe on Windows machines, if ImageMagick is preinstalled

Contributors:

• Bart Kranstauber

moveVis 0.9.4

adding animate_stats() and stats arguments for animate_move(). Released on CRAN: 2017-06-28

New features:

• animate_stats() – Enables creation of statistic plot animations visualizing possible relationships between movement paths and basemap. Define individual plot designs based on ggplot2 syntax.
• stats arguments for animate_move(): Enables statistic plot animations side-by-side with the spatial plot animation of animate_move. Use the animate_stats() arguments with animate_move().
• extent_factor argument for animate_move(): Increase the distance between the spatial extents of the movement paths and the basemap.

Improvements:

• Several minor bug fixes

moveVis 0.9.3

fixing major bug. Released on CRAN: 2017-06-28

Improvements:

• Fixed a major bug causing an unavoidable error when creating animations with animate_move() using user defined basemaps (Error message: ‘Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos) : Object ’frame_l’ not found’)

moveVis 0.9.2

adding frame_width and frame_height arguments. Released on CRAN: 2017-06-28

New features:

• Added two new arguments to animate_move() function for changing output frame resolution

Bug report contributors: * vestlink (at) github

moveVis 0.9.1

fixing important bug; adding animate_raster(). Released on CRAN: 2017-05-23

New features:

• Added moveStack support: animate_move() now takes also moveStack objects in addition to list objects
• animate_raster() – for animating just basemaps/for doing the same as with animate_move(), but without movement data

Improvements:

• Bug fix: Function now takes movebank.org data –> there had been a static code line preventing the read-out of movement coordinates, which is now solved.
• Several major and minor bug fixes

Bug report contributors:

• bart1 (at) github
• Patrick Scherler

moveVis 0.9.0

initial release. Released on CRAN: 2017-04-28

Initial features:

• animate_move()
• get_imconvert()

Initial example data sets:

• data(move_data)

This document should provide a broad overview on changes that are applied to the moveVis R package. There is no warranty for completeness, since minor changes might not be included. All improvement and feature descriptions are bundled per release version. The document is currently maintained by Jakob Schwalb-Willmann.