This release adds a Drone zones map layer: where you may not fly a drone, where you need permission first, and where conditions apply, for the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and Switzerland to start with. Alongside it, the Radar screen in a Nomad van has learned to behave like a screen in a vehicle: you can search from it, the map comes back to the van when you ask, and while you are driving nothing on it asks you to type.
This release is mostly about FollowMe, and about one gap in it that mattered. A trip published a day or two behind protects you while you are driving and protects nothing once you have parked, so the route now also stops short of the van in distance. Alongside that, there is one link you can send to everybody rather than inviting people one address at a time, a way to show today's stop tonight instead of waiting out the clock, and a travelling name and photograph that is nothing to do with the name on your account.
We have also made it much clearer which features need a Nomad campervan, because Tracking and FollowMe are not things a Radar subscription can add.
Two big things. FollowMe lets you publish a trip to the people you invite while you are still on it, a few days behind, with your notes and photos pinned along the route. And Trip mode now turns the map to face the way you are going, so it reads like the sat-nav you are used to. There is also a share button for the map you are looking at, and location shares can be kept rather than re-entered.
Location sharing. If you have a Nomad van with Tracking switched on, you can now send somebody a link that shows where the vehicle is, right now, on a map. They do not need a Sensa account. It is free, it lasts as long as you say, and you can stop it from your phone.
The phone map gets its screen back. Search moves off the map and into its own tab, everything floating over the map steps aside while you drag it, and the map now runs the full height of the screen. Radar also stops asking you to choose data sources and chooses them for you.
Scotland gains two things at once: its four Low Emission Zones, which are a ban rather than a charge, and 945 of its nature reserves and country parks. Radar also stops being purely practical, with three new categories for the places you actually drove there to see.
Radar now opens by asking what you want to do, and shows you the handful of categories that go with the answer instead of all 46 at once. Alongside that: toll gates on the map in every country we cover, severe weather warnings for Spain, Switzerland's protected areas, ferry terminals as a category of their own, and EV chargers that finally work outside Britain.
Radar Premium is now on sale, with a 7 day free trial. Until today the only ways to have it were a Nomad campervan, ten approved community contributions in a month, or a grant from us. You can now subscribe directly, monthly or yearly, and try it first without paying anything.
Radar 5.0 is the phone release. The app has been rebuilt around the screen most people actually use it on, with tabs along the bottom, a results sheet you pull up over the map, and every control large enough to hit with a thumb. Alongside that: London's ULEZ, LEZ and Congestion Charge and the Bath and Bristol Clean Air Zones on the map, what3words addresses in the search box, and seven more countries with the full local map.
Radar 4.0 adds a new map layer: roadworks, closures, accidents and the things blocking the road, for the Netherlands and France, with planned work shown up to a month ahead. Fuel prices can now be converted into your own money for a trip abroad, and the Radar screen in a Nomad van gets a set of improvements for use on the move.