Quote:
Originally Posted by Luca
I think they're gone permanently.
|
That's my feeling too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luca
My brother speculated it was to reduce load on their servers.
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Maybe. I'm still convinced it's to improve load on their bank accounts.
Their API calls still return distance information (although often broken and wrong; that's something to your argument, I guess) for all of the nearby pokémon. Here's an example I just *now* fetched from an API call to their servers (IDs rounded/anonymized):
Code:
{
'nearby_pokemons': [
{
'distance_in_meters': 200.0,
'encounter_id': 1146767300000000000L,
'pokemon_id': 16
},
{
'distance_in_meters': 200.0,
'encounter_id': 4769005900000000000L,
'pokemon_id': 46
}
]
}
Their API responses also return a complete list of incredibly precise GPS coordinates of nearby spawn points (again, numbers rounded but still very precise):
Code:
'spawn_points': [
{'latitude': 35.77720000000000, 'longitude': -78.64320000000000},
{'latitude': 35.777210000000000, 'longitude': -78.64330000000000},
{'latitude': 35.77724000000000, 'longitude': -78.64270000000000}
{'latitude': 35.777250000000000, 'longitude': -78.6429000000000},
{'latitude': 35.777350000000000, 'longitude': -78.64310000000000},
{'latitude': 35.777430000000000, 'longitude': -78.64300000000000},
{'latitude': 35.77794000000000, 'longitude': -78.64310000000000},
{'latitude': 35.777940000000000, 'longitude': -78.64300000000000},
{'latitude': 35.77795000000000, 'longitude': -78.64310000000000},
{'latitude': 35.77813000000000, 'longitude': -78.64320000000000},
{'latitude': 35.77821000000000, 'longitude': -78.64320000000000},
],
It doesn't take much geometry, arithmetic, and logic to plot very good guesses as to a pokémon's location and distance. Heck, there are a dozen amateur open source projects doing this now from the data currently returned by the API.
Unless Niantic is just truly incompetent in the software development department, which I actually am thinking may be a good possibility, there's too much evidence pointing towards this being a deliberate choice.
edit: and I just realized that the API even given high-precision GPS coordinates when it finds "catchable pokemons"...
Code:
'catchable_pokemons': [
{
'pokemon_id': 19,
'longitude': -78.77880000000000,
'expiration_timestamp_ms': 1470112000000L,
'latitude': 35.78910000000000,
'spawn_point_id': u'49d3adb3ef0',
'encounter_id': 6342863650000000000L,
}
]
so... like... no excuses.