Final video does not match pre-render

Hey, thanks for the detailed report — and sorry you've been stung twice. Let me explain what's going on, because it'll help you understand both the limitation and what just changed.

A bit of background

AvoMap uses Mapbox under the hood for all the satellite imagery and 3D terrain. Mapbox is the same tech that powers maps in apps like Strava, Komoot, and a ton of others — it's the industry standard. But it comes with some quirks we have to work around.

What's happening under the hood

Mapbox loads the world as a grid of square satellite "tiles." Think of it like a giant photo mosaic. When you're zoomed way out you see one set of tiles; when you zoom in close, you see a much more detailed set. Each level of detail comes from imagery captured at different times — sometimes by different satellites, in different seasons, with different lighting. That's why you sometimes see those patches of slightly different color or brightness across the map: it's literally different photos stitched together.

When the camera tilts toward the horizon and sits low to the ground, the foreground might be using really detailed close-up tiles while the distance uses zoomed-out ones — all in the same frame. That mix is what creates the "ugly tiles" effect you noticed.

You found a clever workaround by picking 1km altitude — at that exact distance, the preview was lucky enough to stay on a single set of tiles. The reason your final video came out different is that the export runs in 4K, much higher resolution than the preview. Higher resolution means the renderer pulls in more detailed tiles to keep things sharp. So your 1km altitude that looked clean in the preview crossed into a more detailed tile set during the 4K export — and that's where the color patches snuck back in. Unfortunately the preview can never be a perfect match unless it runs at full 4K too, which would make it painfully slow to work with.

What just changed

I just deployed an update that locks the satellite imagery to one consistent level of detail across the whole map, no matter how close the camera gets or what resolution you're exporting at. Distant tiles and close-up tiles now come from the same source, so the color patches are gone. Preview and final export pull from the same imagery at every distance — what you see really is what you get now.

The small tradeoff: in very tight close-ups the imagery will look slightly softer than before. But for the kind of routes you're rendering, you should be able to use whatever altitude makes your trip most expressive — including dropping below 1km to really show off elevation changes — without worrying about surprises in the final video.

Give it another go and let me know if anything still doesn't match up. Really appreciate you taking the time to describe this so clearly — it makes a huge difference.

Also, I’ve just sent you an email with the re-render of your video — without flickering :)