New in 1.0.13: a tidier map picker and an easier way to Pro. Map picker The left button stack now has a “Map” button. Choose the background (map, grey or aerial), add terrain relief in three strengths, and use “Past” to move along a timeline to old maps and old aerial photos. One slider blends between past and present. Everything sits in one place, leaving more room for the map. Aerial imagery, old maps and old aerial photos are part of orecast Pro. Pro made easier The Pro offer shows the benefits that fit what you are looking at. You can now buy without an account and create one afterwards. Also new • On first start you can also pick “Aerial photos” as an interest. • Links to orecast.app/app open the app directly.

New in 1.0.12: maps you can blend, the hex map, and the app on iPad. Maps you can blend Bottom left there is a new button, “Maps”. Lay aerial imagery, terrain relief, old maps and old aerial photos over the map, up to two at once, and blend between them with one slider. See what a place was around 1850 and what stands there today. Old maps and old aerial photos are available where the German states release them freely, for example North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony or Brandenburg. Aerial imagery, old maps and old aerial photos are part of orecast Pro. Hex map In the layers sheet under “Records per hex” the map shows hexagons within 5 km of your point. The stronger the colour, the more fossils, ores or mining are documented there. A coloured edge warns of WWII sites and marks protected sites, battlefields and Roman roads. The hexes show where a lot is recorded, not where you will find something. With orecast Pro. iPad orecast now runs full size on iPad. Also new • The welcome screen explains what the app can do. • Aerial imagery and relief moved from the layers sheet into the maps bar. • If an error occurs, the app shows it instead of quitting silently.

Two big new features: take an area with you, and the heatmap. Take an area with you In the woods and in many valleys there is often no signal. Save your area to your phone beforehand, and the map, the sites and the warnings about unexploded ordnance keep working without signal. With a free account you can take one area with you. With orecast Pro you get several larger areas, and the relief scanner and aerial imagery come along too. Heatmap Where was there a lot of mining, where many ore finds, where many fossil sites? The heatmap shows it in colour. The stronger the colour, the more is documented there. It shows where a lot is recorded, not where you will find something. The gold heatmap comes with Pro. Places from the videos For every orecast episode the app shows you the place on the map. You find the episodes at the bottom left under “Videos”. My find book Your finds with type, date and note, as a PDF if you like. You can now record a find without signal too. It uploads as soon as you have signal again. Also new • Place of the week: once a week the app introduces a place when you open it. • Share a place, for example in a message to friends. • Low water note: when the gauge on the Rhine, Elbe or Danube drops below the usual low water level, the app tells you. On the Elbe it also shows the documented hunger stones. • The app starts where you left off. • Without Pro, the app shows ore veins and coal seams within 5 kilometres. A note now tells you when that is the case. • The account button and the zoom slider now have more space from the other buttons.

New: the relief scanner. Tap the scanner button and the map shows the ground itself: ditches, banks, mining pits, spoil heaps and old tracks hidden under woods and fields. It is based on official laser scans, at one metre or finer in ten German states, plus Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Norway, Czechia, Poland, England and Italy. You can adjust contrast and sharpness so that fine structures stand out. The relief comes in grey or on top of the map. Without Pro the scanner shows a preview of one kilometre around your point, with Pro the whole map. Also new: aerial imagery, official photos for all of Germany and Austria, visible from zoom level 10. The English version is now fully translated, and old texts no longer linger after switching the language.

New: the coal beneath the Ruhr and the Saar. Two new layers show where the coal seams run. More than 23,000 lines are now on the map, together with the height of the Carboniferous surface: in the south it reaches up to 300 metres above sea level, in the north it lies 840 metres below, buried under younger rock. One thing worth knowing: the seams are drawn at the top of the Carboniferous, not at the ground surface. North of the Ruhr that surface lies hundreds of metres deep. The maps were compiled between 1949 and 1954 by the Geological Survey of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Saarland environmental agency. Visitor mines are now marked as such, with a note that you may only enter them on a guided tour. The layer list has been tidied up. Layers are grouped, and each one explains where its data comes from, how old it is and what it does not show. orecast now also starts in German on a German device. You can switch the language in your account.

This update mostly changes things under the hood. The free version now shows an ad banner at the bottom of the map. It hides itself whenever you open a place card, and it pushes the controls up instead of covering them. With orecast Pro the app stays completely ad-free. The map data, the sites and everything you can do in the app are unchanged.

NEW: Find talk. Comment on other collectors' finds and leave likes — with reporting and blocking to keep things civil. Rolling out gradually after the update. NEW: Pick the find spot on the map — for finds you log at home rather than on site via GPS. NEW: "War/WWII" map layer — bunkers and war sites as their own toggle in the legend. FIXED: The map button for adding a find never fetched a GPS position, blocking submission. CLEARER: "Report a find" is now "Add a find" throughout.

NEW: Your finds, right in the app! • Save your own finds: photo, note and the exact spot. Private, visible only to you. • Share if you like: after review your find appears anonymously on the map, coarsened to about 5 km. Your exact spot stays secret. • Add photos to places: contribute up to 4 photos per map point and collect likes. • Explorer levels: earn XP for approved contributions, with your level right on the map. • Meet Werner: our wolf now guides you through the app. • Easier to read: larger text everywhere plus a new text size setting in Account (Standard, Large, Extra large). • Large photos are resized automatically on upload. • New in Account: legal info, data export and account deletion. Happy exploring!

Four additions to the map. Gold panning rivers: 37 rivers across Europe where panning is worthwhile, among them the Rhine, Eder, Isar, Oker and Zwickauer Mulde. Part of orecast Pro. Amber areas: 15 documented sites, free for everyone. Fossils with substance: sites now show what was actually found there. Instead of just a collection name you get the fossil group with its own picture, the most common genera, the age in millions of years and the formation. Records from museum collections also carry the locality, the year of the find and the holding institution. The age is deliberately given as a range. These are the boundaries of the geological interval, not a measurement taken on a single fossil.