Sharing of insanity and luck
So I posted last week about a strange GPS drift around my office. Well I will now say that it is not a drift, but a full on GPS issue. My game fluctuates between 3 different locations near my office until it finally stabilizes on my office. Now to the luck.... during my fluctuations this morning caught my first wild Lapras!! Level 26 with double ice!! Yay. Hatched 4, but never a wild one before.
Answers
That's called GPS drift.
GPS relies on the timing of signals received from satellites (to find distance to the satellites and triangulate your location) . These signals do not travel through buildings very well, but rather bounce off them (reflected signals are of course weaker). When you're outside and have line of sight to the satellites, it works great. If you're near a large building, that will often cause the location to be reported incorrectly because the reflections throw it off a bit. If you're inside, this effect is even larger. In all cases, the architecture of the building(s) and the location of the satellites your GPS receiver has a fix on have an impact; since GPS satellites orbit every 12 hrs, you'll tend to see the same kind of glitches in the same time and location every day .
Phenomenologically, this results in exactly the kind of behavior you describe - some locations where it has a hard time getting a fix will cause the GPS to snap to other certain locations/areas. At other times/places where conditions aren't so favorable to this, but GPS reception is still poor, the drift is less dramatic. As the GPS receiver has been running for longer (timescale, seconds to tens of seconds), it may get a fix on more satellites, and generally do a better job of figuring out where you are - that's why drift is usually worse when you first wake your phone.
