Timeline for Are there any examples of orienteering (off-trail) route-finding software?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 16, 2023 at 17:48 | comment | added | Chris H | @LorenPechtel yes, more examples of how it's hard or impossible | |
| Feb 16, 2023 at 17:21 | comment | added | Loren Pechtel | On the flip side, I'm aware of two published trails that would appear completely impassible on a 1m grid. They contain near vertical spots where the rock has enough flat spots that it is little harder than climbing a ladder. | |
| Feb 16, 2023 at 16:31 | comment | added | Loren Pechtel | I reasonably commonly hike up drainages (desert conditions) and even a 5m grid would be worthless for determining passability. Consider the endpoints of my last three such explorations: a big rock with an average of about a 30 degree slope but there were waves to it. Some were easy, then there was one I wasn't 100% comfortable with and so I turned back. The second was blocked by vegetation. The third there was a huge rock plugging the path, one spot that I believe I could have handled--except it was blocked by vegetation. Even a 1m grid wouldn't have identified any of these. | |
| Feb 11, 2023 at 15:53 | comment | added | Chris H | @bdsl it might be worth trying a decent mapping engine. Google for walking is rubbish. That said you'll see the same effect I think | |
| Feb 11, 2023 at 10:53 | comment | added | bdsl | I had a look on google maps at Trafalgar Square in London and Piazza San Marco in Venice. It looks like Google Maps walking navigator only offers walking along set lines in those squares (and in the latter case only along the edges of the piazza). | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 16:57 | comment | added | Chris H | @bdsl good question. I'll have to route across some town squares without obvious paths to test. The first step is to identify such a square as all the ones I can think of have obvious paths on the ground that I'd expect to be mapped. Paths around parks also tend to be mapped, and routers follow those. | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 16:07 | comment | added | bdsl | Is there a way for a map to include data on areas that are claimed to provide a certain level of service to pedestrians? Like a way but with a defined area instead of just a length. I'd expect something like a town square to be advertised as an area suitable for walking. But maybe they just map straight line ways between every pair of entrances & exits to the square. | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 10:35 | comment | added | Chris H | ... (@gerrit) The classic hiking books for the area (Wainwright) do include this route, with gentle warnings; paper maps don't. It looks like the sort of terrain I'd rather do on the way up than down, and considering how much daylight I'd have in hand, but nothing particularly severe. IMO it's an issue more of experience than of mapping; when map rendering engines present it the same as the easy paths people have been walking all day, it takes experience to avoid a false sense of security, and to know what to do about it. | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 10:14 | comment | added | Chris H | @gerrit that's my view, and the view of a lot of OSM contributors. The crowdsourcing of OSM introduces a level of variability in the subjectivity of what constitutes a path. | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 9:38 | comment | added | gerrit | @ChrisH I'm confused about the Openstreetmap issue. This problem applies to any (topographic) map, not only to openstreetmap. Anyone venturing into nature should know the risks involved with following a trail or route they have seen only from a map. When in doubt, stick to routes described in hiking books; there are plenty of those covering the Lake District. | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 9:32 | comment | added | gerrit | An alternative approach, which would work in sufficiently crowded areas: use crowdsourced data on how people before you have travelled from A to B and use that to propose the most popular route. | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 8:39 | comment | added | Chris H | (@sdenham) following on from my previous comment: a little about the mapping/rescue debate and a description plus photos of the route involved | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 6:42 | comment | added | Chris H | @sdenham the OpenStreetMap community is going through something similar at the moment. A difficult and indistinct path was mapped, and mapped as a challenging scramble. The app that displayed that data didn't show the difficulty. Some people had to be rescued. | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 4:35 | comment | added | sdenham | This is an excellent answer, but I feel there is also an ethical issue if you are the developer of such software: if it does a reasonable but not perfect job, you know that it is going to be used by people who do not have the good judgement to know that it is not working out and they need to implement plan B, or even if they do, be unable to figure out what plan B is for their situation. So, should you make it available or not? I don't think there is one right answer. | |
| Feb 10, 2023 at 3:45 | comment | added | erfink | "Why did the statistician drown while crossing a river? It was only 3 feet deep...on average." | |
| Feb 9, 2023 at 21:15 | comment | added | Weather Vane | Agreed. The 5m grid would be needed. Even that could not detect small local impassibilities, so it would need to consider nearby terrain contours too, and find routes with an acceptable width margin to hedge the bets. | |
| Feb 9, 2023 at 21:12 | comment | added | Chris H | @WeatherVane the 5m grid might be quite nice. 50m resolution wouldn't be much good on Dartmoor, say, where I've done the most off-path hiking (letterboxing with the old GPS I mentioned or by triangulation) as the terrain there has a habit of being OK then suddenly boulder-strewn and steep. Apart from the scree, I was picturing Dartmoor as I listed the difficulties | |
| Feb 9, 2023 at 20:59 | comment | added | Weather Vane | It's a good answer. It's impossible for any app to know every obstacle, but they can access elevation maps. For instance UK Ordnance Survey produces elevation data on a 50m grid (free) and a 5m grid (subscription). Theoretically an app could compute one or more routes, trading off gradient vs distance. | |
| Feb 9, 2023 at 19:27 | history | edited | Chris H | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 36 characters in body
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| Feb 9, 2023 at 13:15 | history | edited | Toby Speight | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Spelling fixes
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| Feb 9, 2023 at 12:03 | history | answered | Chris H | CC BY-SA 4.0 |