VeloViewer Explorer Score and Max Square

[Pingu]

So does Strava use a 'walking' algorithm rather than a 'cycling' one?

[Davef]

Those roundabouts are fractionally offset.  It has given you the shortest route.

Not when you include the detour via A+E and/or police station.

[Davef]

Strava is an American product, and contra-flow riding on one-way streets is common (and even encouraged) in much of the US. I’m surprised by the roundabout thing. I live in the countryside and rarely encounter them on any of my rides, but I can’t say I’ve ever encountered the issue - and I’ve been a paying member of Strava pretty much since Day 1.

It is only since the route planner rewrite a few months back.

[simonp]

No-one seems to have a completely satisfactory cycling routing algorithm. I could not persuade Strava to do a 180 at a roundabout in Keynsham. It wanted to stop about 1/3 way round and retrace. Any attempt to make it go right around caused it to continue ahead, and then do a u-turn about 100 yards down the road.

I've realised that the fundamental limit of my home square is going to be about 40x40 because I have the Bristol Channel to the West and about 40 tiles east from there is Salisbury Plain, most of which is going to be out of bounds forever.

[andyoxon]

Most Popular...  eh?

RP1 by a oxon, on Flickr

vs, Most direct...

RP2 by a oxon, on Flickr

[citoyen]

It is only since the route planner rewrite a few months back.

I've not used the Strava route planner for a while but I'm sure this has always been a feature.

In fact, I think it's probably a feature of every route planner I've ever used, and I tend to force them to behave by adding in extra points. Sometimes I also turn off the 'follow route' option for sections and just draw straight lines.

Or just not bother and let it do its thing - I mean, it's not like I'm going to ride the wrong way round a roundabout just because Strava tells me to.

[JonBuoy]

Settings menu, top left of the map screen.

Sorted thanks.

I was sucking in a GPX using the 'Add route to map by loading GPX file' button half way down the right hand side of the map screen.  This does add the route but doesn't colour the new tiles.  Loading a route through the top left menu/routes/upload route button means that they do get coloured in 

[Davef]

It is only since the route planner rewrite a few months back.

I've not used the Strava route planner for a while but I'm sure this has always been a feature.

In fact, I think it's probably a feature of every route planner I've ever used, and I tend to force them to behave by adding in extra points. Sometimes I also turn off the 'follow route' option for sections and just draw straight lines.

Or just not bother and let it do its thing - I mean, it's not like I'm going to ride the wrong way round a roundabout just because Strava tells me to.

I have never encountered it before the update (apart from when doing a route reversal myself by simply reversing the points in the gpx but I can’t blame that on strava!). It is more of an issue with one way streets where it can be difficult to find your way. I think it is as someone has pointed out above to do with the popularity routing ignoring direction as the heat map is directionless.

[JonBuoy]

I like Statshunters but I have noticed that it sometimes misses tiles like the one in the middle of this area:



It seems to use simplified track similar to VV but zooming in shows that I did cross through the tile - but only just:



The more detailed view from VV shows I definitely bagged it:

[PeteBart]

I like Statshunters but I have noticed that it sometimes misses tiles like the one in the middle of this area:



It seems to use simplified track similar to VV but zooming in shows that I did cross through the tile - but only just:



The more detailed view from VV shows I definitely bagged it:

Behind the scenes, if you let an app like VV or StatsHunter have access to your activities, the app can use the Strava API to get two different "representations" of the ride. They both use the same Google polyline format, but the first one is a minimal rough cut and the second one is a complete one that really follows every contour of where you went.

The first one is obviously much smaller in terms of data to copy/store/process. VV uses the first one initially, and it can get your tiles wrong if you just clip the edge of a tile. This is where the advice to click into the ride details comes from - if you do that that VV loads the second more detailed form.

I have loads of holes in my StatsHunter max square too - I am pretty sure it only uses the first form, unfortunately.

[simonp]

Statshunter can download the detailed track on request.  It did this for me but still misses the tile.

[JonBuoy]

So it can!

I asked it to improve the precicision of the offending ride and it now credits me with the tile

[PeteBart]

So it can!

I asked it to improve the precicision of the offending ride and it now credits me with the tile

Ha, I'm just disappearing down this rabbit hole of ride updating too ... thanks simonp.

[PeteBart]

So it can!

I asked it to improve the precicision of the offending ride and it now credits me with the tile

Ha, I'm just disappearing down this rabbit hole of ride updating too ... thanks simonp.

So this worked for about 90% of the holes, but two of them remained stubbornly unfilled - including one I have clipped three times riding along the same road! I'm now worried that if clicked the detail view of those rides in VV, I will lose the squares there too... I had better go back to them .

[Kim]

I've seen a lot of widdershins roundabouting by the Strava route planner, which I attributed to USAnian developers not understanding  a) what a roundabout was  or  b) that we ride on the left side of the road.

A bigger issue is that it has no clear understanding of whether a given track is cycleable or a footpath.  I accept that that's an NP-hard problem, and the mapping will always have inaccuracies, but it seems particularly bad at sending you on a helpful shortcut over a stile and through a muddy field with a 25% gradient and wandering cows when there's a perfectly good road route that's 100m longer.

But the tiles thing is handy.  I use the route as a guide for plotting in Basecamp (or if there's non-trivial off-road, it gets tidied up in ridewithgps), so I tend to discover most of this from the comfort of my computer.

[quixoticgeek]

I've seen a lot of widdershins roundabouting by the Strava route planner, which I attributed to USAnian developers not understanding  a) what a roundabout was  or  b) that we ride on the left side of the road.

We get the fair share of Turnwise roundabouting too... I think the strava developers are just slightly misguided, Same as they think its acceptable to remove stations from the default map render. My attempt to log this as a bug has been met with them basically being unable to understand what I'm actually asking for...

A bigger issue is that it has no clear understanding of whether a given track is cycleable or a footpath.  I accept that that's an NP-hard problem, and the mapping will always have inaccuracies, but it seems particularly bad at sending you on a helpful shortcut over a stile and through a muddy field with a 25% gradient and wandering cows when there's a perfectly good road route that's 100m longer.

Well yes, but surely that's just down to how it's classed in OSM?

My bigger issue is there's no "avoid stairs" feature, which I didn't think I'd need to request of a cycle route planner, but I've now had to log as a feature request in Komoot, Strava, and RidewithGPS...

But the tiles thing is handy.  I use the route as a guide for plotting in Basecamp (or if there's non-trivial off-road, it gets tidied up in ridewithgps), so I tend to discover most of this from the comfort of my computer.

J

[Davef]

Ah ha. I have some further insight with a little experimenting. Popularity routing can tip the balance in favour of going the wrong way, but also avoiding trunk roads.

If you look on my example it is trying to avoid the A312 that has leaked onto the roundabout in the underlying map data. The fix would be to ignore say the last 5 metres of trunk roads.

[quilkin]

... and I have just received an email from Wandrer.earth to tell me that:

You're the monthly leader for new miles in Solihull, West Midlands, Birmingham, and West Midlands Combined Authority during October!

It makes it all worthwhile 

I'd never heard of Wandrer so yesterday I had a look, and signed up (and paid! ). Now having pulled in all my 6 years' of Strava rides, I'm #1 in Cornwall (and #30 in the world!).
I thought I'd done all the roads in Cornwall, but of course i've only done the rural ones. That's only 46% (according to Wandrer) of all the roads in the county. But do I really want to cycle every street in every town? 

[Kim]

Ah ha. I have some further insight with a little experimenting. Popularity routing can tip the balance in favour of going the wrong way, but also avoiding trunk roads.

Presumably popularity gets skewed by people mostly going in the other direction...

[Davef]

Ah ha. I have some further insight with a little experimenting. Popularity routing can tip the balance in favour of going the wrong way, but also avoiding trunk roads.

Presumably popularity gets skewed by people mostly going in the other direction...

Yes indeed, I don’t think the heat map takes into account direction.

[Jack_P]

I was a longtime Paid up Strava member and advocate of the route planner, loved it......then they improved it. It ground my average PC to a crawl and the routing just got so much worse. lost my vote and cash.
i have really enjoyed using Brouter this year, it has taken me on some great new adventures 

[Graeme]

While playing with Garmin Connect IQ to look at Group Track on the 530, I spotted there is a VeloViewer "Every Tile" app clicky.



Not all of my rides are pre-planned explorer tiles rides, so to have this screen available rather than check the Explorer Helper App on my phone is handy. Been downloaded 358 times and has a 4 star review. It had a version update in July this year. There is another one called "Tile Explorer" but that hasn't been updated since 2018 and only downloaded 78 times.

[Davef]

While playing with Garmin Connect IQ to look at Group Track on the 530, I spotted there is a VeloViewer "Every Tile" app clicky.



Not all of my rides are pre-planned explorer tiles rides, so to have this screen available rather than check the Explorer Helper App on my phone is handy. Been downloaded 358 times and has a 4 star review. It had a version update in July this year. There is another one called "Tile Explorer" but that hasn't been updated since 2018 and only downloaded 78 times.

I wonder who the other 77 are. I just use it for checking when I have reached a tile when on a dead end and don’t want to travel further than necessary.
Edit: my mistake I am on the more popular everytile.

[citoyen]

My new Garmin has IQ capability. I think you might have just answered the “What’s the point?” question. 

[L CC]

Nah, the point is so you can sync routes with the Ridewith GPS app.
This app is more limited than the 'phone app.