What's neat here is how clean their elevation data seems to be. Having spent a long time trying to work with various dataset like the NASA SRTM and USGS files, I quickly came to realize how hard it is to clean up this data. Looking at this feature I tried out a couple of things that would have tripped up a naive implementation and Google Maps seems to have dodged the most obvious pitfalls. For example a bike route that crosses a freeway in a trench correctly shows the route without discontinuities. It also seems like Google are getting around some of the problems just by being intentionally vague and blurry. If you make a route short enough it will just say "mostly flat" instead of trying to draw a misleadingly detailed profile.
Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
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Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#12Six years ago, I spent an hour learning to drive manual transmission in my friends car. I did not get very good in that hour. Then I went and bought a manual transmission car of my own. The drive back home from the dealer was one hell of a trip. I learned very quickly how tricky it is to get a car moving when you're stopped on a hill. So I totally could have used this back then. :)
Yes, the hand brake is your friend when starting on hills, but it's tough when you're starting out because it means you have to coordinate three things at once :)
Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#13Oooh...too bad google is so committed to online-only, I'd love this feature but I'm too cheap for a data-plan.
I Google Maps even capable of routing when offline? I don't see why having the height data would be useful if it can't start routing anyway.
Yes, it is. If you start the route when you're still online, you can proceed offline the rest of your trip.
Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#14Heh, Google is catching up. I want to highly recommend https://www.komoot.de/plan for hike or bike planning. It's fundamentally based on OSM and very very nice.
Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I Google Maps even capable of routing when offline? I don't see why having the height data would be useful if it can't start routing anyway.
Yes, it is. If you start the route when you're still online, you can proceed offline the rest of your trip.
... So no, you can't.
Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#16Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#17As someone who really enjoys cycling I have been surprised at how bad mapping and routing applications are, google maps have large portions of the world that are unavailable offline, its impossible (or hard to find out how_ to save routes offline, regularly sends me down dual carriageways and motorways. Open cycle routes loses your position every time you rotate the device and generally lacks quality.
Am I missing something? with the amount of effort gone into OSM I dont really understand why there isnt a top quality app to display and use all that data.
Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#18Now if only they'd put terrain mode back.
Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#19Now if only they'd put terrain mode back.
It's accessible if you put 'terrain' in the search box (and I see a text button for it).
I couldn't get it to work together with a bike route.
Re: Google Maps Adds Elevation Profiles To Bike Routes
#20What's neat here is how clean their elevation data seems to be. Having spent a long time trying to work with various dataset like the NASA SRTM and USGS files, I quickly came to realize how hard it is to clean up this data. Looking at this feature I tried out a couple of things that would have tripped up a naive implementation and Google Maps seems to have dodged the most obvious pitfalls. For example a bike route th…
They're almost certainly using barometer data from Android devices to help know elevations and differences between roads. The barometers can measure altitude differences as small as ~0.5m - it's pretty amazing.