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Heh, 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.
Thanks for sharing
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 th…
Six 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. :)
So we drove a few lurchy blocks around San Francisco - yes, San Francisco, the city of seven hills. Ah, if it were only seven!
After a while he said, "Doing great, drive me back to the dealership and you're on your own."
I knew my way home, but I couldn't remember where the hills were.
I could have used elevation data that day...
"...sweat beading upon his brow, he might recount that Damp Morning when he drove his Manual Transmission up the Impossible Grade, and was forced to stop, just below the top! In frantic pantomime, he’ll pull the emergency brake and disengage the clutch. Crane his neck to peer anxiously at the car sniffing his downhill bumper. Bulge his eyes. Gun the engine. Pop the clutch. Release the brakes. Lay down some rubber with a piercing squeal. Float his steed slowly onto the flat. Wave the smoke from his eyes. Pump his arms in brief celebration. And finally, grouse about that sadistic driving instructor who got him into the pickle in the first place. What a jerk!"
http://www.datapointed.net/2009/11/the-steeps-of-san-francis...
I've heard Google is working on "street view" for trails. It is a backpack. My guess is they've done this with Bike trails too.
Six 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. :)
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 th…
it looks clean, but from the few routes i checked it might be clean because it's been fuzzed beyond the point of usefulness. it's got no scale on it so i can't be sure what exactly is being showed, but there's a couple major hills near my house (and i mean major, i live in the mountains) that don't even register.
Heh, 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.