[Anonym]

Currently mtb:scale:uphill is rendered with short colored dashes in the mountain bike style. Sometimes t’s difficult to understand whether a path goes uphill or downhill thanks to contour lines. Therefore it would be useful if mtb:scale:uphill were rendered with an arrow or something, taking incline=* into account. Something similar to what OpenMtbMap do:

Is there a way to draw an arrow through mapsforge styling? Diagonal dashes would do the job as well.

[Tobias]

Are you referring to the MTB mapstyle in Elevate or the old MTB andromaps theme?
I can only speak for Elevate, but I don’t see the necessity for incline direction arrows, as it is redundant information – there’s contour lines in the map, and hillshading and altitude from DEM files (depending on the app). The MTB mapstyle is already crowded and not so easy to understand anyway. For me this would be pretty massive optically without really adding something which isn’t already there.
There is actually no build in way to show arrows in mapsforge, one has to use „lineSymbol“ and graphics.

Developer of Elevate mapstyle

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[Anonym]

HI, I refer to the new MTB style in elevate. Personally I feel that in some circumstances relying only on contour lines and hillshading isn’t enough to understand whether a path is pointing uphill or downhill.

In the first picture attached (IMG_0050.jpg), the blue path (S0, no uphill scale at the moment) is going uphill from right to left. The uphill value I added is mtb:scale:uphill=1, since some sections are pretty steep. Looking at the contour lines you would assume that it’s flat, or even is going slightly downhill.

I don’t think real arrows are really needed. Currently uphill scale is rendered through coloured dashes parallel to the path (3rd attachment, IMG_0052.jpg, where I exaggerated the dashes‘ dimension). Wouldn’t it be possible to incline those dashes, so that they point in the downhill direction (like in the 2nd attachemnt, again exaggerated, IMG_0051.jpg)? There is no way to accomplish this with styling?

[Tobias]

I would say in your example that the path is closer on the left to 1080 and on the right to 1060, so it must go uphill for right to left as you said 🙂
Inclining the dashes is not possible, but I will try something next time when I update Elevate. Maybe it works to make two dashes next to each other when going uphill: a shorter one and a longer one. But I don’t get why the downhill direction is marked in OpenMTBMap, I would make the shorter one on the uphill side, as it is the direction the uphill scale is pointing to – that would be logical.

Developer of Elevate mapstyle

[Anonym]

Hi Tobias, actually it’s 1120 on the left and 1140 on the right. So it seems it’s going downhill from right to left, while in fact it goes uphill 😉

The arrows in OpenMtbMap suggest the direction you should ride the path (downhill).

Is there any doc/howto I should read in order to try and contribute?

[Tobias]

Oops, of course you’re right 🙂
The uphill scale is meant to show the difficulty of riding uphill, so the direction this refers to is uphill. That’s why I think it makes much no sense to point in the direction this scale is not refering to.
Thanks for your offer, but my main issue is just to find enough time to implement and test it if it would work out.

Developer of Elevate mapstyle

[Tobias]

I’m working on the next Elevate version, attached is an example on how the rendering would be possible.

Developer of Elevate mapstyle

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[reiner]

I would rather not include it. The MTB theme is already quite crowded.

[Tobias]

reiner schrieb:

I would rather not include it. The MTB theme is already quite crowded.

As I said above 🙂
That’s why I would never add arrows etc.
This or something similar would be the only possible change, as it really adds only a little bit to something which is already there. But it’s fine for me if most think it’s not necessary, so if there are any more opinions, please add them here.

Developer of Elevate mapstyle

[Anonym]

To me it seems reasonable and effective. I don’t see where this new solution makes the map more crowded than the current version–it’s just a few pixels difference. As I showed above in a previous message, there are some instances where contour lines are not enough to easily or correctly understand the path’s incline.

Tobias, in the end you’ve chosen to point your uphill, haven’t you? As we discussed, arrows point downhill in OpenMtbMap since the idea is to show the direction you would not need to pedal against gravity, like the water flow in a river, and you found this confusing.

Thanks and Regards!

[Tobias]

I asked in the German forum for some more opinions, we’ll see.
Yes, I used the logic I described above – as this is only marked with mtb:scale:uphill, it makes little sense to show the downhill direction. Or is there any standard which implies that only downhill should be marked?

Developer of Elevate mapstyle

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[Anonym]

Initially I was also confused for that exact same reason–we tag with mtb:scale:uphill. However now I’m used with the convention used in OpenMtbMap. Although it’s not standard, I think it’s pretty popular, since there are many people that use OpenMtbMap on their Garmin devices. For this reason I’d rather stick with that choice, in order to not introduce another different convention that would result in more confusion, not less. One thing is tagging, another is rendering. And most MTBikers are generally more interested in downhill riding, therefore they expect to have that information on a map. The more difficult a path is in the uphill direction, the more that path is enjoyable in the downhill rather than in the uphill direction.

[Tobias]

I don’t think only one (even popular) map is a good reason to stick to a confusing rendering. It’s not about tagging, either. The uphill scale is meant for additional information for riding uphill, not downhill, for the latter is the normal mtb scale. Incline direction is now only shown if there is information for going uphill. So I will stick to the logic to show the uphill direction for the uphill scale.
Anyway, I will include this for now in the next update, as there isn’t any more feedback. Maybe after that more users will tell me that the map is now too crowded, we’ll see then.

Developer of Elevate mapstyle

[Tobias]

Updated Elevate version with this feature is now online.

Developer of Elevate mapstyle

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[Anonym]

Diese Antwort wurde als privat markiert.

[Autor]

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