What’s better to use on bikehike for plotting a route – the satellite imagary or the OSM mapping? The OSM stuff doesn’t always line up with what you can see on the ground in the satellite view.

Any ideas?

Ta

Unless it’s just a road ride so I can “snap to road” on Google maps, I usually use OSgetamap for detailed trail plotting and just use bike hike to export it as a track without excessive waypoints.

I’m sure snap to road used to work on bridleways etc, doesn’t seem to now though 🙁

Assuming it used to snap to the OSM bridleways, were they pretty accurate when actually used to navigate? Cos they aren’t always in the same place as the tracks on the satellite images, hence my confusion.

I personally don’t know, only use BH on the pc for local route planning and back tracking distance/elev after a ride. Never exported for nav.

Ah, cheers anyway.

BH has never snapped to bridleways in the time I’ve used it – last few years. Only snaps to road. I do a combination of the two – snap to roads for any linking bits, and hand draw any big deviations on the OS bit. Not too fussed if it doesn’t follow every single sinew of the path.

If you change the settings then it does snap to OSM offroad trails 🙂

1. Change the main map type to “OSMCycle” (top right).
2. Click on options (on right under mapping controls)
3. Change routing algorithm to “Open Street Maps” and Travel Mode to “Walking” (this will allow trails marked as footpaths to be followed).
4. Exit options (red cross icon)
5. Map away!

Note: sometimes it can’t join up some sections and you need to go into manual mode, just uncheck the “Follow Road (google map)” checkbox, do your freehand section and then recheck it. Use the “Undo” option to clear the previous step if BikeHike doesn’t join stuff up correctly. Normally this is only a small section where a trail meets a road (and the OSM author hasn’t made the two join up)

Bump for the morning crew.

Brilliant tip there from allthepies, I just tried it. I bet my browser doesn’t remember those settings, though 🙁

Don’t forget that you’re best to keep your eyes on the trail(s) on the ground when you’re riding, and choose the “best” one to avoid erosion and obstacles as you go along! It doesn’t usually matter if you’re slightly off the mapped Right of Way, in fact often you need to follow diversions set up around buildings etc anyway.

And if you don’t think that the OSM trails are mapped accurately, please edit them!

As njee20 I’ve never felt the need to do anything more than plot a route roughly. I toggle map size and use OS view mostly. Occasionally during plotting a route it has been glaringly obvious that map doesn’t match satellite, so I’d plot an adjustment, but in reality 9 times out of 10 it would probably be glaringly obvious what the correct decision during the ride is anyway.

allthepies, looks interesting, will give it a go.

+1 I’ve made quite a few corrections/additions to OSM, good to give something back.

Has anyone ever compared the elevation data with other mapping systems? I still use an old version of Anquet mapping (‘cos I’ve bought the maps and it works better than the current version) and BikeHike is a good 10-20% lower in terms of feet climbed. I’m inclined to think the digital terrain model in Anquet is likely to be more accurate. Plus it makes me feel better!

The OSM paths are more accurate than the google satelite images. The images a just photos so they have all sorts of distortions so won’t always line up with what is on the ground.

This is why bikehike’s so useful with the dual map interface. You can compare tracks drawn using the OSM data (or google maps/earth) against an OS map 🙂