Komoot Trail View uses over 15 million user-sourced photos to show users visually what the trail and terrain will be like.

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By ben_haworth

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Komoot Trail View is Google Street View for… y’know, trails!

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geograph.co.uk does much the same. A very useful planning tool for explorers.

The story feels a bit like an advert disguised as an editorial; it seems very glowing.

I find that Komoot has potential that it never seems to realise. I find it rather fiddly and lacking tools for content creation and for searching/finding other users’ content. I’ve had mixed success with its routing (but have only done small amounts of trip planning). It’s great for finding interesting locations to explore.

The Trail View feature doesn’t really work like Google Street View, it just seems like an alternative to the Komoot Highlight – just a placeholder for a static image, although I guess it’s work in progress and it’ll be interesting to see how it progresses.

I really like the premise of Komoot and its focus on recreation rather than fitness/competition but it’s always felt unfinished and somewhat underfeatured but it is perfectly useful without having to sign up for the paid services.

I use Komoot for route planning but not for recording. I’m guessing that only photos from recorded routes make it into the photo selection. I might try recording a couple to see if they pop through.

I quite like that.  I’m terrible at remembering which parts of a route I’ve done are the nice bits so I’ve tended to take photos and put them into Garmin Basecamp, so it’s good to no longer have to do that and to have more than just what I’ve take.  Wonder how long before it becomes a ‘premium’ feature.

The story feels a bit like an advert disguised as an editorial; it seems very glowing.

Yes. Is this advertorial / paid-for content?

I think what’s happening is that Komoot is recycling photos that have previously been uploaded to users’ routes.

I get the feeling that there’s an algorithm that’s picking out geotagged photos. and using AI to decide if they show a trail/road surface then added them to the Trailview layer. It’s certainly useful, but a million miles from Google Street View though.

This is a nice thing. That I think I will use. It’ll only develop I’m sure.

The best thing that exists at the moment are YouTube ride guides linked to Strava (etc) the best of which is TrailFinder. His videos are fab. Very much like a video guidebook, find one you like and go to the Strava Page and download the route.