DualSportMaps.com - New Mapping Site For Riders

Great, thats not too far from me.

DragonNester wrote:

I decided to contribute a few tracks, way points and a route to your site. I hope folks that come to the lair of the Dragon (east TN/western NC) will take the opportunity to run some of these. My hope is to help facilitate a better experience for visitors and local explorers alike.

I know I always appreciate a heads up on where to ride, with GPS support, when visiting different places.

Thanks CC for creating this unique service and best of luck!

I think that we need to ability to comment and post ratings for routes on dualsportmaps.com and the mobile app. Also, I would like a button on the mobile app to "start tracking", "pause", and "record/ end route". Perhaps there is already a way to do this simply that I am unaware of but I didn't see it if it exists. Thanks for the app and the hard work! Love it!!!

There is a comment area on the left. The app is always tracking when the map is up. I figure it easier to clean up tracks later than to recreate track points after the fact. You can write the current points to a GPX file and start a new one at any time by through Settings=>Monitoring=>Save Current Track

FosTerHM wrote:

I think that we need to ability to comment and post ratings for routes on dualsportmaps.com and the mobile app. Also, I would like a button on the mobile app to "start tracking", "pause", and "record/ end route". Perhaps there is already a way to do this simply that I am unaware of but I didn't see it if it exists. Thanks for the app and the hard work! Love it!!!

I have started moving all of my maps over into OpenStreetMap. I think it's structured appropriately to hold all the data we need for these types of tasks.

In addition to the standard way of labelling "ways" for trail type, surface type, seasonal/time based openings and closings, I am also proposing a grading system for difficulty. On ways marked highway=trail, I am adding a tag dirtbike:scale=1-10. This mirrors the way the mountain bike folks are handling things.

Given Dual Sport Maps' focus on, well, Dual Sport Maps, and your clear ability to code this kind of stuff, do you have any plans at supporting OSM by making or building in support for dirt-bike specific (and thus dual sport) trail attributes?

The community can get the data into OSM, but we need a viewer to make it useful. :-)

There is an OSM map layer (Mapnik) available. If they are rendering trail attributes then you would see them on my site. Are you requesting that I create a dual sport specific OSM rendering service? I'd love to do that, but I'm going to need a few more grand a month in storage and electricity costs not to mention a LOT more hardware. Currently the site is 2 servers, one that is very beefy and the other a run of the mill quad core 4GB ram webserver. It is backed by an EMC² harddisk array and in a very nice datacenter. All this is already what any reasonable person would describe as expensive. Pick any number you think it reasonable, multiply it by ten and you are low.

A new OSM rendering service for dual sport would be bleeping awesome and I'd be all over that, but I need funding and a lot. I avoid charging for the website as that is the basic convention on the internet. Yesterday I got >145000 hits. It was a big day, but not abnormal. The site is taking on a life of its own but like Seymore's plant (in Little Shop of Horrors) it's starting to be a bit of a moral dilemma how to keep feeding the beast.

Great idea though!

Overkill wrote:

I have started moving all of my maps over into OpenStreetMap. I think it's structured appropriately to hold all the data we need for these types of tasks.

In addition to the standard way of labelling "ways" for trail type, surface type, seasonal/time based openings and closings, I am also proposing a grading system for difficulty. On ways marked highway=trail, I am adding a tag dirtbike:scale=1-10. This mirrors the way the mountain bike folks are handling things.

Given Dual Sport Maps' focus on, well, Dual Sport Maps, and your clear ability to code this kind of stuff, do you have any plans at supporting OSM by making or building in support for dirt-bike specific (and thus dual sport) trail attributes?

The community can get the data into OSM, but we need a viewer to make it useful. :-)

I guess what I'm really interested in is unification of data sets. OSM wants to capture all roads/paths/trails, including the subset that DualSportMaps mappers are interested in. The thing that has prevented me from getting my trails involved in a website (I manage an unwieldy Google Earth file of Virginia trails) is that I want it to be as generally useful in as many places as possible. OSM has adoption and support by many developers on several different platforms. I see OSM as keenly interested in ALL data in great detail, while DualSportMaps is storing specifically dual sport trail data in great detail.

What I'm wondering is if you have any plans / interest in transitioning the DSM data storage into OSM, as it seems well suited to the task. That would largely free you of data management tasks, and instead free up time for tweaking on the interface TO that data, as well as fiddling with possible custom route planning algorithms and other exciting stuff. (Well, exciting to me)

What I envision is a complete OSM map set with roads, trails, hiking paths, etc... managed by data geeks like myself. What is missing (And Dual Sport Maps is kind of established to become this) would be a viewer for that information.

Viewing:
-Filters for what kind of vehicle is being ridden. Dirt bike? Street legal dual sport? Trails would be shown or hidden based on their highway=* attribute or other custom tags. ("Dirtbike=yes", "atv=no", etc)
-Filters for what kind of track surface. Only show dirt and gravel if desired. Based on existing surface=* attributes.
-Colorize tracks (using current color scheme on DSM) based on difficulty. I currently tag difficulty on a 1-10 scale using "dirtbike:scale=*" tag.
-Somehow denote trail closings, based on OSM's "date_on=MMDD" and "date_off="MMDD" tags

Routing:
-Route based on desired difficulty range. R1200GS's aren't going to go on a skill "8" trail.
-Route based on expected time of travel, taking trail closings into effect
-Give precedence to certain features where possible, such as avoiding pavement, taking any trail with a skill 3 or greater that presents itself.

Basically... I'd like to see DSM rather than being just a record of other peoples' travels, I'd like to see it employed as a planning engine based on OSM data. Like in Google Maps where you can check "Avoid Highways", on DS bikes we want the option to check "Have Adventure" even en route to the most mundane of places. OSM is ideal for "What is there" and how are these things connected, which includes a significant part of what DSM is going for. DSM would then stand out as a way of creating routes based on input, or viewing other peoples' suggested routes over those OSM roads.


I'm not expecting much in the way of traction (Deathwings on red clay) here... After all you have a vision for "your baby". But I'm hoping my nebulous ramblings might spark something.

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There is an OSM map layer (Mapnik) available. If they are rendering trail attributes then you would see them on my site.

They do not, and they're more of a frame work for rendering maps. Someone would have to mold that into (Or create their own) "something" specifically geared toward representing DS maps.

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Are you requesting that I create a dual sport specific OSM rendering service?

I can't request anything. :-) I can just share wishes and hopefully inspiration. Heh. But sort of. I'd like to see DSM make use of its strengths and the "dual sport" focus... Which to me is less about duplicating a subset of the the work of OSM (possibly instead contributing to its data) and more about sharing community suggestions.

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I'd love to do that, but I'm going to need a few more grand a month in storage and electricity costs not to mention a LOT more hardware. Currently the site is 2 servers, one that is very beefy and the other a run of the mill quad core 4GB ram webserver. It is backed by an EMC² harddisk array and in a very nice datacenter. All this is already what any reasonable person would describe as expensive. Pick any number you think it reasonable, multiply it by ten and you are low.

Which makes me wonder if utilizing OSM for the data back end would cut back on any of that at all! I have a lot of questions about the backend of DSM... But perhaps another thread. I'm a server engineer and we're 99% virtualized in our DCs... Curiosity always gets me. I don't suppose a little donated web space would do you any good?

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A new OSM rendering service for dual sport would be bleeping awesome and I'd be all over that, but I need funding and a lot. I avoid charging for the website as that is the basic convention on the internet.

It seems to be HUGE out west... but so far it hasn't been particularly useful for me out here. I'm solely looking for a long-lived place to store my data for others. :-) I guess at the very least, the ability to import ways from OSM and automatically read in the various attributes that DSM wuold be interested in would allow me to contribute to both projects by starting at one place. You certainly have a regional critical mass right now. But OSM is global. :-)

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Yesterday I got >145000 hits. It was a big day, but not abnormal.

This is why I'm interested in DSM... It is positioned to be "the one"... Domain name makes sense, top google search hit for what is no doubt a common term... And dual sporting is kind of taking off!

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The site is taking on a life of its own but like Seymore's plant (in Little Shop of Horrors) it's starting to be a bit of a moral dilemma how to keep feeding the beast.

I'm surprised that there seem to be no ads at all. I would expect with that many hits, some non-intrusive ads here and there would generate some revenue, but perhaps upset the "gimme it free!" community.

Woo. Rants.

I would pay for a system. Data (which I think should be free and open). Web interface. Mobile interface. Offline mobile interface. I've tried a few things, but nothing has really struck me yet. Trimble Outdoors came close.... But the system being closed sucks.

My basic "wah":

These 2 simple tracks contain the minimal information to label them and colorize them for difficulty.
http://osm.org/go/ZT4Piv8J--

This trail contains enough information to label, colorize for difficulty, and show seasonal closings.
http://osm.org/go/ZTvPKX3x--

I am putting all of the GWNF MVUM trails I've recorded GPS tracks for into OSM (and will now start recording trails in segments based on difficulty, rather than assigning one difficulty to an entire trail), but no interface currently exists to turn that data into information useful for dual sport riders.

Those tracks show up in DSM on the Mapnik tile set. http://www.dualsportmaps.com/?link=103370

I like where you are going with this. While I absolutely support you posting your tracks to OSM, I am a little uncomfortable with the idea of ME posting your tracks to OSM. I do not want to "litter" their database with bad data and a some of my data is either repetitive, old, or illegal. This is just the nature of public access databases. I am certain OSM has the same problem. I just don't want to be a wholesale contributor to the problem. This may be a shortsighted point of view though...

The hardware I have put together for this project is for performance. Using OSM for data storage would defeat my performance goals because of latency among other things and I would be at their mercy for access to "my" data. I like that I keep my data local. What would be cool is the ability to "promote" a track to OSM after it has been vetted, so to speak. It would then show up in their database and eventually in the MAPNIK tiles.

I wonder what it would be like to add OSM's vector track data to my search system though. I could grab their data based on some search criteria and then render tracks just like I render the tracks currently. It would be slower to respond, but that ok as some data would already be on the screen.

In either event, I would be very interested in getting your VA data into my system. Maintaining the data in DSM is pretty convenient...

Would you mind sending me the OSM search criteria to get the "Adventure" track data as you envision it? I'll see about roughing out a system to download that data on request and render as vector data rather than raster info. That offers the option to export that data to GPX for people going for a ride. It also limits the CPU requirements because I am not trying to render the entire globe as a raster.

[TASF]Overkill wrote:

My basic "wah":

These 2 simple tracks contain the minimal information to label them and colorize them for difficulty.
http://osm.org/go/ZT4Piv8J--

This trail contains enough information to label, colorize for difficulty, and show seasonal closings.
http://osm.org/go/ZTvPKX3x--

I am putting all of the GWNF MVUM trails I've recorded GPS tracks for into OSM (and will now start recording trails in segments based on difficulty, rather than assigning one difficulty to an entire trail), but no interface currently exists to turn that data into information useful for dual sport riders.

As is typical of my experience with OSM, every search API I try to hit from the wiki never responds to web requests in a useful way. Please hook me up with a helloworld for querying that data along with a server that is actually online and accepting requests.

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Those tracks show up in DSM on the Mapnik tile set. http://www.dualsportmaps.com/?link=103370

Right, but they're formatted generically and minimally since forestry roads are of minimal interest to most map users (I.e., drivers). In the DSM map world, these little grey dashed lines are probably the bulk of the interesting data!

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I am a little uncomfortable with the idea of ME posting your tracks to OSM. I do not want to "litter" their database with bad data and a some of my data is either repetitive, old, or illegal.

I wasn't really even thinking of a two-way communication between the sites... But now that you mention it... GPX files can be uploaded to OSM for tracing. Theoretically (If you wanted to make a contribution to OSM, not necessarily to further the value-add of DSM) you could export your tracks as annotated GPX files to OSM as GPS traces. They wouldn't be shown in OSM, but would be treated as "raw" data that mappers could use to set attributes / correct routes on existing ways as well as put in new ones that haven't been mapped yet.

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The hardware I have put together for this project is for performance. Using OSM for data storage would defeat my performance goals because of latency among other things and I would be at their mercy for access to "my" data. I like that I keep my data local.

I think the entire OSM data set is about 20GB compressed. Obviously that's a lot of data... There are diff releases and tile sets that would make that less painful to update, but you could store it locally and keep it synched. I just don't know if that would save you anything over your current setup. Probably not given the size! Bummer.

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What would be cool is the ability to "promote" a track to OSM after it has been vetted, so to speak. It would then show up in their database and eventually in the MAPNIK tiles.

I'm not sure that would be possible (except using the "GPS traces" mentioned above). You'd have to do some kind of collision detection / node merging to make sure you weren't "contributing" a new way where there are existing ways... and to make sure that the uploaded way is connected to other ways appropriately. That kind of nitty gritty work is what the tracers do, but they need good reference data. Unless you built a new editor too. :-)

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I wonder what it would be like to add OSM's vector track data to my search system though. I could grab their data based on some search criteria and then render tracks just like I render the tracks currently. It would be slower to respond, but that ok as some data would already be on the screen.

And here there is value to me. :-)

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In either event, I would be very interested in getting your VA data into my system. Maintaining the data in DSM is pretty convenient...

I'll sit time sometime in the next few weeks and see how much more trouble it'd be to put it into both places.

[quote]Would you mind sending me the OSM search criteria to get the "Adventure" track data as you envision it? I'll see about roughing out a system to download that data on request and render as vector data rather than raster info. That offers the option to export that data to GPX for people going for a ride. It also limits the CPU requirements because I am not trying to render the entire globe as a raster.


This is in the JOSM editor, not a viewer... Therefore this is ugly... But using its syntax:
All tracks in a given area:


Only ways where "highway=track":

For a "trail map" where your only options are trails being on or off, you'd do something like "highway=track AND motor_vehicles!=private AND motor_vehicles!=prohibited AND (surface=dirt OR surface=gravel OR surface=unspecified)".

Here are some of the attributes of "Coon Bridge Trail" show in the advanced view of Potlatch editor. I'm still fiddling with the "right" way to tag some of this stuff, so this is just a basic trail that I've started with. I'm still working on what the proper convention is for some of these attributes, a whole 'nother topic of discussion I'd like your input on.



I'll make a table of all possibly interesting criteria and send your way at some point in the near future.

Do you have an existing guideline you would recommend for grading trail conditions on a 1-10 scale?

I have an internal one that I use in the "track wizard" but I ask people to use their best judgement.

You never got back to me with an example of how to query the OSM map APIs. I would seriously attempt to include their motorized trail data into dualsportmaps.com, but I could use a little guidance on what server to ask and via what API. As I said above, I've never successfully contacted an OSM API. They are always offline when I attempt to contact them, I assume I just don't know where to find the currently running server list though. I'll help you if you help me.

[TASF]Overkill wrote:

Do you have an existing guideline you would recommend for grading trail conditions on a 1-10 scale?

You're right about the API's in the Wiki... there have been a lot of changes but few updates to the Wiki bits.

I stumbled on "XAPI" as a way to do what I wanted, but the referenced servers weren't working. Looks like "Overpass" is its own API (Currently in use) and it has an overlay for XAPI. I can't really put together a native Overpass query in XML and fire it off... But in XAPI (Which Overpass will accept), you can do this:


Any tracks in the given bounding box.
http://overpass.osm.rambler.ru/cgi/xapi?way[bbox=-79.358278,37.625678,-79.303346,37.671482][highway=track]

Any dirt roads in the given bounding box that are open to motor vehicles.
http://overpass.osm.rambler.ru/cgi/xapi?way[bbox=-79.358278,37.625678,-79.303346,37.671482][surface=dirt][motor_vehicle=yes]

Any tracks in the given bounding box open to motor vehicles with a dirt bike difficulty assigned.
http://overpass.osm.rambler.ru/cgi/xapi?way[bbox=-79.358278,37.625678,-79.303346,37.671482][highway=track][motor_vehicle=yes][dirtbike:scale=*]


I'm using this documentation:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API#XAPI_Compatibility_Layer

I imagine with XML there's more flexibility.

Note that I have no idea if Overpass is the best way to get info out of OSM. It looks like most of the APIs at this point are people who are mirroring the OSM database and providing their own APIs into that mirror.

Ok... corrected a few of them. The XAPI queries that contain an OR can only contain one tag. So that one wasn't working. And I typoed the dirtbike:scale tag in one of them.

[TASF]Overkill wrote:

Ok... corrected a few of them. The XAPI queries that contain an OR can only contain one tag. So that one wasn't working. And I typoed the dirtbike:scale tag in one of them.

Thanks, I am getting useful data there now. I'll work on a mechanism for displaying that on the site.

After looking into Mapnik/OSMARENDER I now see why you have such a beefy farm. I figured map viewers generally worked client side, just sneding the relevant tracks to the client and letting the client handle rendering. Looks like that's not the case...

[TASF]Overkill wrote:

After looking into Mapnik/OSMARENDER I now see why you have such a beefy farm. I figured map viewers generally worked client side, just sneding the relevant tracks to the client and letting the client handle rendering. Looks like that's not the case...

its VERY processor intensive to do all those raster projections. The site has a feature to upload raster images that are rectified to the earth. I make tile sets out of them. check out south west georiga for examples... They take about 5 minutes per MB of image. And that is burning the joules, all ahead full captain!

Would tasks like this be any easier in a world where all browsers handled SVGs or some other vector format natively... and well?

[TASF]Overkill wrote:

Would tasks like this be any easier in a world where all browsers handled SVGs or some other vector format natively... and well?

Yes, but in that world we would have magic wands and the ability to use them.

Loving the app so far. Now, how do I get a remote? I haven't hit enough trees yet. I need another distraction while piloting my WeeStrom through the woods.

Clint

Stolenfant wrote:

Loving the app so far. Now, how do I get a remote? I haven't hit enough trees yet. I need another distraction while piloting my WeeStrom through the woods.

Clint

The machine shop is working on a less expensive enclosure. Once I can get it to cost $200 I will make them available.

Glad you are enjoying that app!

Hey Crafty,

Got anything to show off from the OSM angle? I log in to Dual Sport Maps periodically to see if my additions to OSM show up there yet, but I've gotten to the point where I can't remember what I've added to Va. :-)

Also had a good ride yesterday through Virginia FR4008 that took a really nice road ride back... DSM came to mind as a good way to connect those off road segments with the onroad.

I'm thinking of putting together a dual sport ride in the area, linking together the lovely off and on road stuff out here, DSM is gonna be the best way to show that route off, that's for sure.

Crafty,
I deleted a loop titled Great Mix. That had pictures that were shared for a section of road. Any way to retrieve it?

I have a similar phone/map program that has a wonderful feature. Switch the screen to 2X mode. All the road names and titles become much more readable for these old eyes...

I haven't seen anything like it in this program (yet).

Thanks

I found what I was looking for, kind of...

Using pinch to zoom I can find a half-step zoom that is the 2X screen I was referring to. I doubt I could get that while riding. I wish I could lock that in somewhere in the settings so that the 2x would stay on as I use the + and - to zoom the program.

Other than that I'm really liking the app and look forward to more gpx tracks and overlays as time goes on.

Thanks!