RouteGadget and Course Distance Questions
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Topic created by rpboehme on Mon Oct 1, 2012 at 6:32 pmHi All,
One of the finest features of the DVOA website is the integration with RouteGadget for all of our E-punch event. I do have a couple of questions regarding it and O course lengths in general.
When courses are listed and posted, are the distances "As the crow flies" (or one most humorously postulate, "as the ultimate orienteer runs!")? My inclinination is to consider this to be a truth.
Second, I love to place my routes on the RouteGadget, with all their questionable choices and random zeroing in that tends to go on. Is there a way to extract the total "actual distance covered" from the routegadget? I could do it the hard way and take my map and make lots of little marks on a sheet of paper an figure out the distance manually, but the hope is that somehow this information can be extracted from the mouse clicks that are entered in the routegadget. Seems like a bit of a longshot, but I thought I would ask.
When I first started, yellow was my course until I felt confident enough to move up. I kind of guesstimated that the actual distance traversed would be in miles what the ideal course length would be in kilometers (so a course lenth of 3 km would require about 3 miles of trail movement). This would align with "basically sticking to trails", as the newbie I am would have tended to do. Now that I feel more comfortable on orange, with more route choices and beautiful terrain (Orange controls 7 and 9 at Nolde were in such nice spots, I almost did not want to leave), I suspect that this little rule of thumb is no longer valid.
Thanks for any help that you may lend to a nerd discovering O.
Rich -
Reply by edscott on Mon Oct 1, 2012 at 7:28 pmThere may be a high tech way of doing it, but if you want to go more old school take a #4 rubber stopper from the nearest chem lab. The circumference of the smaller end is 1K on a 1:15000 map. Make a few tics around it for 100 meter marks and roll it over your route. When using on a 1:10000 map just multiply by .667. :)
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Reply by Vadim on Mon Oct 1, 2012 at 8:36 pm
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Reply by edscott on Mon Oct 1, 2012 at 9:27 pmThe Rubber stopper is 69 cents.. :)
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Reply by rpboehme on Tue Oct 2, 2012 at 5:47 amMany thanks for the suggestions - while I may not have a #4 stopper or that cool device Vadim linked to, I can try with another cylindrical object - a wine cork. It may need many resets to zero (having only a 1/2" or so diameter) and a higher count of rotations, but it ought to get me within 20% or so. :-)
Rich -
Reply by edscott on Tue Oct 2, 2012 at 6:49 amThe rubber stopper looks like it is about 20mm in diameter. Never did the math, but one rotation on the map scale comes out right.
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Reply by rgbortz on Tue Oct 2, 2012 at 7:05 amFor all with the same question and for all course setters: What is the ( or your ) answer to the question Rich postulated in his second paraparagragh ?
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Reply by furlong47 on Tue Oct 2, 2012 at 5:33 pmCourse lengths are measured in a straight line from control to control UNLESS there is a marked/mandatory route (that part of the course is measured along the actual route) or an uncrossable feature such as a lake (measured along shortest route around)
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Reply by rpboehme on Tue Oct 2, 2012 at 7:02 pmThanks furlong. So it seems to be mostly the case of "as the crow flies" or as the "ultimate orienteer runs!", except for the special cases of unpassable obstacles like lakes and such.
Now, to find my cork and see how far I actually wandered at Nolde this past weekend. ;-)
Cheers,
Rich -
Reply by Steve on Tue Oct 2, 2012 at 8:11 pmSo back to Rich's question about RG, in the top right corner Rg lists the course length in pixels. That is good for compareing with your friends, but not for Rich's training program. Is there a conversion number? Also, why doesn't RG list GPS courses in pixels? Lastly, shouldn't the pixel number change when you zoom in or out?
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Reply by Vadim on Tue Oct 2, 2012 at 8:50 pmRouteGadget uses images of actual maps and images are not scaled, they can have different amount of pixel per inch. Plus map scale can vary from 1:10,000 to 1:15,000 or be just 1:4,000 or 1:5,000. Two unknown variables for RG.
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Reply by edscott on Tue Oct 2, 2012 at 9:53 pmCalculating the per K time based on actual distance is often useful for me to separate the effects of my mental mistakes from my physical condition that particular day. Also it is somewhat interesting to see that I've covered almost 500 extra kilometers since I started orienteering.
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Reply by Guy-O on Wed Oct 3, 2012 at 0:13 amI would think that, using 2-points on the map image, and the depicted distance between them, it would be possible to calculate a meters/pixel factor. However, this is something the person setting up the RG event -- not the user -- would have to do, and it is not part of the current program.
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Reply by WindWalker on Wed Oct 3, 2012 at 7:25 pmMaybe a GPS would be helpfull?
Mike -
Reply by rpboehme on Wed Oct 3, 2012 at 8:14 pmThanks for all of the great ideas and advice. The reason why I am curious as to how far I really traverse on a course is that I do keep track of my exercise in a spreadsheet. So, walking/running/wandering in the woods nominally burns about 140 kcal per mile for somebody of my mass. Unless I am getting some serious elevation gain, I tend to use that as an approximation, as I do realize that 300 m elevation gain will probably melt more fat than 0 m. :-)
Since I just moved from y to o, I am more concerned about being comfortable getting off trail more, so my route choices are probably not the best in the world at present. Knowing the actual time per K will be useful as my competance improves (thanks Ed - I especially like the extra distance concept!). My GPS is an old Garmin Etrex - useful for finding things, but kind of bulky on the trail, especially considering it was here that I learned that they have wrist models.
Rich -
Reply by Gillettejw on Fri Oct 12, 2012 at 7:52 amFolks:
Here is another option. I use it both for work and for tracking my Boy Scout trips. The first step is to scan the O-Map for the particular area and save it as a .jpg file. From Google Earth, click the 'Add' menu and then 'Image Overlay.' From there, a window will open to select your .jpg file and the map GUI will present hooks to adjust the orientation of the overlay. After jockeying the map around a bit and adjusting opacity, the O-Map aligns with the Google map underneath. The good news is once you adjust the overlay, you do not have to do this step again (It shows up in your 'My Places' window). The saved overlay can also be shared with others by emailing or placing the .kmz file on a server.
Assuming you have competed the steps above, you can then use the 'route' tool from the toolbar (it looks like three circles connected by a line) to trace your actual route on the O-Map. in the Distance tab of the Route window you will see the actual distance with options to change units of measure. The route you draw can be adjusted for color and can be saved in your My Places. A potential use is to compare routes over time from the same site by overlaying several routes.
If anyone is interested I can send them a sample .kmz file to play around with (Muttontown Preserve Permanent Course, Long Island). I am in the process of georectifying the Nolde and Green Lane maps and should have them complete mid-next week. I was concerned at first that the overlays were discoverable by the general public, but I have determined that they are saved locally. If there is interest I can share more detailed procedures and the overlays I have completed with the group.
v/r
John
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Reply by rpboehme on Sat Oct 13, 2012 at 6:36 pmThanks John
I tried this on Nolde orange from a couple weeks back. Took my routegadget, did some screen shost, combined the images in photoshop and dropped a copy on my HD:. Fired up Google Earth, did the overlay, scaled appropriately to route 625, other nearby roads and some key features and it was overlaid well enough onto Google Earth to work with. I then folowed John's instructions and basically repeated my routegadget estimate of my wanderings and got a good idea of how far I actually went.
So, a 4.2 km course resulted in 6.4 km of Google Earth wandering, which is about 3.97 miles. Almost a 1:1 mile to course km relationship.
Thanks again for the really great tip.
Rich
