Strava setup question

[lightning]

l've just learnt how to plot routes on Strava, which is great, but l wondered if there's any way to set it up so you are always going upwards on the display, as on a car satnav.

As it is, North is upwards so you end up travelling down the screen, to the left, off to one corner etc and it can be tricky at road junctions to figure out which way to go, while mainly concentrating on the traffic.

 

[lightning]

No?

l take it that means it can't be done. lt's useable as is, just not ideal.

 

[MadTurnip]

This isn't of much help but in the past strava had quite bad navigation tools, I've heard they have improved this year but overall I think people stick using other navigation tools depending on the type of riding there doing.
Kamoot is generally what I use but there is better alternatives if the purpose is for mountain biking if the trails aren't on open street map.

 

[Zimmerframe]

Just tried "routes" on strava for the first time yesterday after upgrading to a subscriber.

Overall being a subscriber has been a very disappointing experience.

Initially I upgraded as I'd read that on the display you could swipe left and right to find altitude, speed and so on. This doesn't work so I guess they got rid of it.

The Beacon function on mine just errors so you can't activate it - so that's pointless.

The Live segments doesn't seem to work on ebikes, only on rides - so that's pointless.

The Routes is a disaster.

I spent an hour trying to plot my route rather than riding ! You can set it to manual, most direct or most prefered. Manually basically just lets you plot points anywhere, unless you have "display segments" turned on so you can find segments -then if you click on the segment it give you the segment information rather than plotting your point. Weirdly you can't click on a segment and for example say "include segment in ride" - which would be useful.

Trying to plot the other two ways was equally a disaster. I'd click before a segment, then after a segment (because you can't click on the segment) then it would route off around the segment everytime ! taking some stupid 5km de-tour for no reason and avoiding the popular trails. To say it's infuriating would be an understatement. You'd imagine it was some kids first attempt at a mapping software he'd thrown together over lunch rather than a vital part of the paid subscription of a globally popular sport sharing app.

When you actually try it, there is no "navigation" it just plots the lines on your map. You've no idea which way you plotted it - in or out for instance. If you find some other complicated ride where someone went all over and set that up as a route, you have no idea which way they went - just a series of lines of where they went, but was it left or right, up or down.

For the route it did recommend, this was equally a disaster. For starters it lags behind where you are, so you've normally overshot most turns by the time it tell you that's where you are. Then in my case , half the trails it suggested were long lost to logging or nature - which is equally stupid as it has all the heat map data and user data so it knows where people have and haven't been. Suggesting I go down trails which obviously haven't been used by a human in 5 or 10 years is just stupid.

The only positive, is that because it's not navigating, it doesn't care if you're on track or not so you can just ignore it and do your own thing. So yes, the best thing I can say about Strava Routes/Navigation - is that it's easy to ignore and not use it.

 

[Tim1023]

I just gave up on premium. I had it as I forgot to cancel the trial last year.

The only reason I wanted to try it was for planning routes on the PC as I like the general and personal heatmap feature. In the end, though, I had that open on one screen and did the actual planning in Komoot.

Not that I'm 100% satisfied with Komoot!! Still haven't found a route planning option that I really like.

 

[Gary]

Just tried "routes" on strava for the first time yesterday after upgrading to a subscriber.

Were you using a PC? isn't it simply a case of inputting your start point and dragging and dropping points to create a route?
It was last time I used it. Same as any other route creation software. No?

 

[Zimmerframe]

Were you using a PC? isn't it simply a case of inputting your start point and dragging and dropping points to create a route?
It was last time I used it. Same as any other route creation software. No?

Yes, it's a bit like that. Except as you drag and drop it re-calculates between the two points. So as you add points to go in one direction it then keeps deciding it's better to stop, turn around and make some stupid dumb loop around, so you then have to go and delete those way points so you don't end up keep doubling back on yourself if you want to go where it says. It can let you way point your way all along a route and then just as you get to the end and want to go left or right, it decides you have to go all the way back down that track the other way and go via some stupid road sections you don't want to. It even put me on a motorway for one section rather than just turn right on the next track where everyone else had gone according to the heat maps - so how that is the "popular route" I have no idea. It would be the route which literally no one ever has taken.

 

[Gary]

Oh. Yeah. I remember that from creating an illegal route from here right over Arthur's seat in Edinburgh and into town. I think I got around that by setting the portion to manual.

 

[Gary]

I used to create routes with strava for guiding (work) but now I don't guide anymore I only really ever create routes for other folk now. Fuck all wrong with getting temporarily lost. I'm not one of those guys who's too afraid to ask strangers for directions tho ?

 

[Zimmerframe]

I used to create routes with strava for guiding (work) but now I don't guide anymore I only really ever create routes for other folk now. Fuck all wrong with getting temporarily lost. I'm not one of those guys who's too afraid to ask strangers for directions tho ?

Totally. I gave up in the end as I wasn't sure how it would work and just used it as a line to zoom out to so I knew more or less what direction I was hoping to go in. Hell, I ask strangers for direction even if I'm not lost. There's nothing more entertaining than someone trying to give directions.

 

[lightning]

When l tried setting up a route on Strava it led me along a footpath and through a field of wheat, down a private lane into a farmers yard, and along the one main road l asked it to avoid.
l tried one of the "recommended rides" which have been put on by others, and that worked, but again it was always North =up
So l found myself going up the screen, down the screen, off to the left, diagonally and it was very difficult to navigate.

 

[lightning]

lt's a shame because it could potentially work very well, we were in Norfolk (U.K.) on holiday and l obviously didn't know the area.

There were several routes that had been put on Strava by locals and it would be great to use them.

The one thing that spoils it is the map orientation, as l mentioned above. Someone at Strava hasn't thought it through.

 

[Gary]

A lot of Strava premium features used to be freely available third party software from small companies that STRAVA eventually bought.

PS. I just remembered. The one time I tried Komoot I had a pretty similar experience to Zims had with Strava where the software kept choosing to re route portions of a route to roads/paths I wasn't wanting to use.

 

[Zimmerframe]

As it is, North is upwards so you end up

Just noticed today that if you put two fingers on the screen you can rotate the map and a compass appears showing north. So you can at least manually spin it. It would be to difficult to have an option to do this automatically ??

For route plotting, as it doesn't work as navigation, only highlights things on your map. I've found the best thing to do is enter manual mode and just mark out all the places you think there's something worth trying and do it that way. It's not so much Strava Routes as Strava highlights.

Also be wary when using heat maps to find trails. There's no way to set any date relevant filters to these so as I found yesterday, many might be very old and impassable.

 

[lightning]

I did find out that you could manually rotate the map, but if you do that it stops moving the map as you ride, and you end up riding off the edge of the screen!
What a waste of time!

 

[Zimmerframe]

I did find out that you could manually rotate the map, but if you do that it stops moving the map as you ride, and you end up riding off the edge of the screen!
What a waste of time!

Do you die if that happens ? Is it like mini flat earth ?

?

It's a bit sh1t isn't it. Have you tried ride with GPS. Though I don't think that rotates either so maybe not.

 

[Gyre]

Yes, it's a bit like that. Except as you drag and drop it re-calculates between the two points. So as you add points to go in one direction it then keeps deciding it's better to stop, turn around and make some stupid dumb loop around, so you then have to go and delete those way points so you don't end up keep doubling back on yourself if you want to go where it says.

The dataset behind the map has a lot of holes (lots of places where trails should connect, but have a discontinuity somewhere), and I don't know if they have a decent reporting/correcting process in place to fix them. Komoot has the same problem, but as I recall they have a decent reporting system.

Also be wary when using heat maps to find trails. There's no way to set any date relevant filters to these so as I found yesterday, many might be very old and impassable.

The heat maps are useful, but yeah, definitely require a gain of salt. I had a bad time on a very overgrown trail with some extreme exposure a few months ago.

Trailforks seems to be one of the better resources to scout out new trails. I can see that it has some at least some use in France and the UK.

 

[Zimmerframe]

The heat maps are useful, but yeah, definitely require a gain of salt. I had a bad time on a very overgrown trail with some extreme exposure a few months ago.

This bramble wall was the bottom of one popular heat map trail I carried back up through the overgrowth at the top yesterday?

 

[Zimmerframe]

The dataset behind the map has a lot of holes

I've not seen anything where you can correct. Or any effort to correlate recent heat map data with routes , actually the opposite. They're missing a lot of opportunities from the data they have which is unfortunate.

It's like when you create segments, you can't set an accuracy slider if they're are other segments near.

It still feels like a product in its first year of production which still learns nothing about it's users or the world around it.

 

[Gyre]

It still feels like a product in its first year of production which still learns nothing about it's users or the world around it.

Sounds like they're focused on cranking out features to justify the rent without getting useful feedback from users.

 

[Gary]

Strava bought out a lot of smaller companies who made free third party software that added additional features to strava. Some they improved upon after acquisition... Some not so much... The "routes" function was OG though.. Roadies I used to ride with used to use (on PC) it to maximise segments when building routes for group rides.. Yeah cheating KOM hunting cunts. This was probably over 6 or 7 years back BTW.
It still works really well for road routes in the UK as far as I'm aware. The implementation to the phone app is newer and I guess more shiter.