The web planner needs some love & development?

[Brian McG]

Hi @Peter-3b
I do agree with a lot of what you are saying,
I also find the 200 waypoint limit very frustrating when trying to plan multi-day trips.

Often I plan/ride 500 mile (800km) routes on small non-motorway roads & will have 150+ waypoints for a day, so for a multi-day trip of 10-16 days I can be looking at a trip with several thousand points.

For those that say only 50 points are sufficient for 1 day, that is your choice/preference, some of us prefer a lot more points as we plan far more detailed routes.
IMO there should be no limit on the number of points unless there is a very sound technical reason to impose such a limit, like when importing tracks with 10's or 100's of thousands of points.

You can of course put a bunch of day-trips in a folder and if you don't mind the work (add route -> add route -> add route...)

I agree the "> add route > add route" is painful especially as this action is not cached / saved & if you exit the route you have to go back & "> add route > add route" all over again.
I get round this by having multiple browser tabs open for MRA but this sometimes leads to instabilities in the browser/mra site.

show them at the same time, but that's about as far as MRA goes in supporting multi-day trips.

MRA does allow for prepend / appending the shown routes using the + symbol in the Routes tab after a route has been added.

Unfortunately with detailed routes you soon hit the 200 point limit when you append multiple days. Trying to get an overview of your whole trip & its total mileage is not possible when MRA then randomly removes points.
And yes I want to know the total mileage of a trip as tyre ware & maintenance stops should be planned ( & yes again a new tyre is fitted before a trip)

I understand MRA is a small team & only so much can be done & only so fast, the above is just some pain points I experience with the planner & which I work around.
For planning group trips with multiple riders all using different navigation systems, TomTom, Garmin, MRA, Calimoto...... there is no other app/planner that comes close to being able to successfully create & transfer a route to each of the group & for them then to be able to navigate the days ride.

[Jack van Tilburg]

I am a bit surprised at the number of required route points mentioned here.
I am going to the North Cape this summer and have now planned a route to the north and one to the south. Together more than 6000 kilometers. But no more than 110 waypoints. And that includes shaping points and points along the way for sightseeing and/or overnight stays.
And yes.....I also have day trips in Europe that mainly take very small roads where extra waypoints are needed to carry out the chosen route exactly as I wish. But even there I never reach the number of 100 route points.

[Con Hennekens]

@Brian-McG, I can only imagine that such an exorbitant number of waypoints would lead to an incredibly slow route calculation. I think the problem is in the method, not in the tools.

[Drabslab]

@Jack-van-Tilburg

I suppose you mean 100 routepoints per day? otherwise you have a point every 60 km, and that can hardly be seen as a route?

[richtea999]

@Drabslab said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

... otherwise you have a point every 60 km, and that can hardly be seen as a route?

A route only needs 2 points.

But I can understand why people add superfluous points to a route - it's a distrust of the routing engine to follow the exact same route when actually on the journey.

In my case that distrust originally came from automatic re-routing due to:

• closed roads, and
• traffic

Now that I understand that aspect of the app / routing engine, my routes have a lot less points - 17 over 280 miles for a medium complexity route (start, end, two places to visit on the way, petrol, food, and certain roads I wanted to go down)

You have the option to disable that auto re-routing of course, if you don't like it, or don't trust it.

[Jack van Tilburg]

@Drabslab said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

I suppose you mean 100 routepoints per day

In the sense of my day routes in Europe I indeed mean 100 waypoints.
But I very rarely (or never) reach that number.

[Drabslab]

@richtea999 said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

Now that I understand that aspect of the app / routing engine, my routes have a lot less points

I am not using the app but my old trusted Rider400. The app cooks my phone and I hope that the rider keeps functioning until the battery drain is resolved.

and I rarely follow the route calculated by the planner.

I start with a begin and endpoint, a few POI underway that i want to visit, and then I start tinkering putting waypoints left and right to force the route over a green michelin road, or to avoid the centre of a village...

[Drabslab]

@Jack-van-Tilburg said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

I indeed mean 100 waypoints. But I very rarely (or never) reach that number.

same for me

[Brian McG]

I thought about adding a long reply explaining why its fine for some use cases to only require a few points but that there are other occasions, like when planning routes for large groups where multiple different "engines"/navigation devices will be used, then more points are required.... etc etc etc...

But this just made me laugh .....
The planned route above takes what I would say is the expected logical path between points 1 & 2,
click the Navigate button & ....

the route/path is re-calculated

I understand that different engines/routing algorithms can calculate different paths & there is probably a perfectly logical reason for the difference in this case. I do not expect a fix.

I just thought it was hilarious that within the same app it can display one path & then on the next screen show a different path
& this is why I prefer to use more points to "constrain" the engines/algorithms to the path I want to take.

So for a route similar to the above, where there are different possible paths that the engine/algorithms might choose, I would normally place an additional point somewhere between 1 & 2 to prevent the strange path the engines sometimes decide to take.
This simple control of the engines/algorithms obviously uses more points

[RetiredWingMan]

@Brian-McG it looks to me like the planner took the shortest route while the navigation chose what may be the fastest route. I think car routing can select shortest or fastest routing.

[Vincent Curren]

Just to add my two cents to an already lengthy discussion...

I'm a simple guy. I like simple tools. The navigator is very important to me. I no longer have to fool around with my Garmin, gpx files, Kurviger, Osmand, etc., etc... wow, so much better for me. My phone runs fine, although I would be happy to cook it anyway. (I pay a few dollars a month to Google to replace it if that happens... or if it falls off the bike and bounces along the ground... etc.

The one thing about the app that is less than ideal is that it is often a bit behind me... it's less than ideal to know where I >was< than where I am about to be. And I recognize that the issue may be with an outside provider.

Our pals at MRA have a great product as well as a business that they need to run profitably. I want them to be profitable, so they are here tomorrow as well as today.

So I think all of this input is good, but once given, I might suggest that we have the confidence in our MRA friends to make the best decisions and trade-offs to keep their product attractive, their user base growing, and their company profitable!

Vinnie

[Con Hennekens]

@Brian-McG, I can only say my simulation does not show the same problem. Could it be caused by traffic jam?

@RetiredWingMan said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

it looks to me like the planner took the shortest route while the navigation chose what may be the fastest route.

If you choose the navigation option "Shortest route", that option will be stored with the route, and replicated to MRA Navigation, which will also show "Shortest" at the route optimisation. Exactly to prevent what you are suggesting

[Jem Cotton]

Hi all,

I completely agree with Peter here, in that the browser based planner is why I bought into the MRA system (and yes, I find 200 points limiting when I want to build an overview of a tour).

I would love to see some more active development in this area. Whilst making the app a slick proposition is no doubt enticing, for me the heart of MRA is in it's ability to plan complex routes and visualise them before riding.

I made a suggestion (ability to add temporary waypoints / mid-way through a route) back in Oct 23 which was well received, but has not yet been implemented.

Being a continual user of the planner, I have other suggestions, which I'm happy to put some serious work into defining, provided I can see that they'll go somewhere and in a reasonable timeframe.

So ... does anyone have info on the web redevelopment project timescales, and specifically on whether this involves a re-work of the planner to make it even more productive and easier / more pleasant to use ?

Thanks, Jem

[Jack van Tilburg]

@Jem-Cotton said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

I would love to see some more active development in this area. Whilst making the app a slick proposition is no doubt enticing, for me the heart of MRA is in it's ability to plan complex routes and visualise them before riding.

I completely agree with that.
The best navigator still cannot make anything out of an incorrectly and bad planned route.

[Jack van Tilburg]

@Jack-van-Tilburg

@Jem-Cotton said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

So ... does anyone have info on the web redevelopment project timescales

Yes

@Corjan-Meijerink said in I'm very happy with MRA but......:

When the big 4.1.0 update is released for the app we will prioritise the coming months

[Drabslab]

@Jack-van-Tilburg said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

The best navigator still cannot make anything out of an incorrectly and bad planned route.

Correct, for me it is all about expanding and integrating the MRA ecosystem

We have seen a long process to improve the navigator, and maybe that process was TOO long putting to much time on trivial(?) things (while still struggling with core shortcomings (battery issue)). Maybe it was the only way possible considering that the previous navigator was outdated in many aspects.

I would not like to see that this would be followed up by an equally long cycle for the planner.

Instead, I am hoping for shorter sprints tackling one subject (POI, multi-map, ...) to the extend relevant in all parts of the eco system. This will prevent that one part grows totally outdated compared to the rest, and will give the users something new to play with very often.

[Jack van Tilburg]

@Drabslab said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

the eco system

Yes, yes... who thinks all that is important?
Isn't it so that the Planner is now also used by a lot of users with navigation devices other than MRA Navigation?
And of course I understand that it seems fantastic that the Planner and MRA Navigation fit together well in a eco system. But they already do that in a way now, don't they? In a very useful way, right?
And of course I now create beautiful routes with the Planner and am happy with the functions it offers. But there are many points that could be more beautiful, more intuitive and more convenient.
If I had a choice then I would go to pick the low-hanging fruit.

But my biggest wish?
Make a plan and stick to the plan.

[Peter 3b]

@Jack-van-Tilburg @Drabslab

TS here. I sure hit a nerve, I guess.

Totally agree that a more agile approach would be desirable.

But like Jack, I'm not sure that "integrating the MRA ecosystem" would be the best direction of travel. For me the GPX ecosystem is key. See my initial reply at the top of this thread. We need to support a variety of devices, tools & apps and better GPX support is the way to do that.

Let's not forget that this is where MRA was first successful: a tool that let you plan routes which you could then export to Garmin, Tomtom, etc.

(For comparison, take a look at gpx.studio, which I think was hacked together by a brilliant student to map his own "extreme running" - but which already has so much more depth in GPX handling than the MRA planner has today.)

[Jack van Tilburg]

@Peter-3b said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

I sure hit a nerve

Not just with @Drabslab and me I think.
With 26 upvotes for your opening post it is the most highly rated post ever in my guess.

[Drabslab]

@Jack-van-Tilburg said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

Make a plan and stick to the plan.

YES

I think we all mean more or less the same... with different words

@Peter-3b said in The web planner needs some love & development?:

We need to support a variety of devices, tools & apps and better GPX support is the way to do that.

which are all part of the eco system in my book