Routing

After two incidents after navigation mistakes, one in the Alps Tourist Trophy of 2022 and one in the 2023 Gibraltar race and to have some competitive advantage for navigating the special stages 😉, I decided to create my own navigation configuration.

At the moment, I don't share this yet (not for competitive advantage (I am not that good), but mainly because it needs more testing as the impact of errors can be big). In case that you are interested, drop me a mail. Included some background.

Locus, but also a lot of other navigation apps (I think including  DMD) use a version of Brouter for naviation/routing. Locus calls it LoRouter. Brouter works with configration files that tell Brouter which roads or pathts to use (i.e. gives a configurable penalty for each type of road or path). By tweaking the penaties, you can influence the navigation.

Locus has quite some profiles, but not a good one for Offroad riding. Most drivers riders in the Gibraltar Race used Mountainbike or Car and as a consequence, Locus sent them sometimes over the wrong roads (which can be manually adapted by creating intermediate waypoints during the preparation of Selective Sessions). The custom configuration avoids this by giving a preference for non asfalt roads, while avoiding mountain bike and hiking paths. Furthermore, it avoids "roads" with large height differences. This saves some time during the preparation of selective sessions.

During the 2022 ATT, I drove by "accident" in a special stage on a "path". On the Garmin (open topo map) this was not visible well. On this (steep and washed out) path, I got stuck with my 1150 GS and in the end broke the clutch cable. End of event.

This could have been avoided by a better quality map (i.e. showing the differences between the types of roads and tracks) as well as a navigation algoritm that avoids "paths" when alternatives are available (which was the case here).

In the 2023 Gibraltar Race, I (and quite some other riders) drove into an ungraded fire "road" which was very steep (first decent into a dry river bed and then a very ascent again without the possibilty to get speed). There, I and some other riders got stuck. However, other rides (like Mirco Bettini) went the right track. So what happened?

Mirco was using older maps - LoMaps v3. where the fire road was not visible. Becasue of that (and of course good navigation skills checking the distance of the special stage), he took the right route/track. I went wrong, because the fire-track was on my newer LoMaps v4 (more detailled, but better?). Additionally all roads in this area where ungraded (is common in quite some hilly and mountainous areas) on OpenStreetMap. So, it was not visible on the map (except for countour lines). Off course, I should have turned when seeing the road (like Dirk Mantje did). But, I didn't ...

So what is the software solution? Adapting the configuration of the algoritm so that it has a preference for less steeper roads (and a longer distance up to some point) when available. This is tesed and works in this situation. However, it is no replacement for concentration and using your your brains when driving 🙈.

Later, Frans Schoonderwoerd helped me a lot in testing and tweaking using old tracks in Spain and France. During the 2023 ATT, it had an accuracy of almost 99% (only went wrong where there where no roads on the map).