Hi Simon,

Nice feature!

On 20 February 2012 12:22, Simon Stewart <[email protected]> wrote:

> Currently it does what it says, that is share tracks, a record of where you 
> went.  This is not necessarily what is required for a map since the tracks 
> aren't necessarily on tracks and are not necessarily optimised much.  The 
> latter issue may be resolved in future.
>
> However they are definitely not tracings from other imagery, OS or from a GIS 
> system but members original GPS tracks.
>
> MountainViews would be happy to discuss what use if any could be made of this 
> data.

OK, I see potential for this, with two prerequisites.

The first is easy to get right - simply make sure enough rights are
granted by the contributors to allow inclusion in OSM (not of the
trail, but of what might be derived from it).

The second needs some thought, but is probably still pretty doable -
basically it would be an annotation option. As you say, the trace
lacks enough context to actually map anything from it. But suppose a
contributor were to provide a free text annotation, which could look
like this?:

From Crone car park to the waypoint 123 is a wide gravel track
suitable for vehicles but only for use by forestry service. Ignore the
50m detour half way up this section. At waypoint 123 there is a stile
and after that I stuck to the beaten track [description of track
characteristics]. After coming off the summit I was going through open
country, so do nothing with that.


The idea being that any contributors who provide a usable description
of an identifiable section of their track will help us to improve the
map. Something that will really help with this is that by the end of
2012, Bing will have complete aerial coverage of Ireland, sufficient
by and large to see many mountain tracks, but not necessarily to
determine their characteristics. So the aerial imagery will help get
around the fact that the GPX traces are imperfect.

So there it is, half-baked, but I think there's a basis there for
something useful.

Take care,
Dermot

-- 
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Igaühel on siin oma laul
ja ma oma ei leiagi üles

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