User remarks

[Rungee]

I would like to make some remarks about the usage of your graphical interface of http://openrouteservice.org

First of all I would like to express that I guess that http://openrouteservice.org is not a service intended for professional use. I think that this is more a kind of prove of concept or demonstration tool to show capabilities of routing algorithms.

I think so because I rather often get error messages that intended routes are currently not computable and that there are server problems. Additionally the service is partly slow.

All of this does not affect me. If there is a temporary problem I learned to wait some time and try again later.

Typical error messages are e.g.:
“Leider konnte keine Route zwischen den gewählten Punkten berechnet werden. Bitte wählen Sie Ihre Punkte in der Nähe eines (für Ihre Einstellungen geeigneten) Weges.”

and

„Sorry, während der Berechnung ist ein Fehler auf dem Server passiert. Bitte versuchen Sie es später noch einmal“.

The only real “problem” I could find is the following: If you create a route you are setting points on the map with different colors (green, yellow and red) in the form of a drop. Of course you have to zoom in to set the waypoints. But finally, especially for longer trips, you have to zoom out temporarily for not losing the overview. In this case you can see a larger area of the map together with loosing details (it has to be so in this way because otherwise anyone would be overwhelmed by the mass of details which can be seen suddenly).

Unfortunately the waypoints (the drops) stay in their size an so they begin to cover more and more the visible, calculated route. Especially routes with a lot of waypoints are affected.

Maybe you are a little bit annoyed to be compared with maps.google.come but here the icons for waypoints are rather small.

To circumvent this problem I would like to suggest the following solutions:

•      Ability to choose different icons for waypoints from a menue
  

•      The icons should grow and shrink in the same way like the map itself when zooming in or out
  

•      Possibility to toggle between big and small icons
  

•      Possibility to toggle between “with icons for waypoints”/”without icons for Waypoints” with the default ”with waypoints”.
  

For me as a motorbike traveler there are functions which no computer map can provide until now. I guess, you have the data and I would be surprised, if it would not be possible to compute the fundamental map date in the following way:

•      What is the maximum, minimum and average ascent/descant (in degrees) of a route (e.g. 16% maximum ascent)
  

•      Maximum, minimum, average height above see level of the calculated route (152m – 2516m, average: 1200m)
  

•      Sum of how much meters a route climbs and declines seen from end-2-end (e.g. 3715m)
  

•      Define a measure about how curvy a route is – e.g. how much hairpin bends there are. (e.g. a simple sum of all angles measured in degrees; the bigger the sum the more curvy the street)
  

This and similar functions would be unique on the market and are currently completely unavailable in the net.

If you can provide this service you would create a goldmine because every truck driver, every motor bike driver and every bicycle driver is a possible user/customer.

Motorbike drivers and bicycle drivers have different needs than car drivers for maps and currently there is no one all over the world to satisfy them.