Great to see that the "follow road" feature has been implemented for New Zealand routes. Thank you. Will be a huge help for long rides, and improve accuracy of routes that some people implement with the maps not zoomed in.
It does do some strange things at times. (Creating surprising loops) Still working out whether that is a function of the software, or how I'm using it.
tla85258 is right about choosing the side of the street you put the point onto.
There are some roads for instance where left turns are not allowed, so to follow roads, the mapmyrun will create the loop.
Some thing cool is that the follow roads can be turned on and off during route creation. I had a route that mostly follows roads, but I cut across a plaza. I use the follow roads up to the plaza. Unclick the follow roads, plot my course across the plaza, re- click the follow roads and continue on.
I have also noticed that follow roads plots do not always pick the same roads that I would run on. I just have to make sure I am choosing points that have an non-ambiguous routing. I.e. put the point so that there is only one logical (in a car) way to go.
You can still drag and drop points to alter routes.
The issue seems to be that the follow roads still puts in the points to make straight line segments just like I would have to do. So if you want to drag and drop, you have to drag an drop all the 'in between' points. Good news is that if when you add a new point and you don't like the route chosen to 'follow roads', if you delete that last point, it takes all the way back to the last point you placed -> in other words words it deletes all the points that were added to follow the roads. I am not sure if that would still work if you add more points before trying to delete. I thing then you will end up having to delete all the individual intermediate point manually.
I use the program to map out my bike rides, and I have found that at times it does loop back, I think that has to do with divided roads, as noted in an earlier reply. I didn't think about it, but when my road routes do that little loop, it was always on divided roads and apparently I clicked on the wrong side of the road. I also found that when I come up to or close to freeways, I make sure that I use short segments so that it doesn't automatically hop on the freeway to the next exit. And, like hanziou I commonly turn off and on the follow roads option so that the route accurately reflects my actual bike route. (see also my post re mapping bike paths)
Thanks for the comments. I've noticed that it's best to add a point at intersections, before turning into another road.
The "wrong" side of the road does of course depend on the country you are in <s>.
I've noticed that the follow road feature also cuts off corners in bends in the road at the highest two levels of zoom. Not a real concern, but I presume just a "feature".
Follow Roads feature uses driving maps to plot the course and so it obeys 'driving directions'
ie, you cannot go the wrong way down one-way streets and if there is an island or divider blocking your direct turn, it will sometimes take you to the next available place for a u-turn to turn around then return back to the spot you wish to turn...
We're working on smarter ways / better data service providers to do this. This new Route Engine is built in a way that we can more easily build add-ons like this!
Nike+ Integration
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