Evening everyone,
I’ve been having the following issue with kurviger.de lately. Just tested it on my PC again, still happening. Here is what I did: Planned a round trip, starting point at home, length approx. 100km. Direction east, route options curvy, avoidances: backtracking, smallest roads, and unpaved roads.
Then kurviger always throws in a detour somewhere telling me to turn down a road, follow this road for a few hundred meters as seen in the example image, then turn around, go back, and continue the route. Sometimes this spur is only a few dozen meters long. Since I’m usually leading our group, this is always pretty awkward. Sometimes, if the zoom on my GPS is large enough and I’m paying attention, I spot it beforehand and just keep driving, but you don’t always catch it. Can anyone tell me what’s going on here? Here’s an example, sometimes it pulls 4-5 such stunts on a single round trip. Just to be clear, this is the exact route generated right after clicking “Round trip”. I haven’t changed, dragged, or manually added any waypoints or anything to the calculated route.
Oh, and I have the Tourer+ subscription, in case that matters.
Hi @Heinz_Bernemann, Take a look here for an explanation. This definitely isn’t quite optimal yet, I agree with you there. The good news is that you’ll already be warned by the route hints before you set off: Take a look on the Kurviger website on the left below the waypoint list. Here you’ll sometimes find a yellow warning triangle — e.g. if a U-turn has crept in there.
I think this is quite a tricky task. In my experience, such U-turns happen in about 2 out of 10 round trip suggestions. The faster (Fastest) and shorter it is, the more often it happens.
The goal is to calculate a tour that comes as close as possible to the set length, taking into account curviness and, if applicable, avoidances. Appropriate roads must also be available. Some people even expect “100 km is 100 km and not 106” (read in a Play Store review of another app). All of this for lengths ranging from 20 to 600 km, and of course with fast calculation times. Phew.
Yes, it happens. It’s a round trip of about 100 km, travel time probably around two hours. A quick look + correction takes less than 1 minute.
I always see a round trip as a suggestion, as an idea. Even suggestions without “spurs” get revised. Okay, expectations vary.
Here’s one I just generated:
If you don’t like the suggestion, hit the button for a new one. Pay attention to warnings (Warning: U-turn) = a prompt saying “You should check this.”
I think what would help here is an avoidance setting like “Avoid U-turns”, which doesn’t exist yet. That would be pretty cool. At the moment, there’s a warning for it (great help not just for round trips).
Obviously, that’s pretty complicated to program, since these flaws have been around for a while. In the cases where I’ve used the round trip feature, I’ve always seen the result as an idea/suggestion and then optimized it a bit. Nobody in their right mind should seriously start such a tour suggestion unchecked as a “tour guide”.
Right. Plus, I’m always curious to see where the algorithm leads me. Then add a few small changes, put a few curious ideas into practice, and bam — it turns into a wonderful round trip. Good job!
