 Michael
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Posted: 7 December 2010, 4:24 AM
This looks good for close-to-home orienteering: https://sites.google.com/site/mobogoglobo/
It might also be good for physically disabled orienteering. Trail-O is well established in some countries but try as I might, I can't think of venues in NZ which have (a) wheelchair-able trails and (b) a richness of features visible from the trails. Having the disabled person read the map and direct an abled person by cellphone is a nice tie-up, I reckon.
But mobile-phone orienteering is just as suitable for teams of physically able orienteers, perhaps with a two-loop course so the roles are reversed. It's got good training value too, compare with our verbalising exercises.
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Michael
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Posted: 1 February 2011, 2:09 PM
Some excellent close to home orienteering lately. Sprint the Bay of course, even on my 2nd time at EIT I couldn't mapread fast enough and had to stop to get my bearings. And tonight's 2km course set by Lizzie at the Wgtn College of Education was just superb. Sprints provide us slower orienteers with an intensity of navigation that we don't get in the long distance, because we don't pass so many features per minute.
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Bryan
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Posted: 2 February 2011, 12:38 AM
I agree it was a wonderful course for a first time use on the map.
As I mapped the area (really Massey Unversity College of Education, Karori Normal school and Ben Burn park with some streets), I would like comments on it - it will be useful feedback for updating the map in the future and for future 'close to home' events.
I ran the course myself and I'm probably more critical than anyone on my own maps so here is some criticism:
- Scale hard to read at 3000. Probably better at 1:2500 - which makes the map larger than A4. IOF sprint specs specify 1:4000 or
1:5000 but this would be too unreadable for the detail shown on the map. What scale should we be using for sprint events?
- If you look closely, I use two contour widths - a problem with
generalistation as I also printed at 1:1000 for use by several schools in the Karori area - in hindsight only one contour width should be used (the thicker one).
- The Maze blowup was overlaid in the middle of a flat featureless Ben Burn park - this might have confused some runners. I think a larger inset at 1:500 or 1:250 to the side of the map would be better.
- There is some ghosting/overlap of fight/open areas - I wrongly thought the colour table would handle this - I will have to make sure I don't use the lazy method of drawing areas.
- there is a problem I think with the current mapping specs for bushes / gardens - I don't want to draw them as settlement olive - I want to differentiate them and I want to make them out of bounds. I mapped them as fight (and was told afterwards at the event last night I could have use 100%green 50%black instead but this also causes problems of readability when a small track goes through these areas. What have others used?
- one overpass was probably too high above the ground which might have been better left off
- one area I ran pass needed extra trees - I definitely mapped them but accidentally mapped them as yellow open
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Jason
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Posted: 2 February 2011, 6:27 AM
Great map Bryan. I found it very exciting navigating where pretty much everything was on the map.
This map 'Ben Burn' has a high level of detail- more than others I have run on recently. Some things I would not expect to see on ISSOM (sprint) spec maps might be planter boxes (or protective railing around juvenile trees) and the precise shape of playground structures. You can also leave out edging boundaries around garden or veggie beds to save space- usually the contrast between area symbols is sufficient for legibility. I think that ISSOM maps also by necessity exaggerate the detail around buildings in order for it to be legible. We do the same thing on forest maps when symbols take up way more space on the paper than they do on the ground- as long as their relative positions are true then some liberty can be taken with their proportions. Consequently I would expect that some building outlines will shrink a bit to accommodate the detail between them. Maybe more experienced sprint mappers can comment...
At a WOC sprint last year (maybe 2009?) a top runner was disqualified for running through a hedge mapped as 521 'Impassable vegetation' (100% green, 50% black). The spec says this is mainly for 'safety' reasons. In effect it is for fairness too; so no-one can gain an unfair advantage by taking that shortcut. There should be no problem confusing 521 objects (such as hedges) with black objects (such as high walls) if you use the minimum symbol width 0.4mm. There would be no issue about seeing track symbols in this are because it is prohibited anyway.
However I also see you used 410 'Vegetation difficult to run' for the raised veggie garden beds. It might be confusing to use 421 in that case so instead try 528.1 'Area with forbidden access' just as Kate Morrison did for the raised veggie garden beds and rose garden beds on the Frimley map at Sprint the Bay (although she left out the edging the result was still legible).
You may have to consider mapping the same area at 2 scales if it is that good: 1 at 4,000/5,000 for A-level sprints and winter classic-style events and 1 at 2,000/3,000 for other purposes.
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Jason
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Posted: 2 February 2011, 6:41 AM
Bryan,
One other thing you might want to check in the OCAD file is whether the 'ghosting' or 'overlap' (where green abuts yellow) is due to green being set to 'transp' (i.e. transparent) in the colour table. Michael tells me this option goes back to the days of course overprinting where it was often unhelpful for purple to mask other colours and the solution then was to let some of the underlying colours come through. I have used OCAD files where green has been set as transparent and this leads to contours appearing darker where they cross green. I have not been able to figure why this has been done, and why it only occurs on some maps. Perhaps you have inherited the green in your colour table from somewhere else? And maybe a mapper out there can tell me where the practice of making green transparent originates from?
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Michael
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Posted: 4 February 2011, 12:52 PM
While I was visiting UK's version of Maptalk I came across the Nopesport Urban League http://forum.nopesport.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11192
The interesting thing is that these urban events are not all sprints.
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Michael
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Posted: 18 April 2011, 10:46 AM
As I was putting out controls on an area that's a bit on the steep side I thought, "there are SOME good legs here, why don't we just declare the uphill bits out of the competition."
So, it would work by telling the competitors via the control descriptions which legs are not counted, you take your time on them and the software is programmed to ignore them in the results. Obviously some practical nuts and bolts, maximum time for the course, not allowed to restart closer than X behind anyone else, etc.
Thinking about it as a way of using areas close to home, it could link up pocket-handkerchief bits of good map as well as reducing excessive climb. But it could also be a new type of competition in its own right where your physical strategy plays a greater part.
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