Route Planning Mileage Way Off PC/IOS
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I recently planned a hike with the route planner and snapping to the trail. Came to 23 miles total. Then I did the route and it came to 27 miles. Then I calculated from a paper map that it was 27 miles. Has anyone else had this problem? I am PC and IOS
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I have had similar suspicions that there is a difference between planned and tracked routes. I have two hypotheses:
- ascent & descent aren't properly figured into calculations
- actual trails differ from mapped ones - i.e. the trails on the map are often missing the detailed bends / reroutes that you would encounter while actually on the trail.
I have also noticed a discrepancy between what is tracked and what the phone's pedometer records.
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Got this from Tech support:
Melanie Wilson (Gaia GPS)
Jul 21, 2021, 13:22 PDT
Hey Jim,
Yes, I see what you mean. It looks like the route creation algorithm is underestimating the distance of the route.
We're looking into this more and we plan to update our algorithm so that it produces more expected distance stats in situations like this.
I don't have an ETA on when you can expect this update to happen, but we are working on it.
Let me know if you have any other questions.Melanie Wilson
Gaia GPS
Adventure Support
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