Comments on: Route to Christmas: Day 15 2009

By: Markus

Markus — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:34:44 +0000

to Lars: I wasn’t pointing to understanding the technique of some of the best orienteers, nor to the worst. I was just pointing to a very important document called ISOM which states the same (in different words).

By: Jiri Danek

Jiri Danek — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:33:53 +0000

Karst terrain is specific terrain. And not everyone is able to do a good map there. Maps on the left comes from 2008. But customer asked to survey the terrain next year completely again! So, what it means? He was not satisfied with the map. If I compare the examples there are lot of differences especialy of the shape of the contours (well, rock features too). Nothing personal against Italian mapper C.T. but Czech guys put to the map much more effort and their technic skills. My strong opinion is that maps on the right side are much more exact and you can navigate pretty well with them. A map must be exact otherwise it is not a map but a picture! It is necessary to say that I agree with you, Ales and the others, that the use of help contours is really excessive. So, let’s use less help contours and maps on right side are good. I believe that maps on right side are more precise and features are located more exact. Did you try anytime to make a revision of rough and not exact map? Comment to Markus: Sorry, I have never seen that any mapper has too much time to do the map! Jiri Danek, orienteering mapper

By: Kell Sønnichsen

Kell Sønnichsen — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:00:05 +0000

My guess is that the “best” is between the two types. It seems that the details are a bit rough drawn on the old map but I agree with Ales and Andrea that the use of help contours is excessive. If you have 5 m contours then stick to it. If you don’t like that then change the countour interval to 2.5 m and use real countours instead. Orienteers should be able to ignore contour details less that the interval – even when getting lost :-)
Lars, I don’t quite agree with you. It is not the mappers task to squeeze as much information into the map as possible, as you seem to suggest. It is the mappers task to make a precise, readable – also in high speed – map which is consistent in it’s choice of features included and excluded. The latter is the hard part of mapping. Oh, and the map should of course follow ISOM…

By: andrea

andrea — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:38:11 +0000

Since I know this terrain very well, I can say that, IMHU, both mapping styles have a problem: in the old map, some details are drown not so precisely, for example you can see that depressions and hills are too rounded, and this makes very difficult to relocate. In the newer version, I agree with Ales, the use of help contours is excessive, and sometimes it doesn’t give any additional information.
Then, I see a difference in the number of details too. The new mapper puts many more of rocks, boulders etc. so I wonder which should be the spirit of our sport. Is it being fast on the terrain and finding the better way, or being able to find controls hidden in the middle of a maze of details without loosing precoius seconds? If you see old maps, surely orienteering was born with the first goal, but now it has evolved, and we have middle distance too. Maybe it is time to define different mapping styles for middle and long distance? What do you think about that?

By: Ales Hejna

Ales Hejna — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:44:16 +0000

If you look closer on the second sample you see that the amount of new details is not that big. The main difference is the use of help contours. In my opinion the use of help contours is excessive. Some of the help contours just lay between normal contours and add no new information.

By: Lars Lindstrøm

Lars Lindstrøm — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:04:20 +0000

Markus >> I would like to ask you a question? Does a very good mapper understand the orienteering technique of some of the worlds best orienteers? Do you think that it is possible to simplify a map the same way as any orienteer would do?
Of cause it is not possible to simplify as any runner would do, and I really doubt that all mappers understand how elite orienteers navigate. In my opinion, you cannot change the terrain. The task of the mapper is to represent this as perfect as possible, but of cause this will never be completly perfect. The task of the runner is then to choose the information he or she needs for his navigation. But this is ONLY the task of the runner, not the mapper.

By: Markus

Markus — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:43:51 +0000

I like the old style, cause I got a bottle of home-made wine from Cesare 3 years ago after running on one of his maps:)
New maps are clearly too detailed – mapmakers haven’t been able to see the terrain from a viewpoint of a runner. They have too good basemaps or just too much time!
In the sixties when first good o-maps appeared, it was said that: “finally we’ve got maps made to orienteers by orienteers”. Now we’re moving away from this again:(

By: Ivan Nagy

Ivan Nagy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:12:48 +0000

As I see it, the old style maps work well until runner makes a mistake. Once you have to relocate, the new map works better and is more fair. The biggest challenge for detailed style mappers is to make the map readable. Orienteers themselves should be able to simplify the contours on their route.

By: Jan Kocbach

Jan Kocbach — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:04:21 +0000

@Renchix: I like the new style, as in this type of terrain, I really need to do a lot of fine orienteering when being close to the control in order to find the controls without error. I’ve had much better feeling when orienteering on maps of the new style than on maps with the old style in Slovenia. I think it is part of the modern orienteering technique to manage to draw the important details out of a map drawn with the new style.

By: Renchix

Renchix — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:49:03 +0000

Old-style mapping is definitely better. It doesn’t contain most of details unneeded for fast orienteering. And with old-style mapping you definitely know that all the details in the map will be clearly seen also in the terrain. With the new-style not all details shown on map can always be clearly seen in the terrain.