Elevation Profiles?

[aiwetir]

Is there any interest in including elevation profiles in the Field Guide. With OSM/GraphHopper routing matched with online elevation profile generators and people's gpx files, it would seem quite easy today.

There's probably some larger discussion to be had about it, like do we need to give everyone everything or should they discover things themselves etc. but putting it out there, I can work on these over the winter a bit.

[adamschneider]

All I'll say is that I highly recommend ignoring recorded GPS elevation data. No matter which online profile generator you use, GPS Visualizer can help by replacing a GPS file's elevation data with numbers that come from a DEM database:

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_in ... ation=auto


(To reduce horizontal noise, I also recommend using GPS Visualizer's "trackpoint distance threshold" filter; see http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/tutorials/ ... lters.html.)

[Bosterson]

I have previously suggested to other Field Guide editors that every hike in the Field Guide should have a trail map of some kind to help readers make sense of the written description. I think between the users on here, we should be able to come up with GPX tracks for most, if not all, of the hikes in the Field Guide. Then we would just need to go about collecting the tracks, making maps, and adding them into the hike pages.

If you have any tracks you'd like to submit for hikes, I'd be happy to make a map and add it to the FG.

[aiwetir]

All I'll say is that I highly recommend ignoring recorded GPS elevation data. No matter which online profile generator you use, GPS Visualizer can help by replacing a GPS file's elevation data with numbers that come from a DEM database:

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_in ... ation=auto


(To reduce horizontal noise, I also recommend using GPS Visualizer's "trackpoint distance threshold" filter; see http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/tutorials/ ... lters.html.)

While I do agree with all of this, I think that we wouldn't necessarily need a very accurate profile for the field guide, just something as a reference so people get an idea what they are getting into. OTOH after using dedicated Garmin cycling units, handheld GPS units and GaiaGPS, I've found the 3 of them to be usually within 10% EG of what the FG says.

Something like the attached IMO is fine for the FG, but yes smoothing even that would be a nice touch since the spikes bother my OCD.

[bobcat]

I think it would be fine if we added elevation profiles below a map. I'm not going to do it, but if anyone wants to add the profiles, go ahead!