Route Gadget

Maintained by Greg Lennon and Valerie Meyer

Developed by Finnish orienteer and programmer Jarkko Ryyppö, RouteGadget allows orienteers to draw and compare their routes online. It is also a great training and teaching aid, and quite useful to course setters. RouteGadget can also replay a race showing any combination of orienteers.

Please note that maps and courses shown in RouteGadget are made available by QOC for personal use only, and are not to be distributed or copied in any form without explicit permission from QOC. We also recommend that you keep your computer's version of Java up to date for security reasons.

Instructions

Viewing Courses

Here's a short summary to get you started:

Select an event from the main QOC RouteGadget Results page.
Instructions are shown below the map.
Move the map around by pressing and holding down the left mouse button anywhere on the map while moving the mouse in the desired direction. Zoom in or out with the + and - buttons.
To view a race animation, pulldown a choice from the 'Choose class/course' menu. The numbers in parentheses are the number of routes currently entered by runners.
Next, 'Choose competitors' whose routes you would like to view. Click on any combination of names (max. 10) from among those who have drawn their route.
To start the animation, press 'View animation' button, leave the 'Mass start' option checked (on by default), and press 'Start' button. Small squares representing the different competitors as named at the top of the map display will start moving from the start triangle.
During the animation you can move and zoom the map. You can also increase/decrease the animation speed with 'Speed+/Speed-' buttons.
You can also view the competitor's routes, splits, and comments by selecting 'View Routes'.
If you're getting a "No Map!" or similar error, when you really think there is one, your browser probably has had too many tabs and windows open for too long. Clear all history, close tabs, and restart the browser. This problem tends to affect inveterate internet surfers, trying to load a large map.

Drawing Your Route

Drawing your own route is equally easy. Simply follow the instructions at the bottom of the RouteGadget page. A few tips:

The 'Undo' button at the top will undo mistakes.
The '3 sec' button next to the 'Undo' button can be used to indicate hesitating or stopping in place.
You must click at the center of a control you have reached, which causes the blue "next control" line to point directly to the next control. If you don't see the blue line, you haven't made it to the control.
Make sure to SAVE your route when complete by clicking the "Save" button! RouteGadget displays a message, "Congratulations - You May Now Save Your Route" in the lower left window area when this is possible.
If you can't save your route, you probably didn't hit the middle of one (or more) of the control circles, so check them carefully.
RouteGadget spreads your time out evenly along the route that you draw for each leg. This may not be accurate, particularly if you had trouble with any part of the leg. If you wandered around make sure to include a lot of fine detail in your drawing, even if you don't know exactly where you were. This will appear to slow the animation in that
area (and not on the part of the leg where you did well). You can also artificially introduce a pause, if, for example, you stood for a minute relocating. You can show this by oscillating back and forth in place in one area for awhile when you are drawing the route.
In some cases the routes will speak for themselves, but there is also a comment field for you to use. You can write to the comment field when you think of things while you are drawing your route. This can be particularly helpful for anyone looking at the
animations and wondering what was going on. Was the route planned or accidental? If it was planned, what was the thinking? Make sure to include the leg number in the comment since the comment is associated with the entire course. For example:
- 1-2: Aimed for the fence corner to use it as an attack point - but missed it.
- 3-4: Made 180 degree error leaving control; corrected only after hitting trail.
- 4-5: Accidentally drifted much lower than planned. Saw the road and headed back up.
- 5-6: Deadfall wasn't mapped and was very slow! Bailed out to trail.
- 8-9: Followed someone who clearly knew where they were going, until I realized she must have been on a different course. Reminder to self: don't follow!
- 10-11: Was planning to use the trail bend as the attack point, but saw big boulder and used it instead.
- 11-12: Hypoxia setting in, must have been daydreaming, totally lost contact with map and had to relocate.
As the RouteGadget administrators we can remove your route after it's saved if you realize you made a drawing mistake. Just let us know.

See the World via RouteGadget

Thousands of orienteering maps from around the world can be viewed by following the club and event links indexed at the international RouteGadgetwebsite. Have fun checking out terrains from many parts of the planet!