Why is the heatmap rendering in the route editor so bad?

Heikoo 13 days ago

I am comparing the Strava and Garmin route/course editor in terms of the popularity heatmap:

Strava: Smooth colorshading of heatmap lines, consistent behavior when zooming in/out
Garmin: Rough shading, heatmap lines vanish on certain zoom levels

It's a bit hard to describe, but becomes clear when trying to create a route on both platforms. The visual issues on Garmin side make it much harder to get a good understanding of the popularity situation in a certain area.

In addition, Strava added a couple more heatmap features like more recent (weekly) or night heatmap. However i would be perfectly happy with better rendering.

I am checking Garmin from time to see if there were improvement but nope. Unfortunately this is the only reason i still have a Strava subscription.

0 FlowState 12 days ago

Yeah, the Garmin route editor / courses UI is just bad and I don't think it will ever be as good as strava or even something as simple as onthegomap

e.g.

Strava: street name is displayed on top of the route track, so you can read it

Garmin: the route track can completely cover the street name. for small streets, you might not be able to see their name at all unless you adjust the zoom

Strava: shows handy list of course points in the route editor which allows you to delete, rearrange, and name them (and all of those functions work properly)

Garmin: only shows list of course points in the app, not the website. if you delete a course point from the end of your route, it just messes up your route (e.g. by somehow adding distance)

Strava: allows you to extend your route to a point already covered by the existing route (so you can create loops). handled intuitively by asking you if you want to add a point or end/extend the route here, when you click on the existing track

Garmin: if you click on the existing track, it always inserts a point

(to be fair, loops are fairly pointless when following a course as when you physically do a loop for the nth time, the device doesn't really distinguish between you being "on course" the whole time and following the loops properly, or you going back and "re-doing the course". if you only specified 1 loop in the course, but you physically went back and did a 2nd loop, the device would just say, "oh they went off course for a second, but now they're back on course again, no problem!" If you specified 2 loops in the course and you accidentally only did 1 loop, again the device would just briefly tell you you went of course, then immediately tell you you're back on course, as you exit the loop.

iow you wouldn't be able to tell from the device's navigation directions whether you should do 1 loop, 5 loops or 10 loops. you would have to memorize or otherwise indicate the correct number of loops in a different way.)

Strava: when you look at the list of your routes, shows you *all* routes

Garmin: now filters your routes based on the position and zoom level of the map. to see all routes, you may have to manually adjust the zoom/position of the map

I could go on an on. Garmin has a ton of UI/UX issues in other areas, I don't think that they will ever be known for great UX.

(To be fair, they have improved the UI on the devices.)