RouteGadget
Maintained by 
During the last couple of years, most major Finnish orienteering events have offered an online utility, RouteGadget (http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi), for competitors to draw and compare their routes. RouteGadget not only shows the routes, but when linked with e-punch results, it allows the race to be replayed, even simulating a mass start. You will actually see little squares run across the map. It really adds another dimension to post-race analysis.
After our Calero event I thought that the Chase would be an ideal race to be replayed with RouteGadget. So, I contacted RouteGadget developer, , in Finland to find out in what terms he would let us try RouteGadget. It turns out that he is developing it as a hobby and offers it for free for non-commercial use. Jarkko has also been very helpful in tuning RouteGadget for our needs. For example, as RouteGadget didn't support SI e-punch file format, he was happy to develop that feature. Not to mention all the little bugs he has fixed along the way.
RouteGadget is now available here (http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi) on the BAOC Web site — I have set up many events with it.
Note that RouteGadget has an option to use the splits file to determine the order in which each competitor visited the controls. This is prefect for Score-Os, Goats, butterfly loops, etc.
How To View
RouteGadget is quite intuitive and easy to use. It also has its own set of instructions. Here's a short summary to give you a quick start:
- First you need to select an event. Start with the Preliminary race.
- To view a race animation, you need to "Choose class/course". Select the Brown course, which was used also as the Preliminary race for the Chase.
- You can move the map around by pressing and holding down the left mouse button somewhere on the map while moving the mouse in the desired direction. Now, locate the start triangle.
- Next, "Choose competitors" whose routes you would like to view. Select everyone (max. 10) who has drawn their route.
- To start the animation, press the "View animation" button, select the "Mass start" option (on by default), and press the "Start" button. Small squares representing the different competitors should start from the triangle.
- During the animation you can move and zoom the map. You can also increase/decrease the animation speed with "Speed+/Speed–" buttons. Moving the pointer to one of the small squares will open a flag that identifies that person.
- You can also view the competitors' routes, splits, and comments.
Special Note for Viewing the Chase
To replay the real Chase in the Calero (http://baoc.org/results/r04/r041003.php) "Chase" event, you need to combine the "Green Right" and "Green Left" courses. You can do this by selecting "All classes" from the "Choose class/course" menu. There is one drawback; the current RouteGadget version cannot show the courses in this mode but the animation still works fine.
How to Draw
Drawing your own routes is equally easy. Simply follow the instructions at the bottom of the RouteGadget page. Here's some additional suggestions:
- 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 in some location 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 creating a small tick mark across your route and oscillated back and forth in place on the tick mark for awhile when you are drawing the route. Then the animation will also appear to pause at the same location.
- 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 beginners 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.
- 4-5: Accidentally drifted much lower than planned. Saw the road and turned.
- 5-6: The undergrowth seemed much slower than mapped. So I switched to the stream bed for a faster route.
- 9-10: Was planning to use the trail bend to attack, but found the boulder and used that instead.
- As the RouteGadget administrator I can remove your route if you realize that you made a drawing mistake after having saved it. Just let me know.
For Course Setters: What kind of files are needed?
Now, that RouteGadget is installed on our Web server, it's quite easy to set up new events. All that is needed are the following 3 files:
- A jpeg or gif image of the map, which can be exported from OCAD. Specs for the image are:
- Resolution should be 100-200 dpi.
- Dimensions should not be larger than 1700x1700 pixels.
- File size should not be much larger than 500 KB for fast download. Thus, the image should only be of the immediate competition area. For example, the Calero map image is 200 dpi, 1800x1300 pixels, and file size is 650 KB.
- Condes course data in XML format. Condes has an export option for doing this.
- SI e-punch splits in csv format (semicolon separated).
RouteGadget has a layout tool that allows the courses to be placed over the map. This takes a few iterations, but is quite easy.
That's all there is to it, RouteGadget handles the rest.
Let me know if you have any problems. Go to RouteGadget (http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi).
Enjoy!
