Course Overprint on Urban Maps

[SJC]

The need to show buildings in the olive green will depend on how much they are needed for navigation.
If the olive green block has normal roads round its edges and no pathways through it then mapping the buildings adds no value.
However, if you are looking for a small passage which runs through the olive green then how many houses you need to pass before you get to it is important so they should be mapped. This also helps to avoid the problem of inadvertently running down a dead end into someone's back garden.

[roadrunner]

While deleting those buildings would not have been my personal choice, it is hard to understand why the controller thinks that the resulting map "is not suitable for a UK Urban League event".

^^^ This.
While you can agree or disagree whether a 3 bed semi constitutes a small or a large building. What detail to put within areas that are not going to be visited by competitors (nor the mapper presumably) are hardly critical to the competitor - so it seems odd that the controller has made so much of an issue of it. For me the important detail is the nature of the boundary at the edge of the competition area - though this is often missed. Out of bounds areas are usually good places to put control numbers - and these are clearer if the underlying area is a simple block of colour.

But it also seems a bit odd that when the mapper has made a start to decluttering the map the first thing they pay attention to is the least important - things within OOB areas. Most urban maps are over-detailed and priority should be on increasing the clarity of the parts of the map WITHIN the competition area. Things such as removing kerb lines, widening paths, ensuring minimum spaces between objects, exaggerating short impassable walls, clarifying passage entrances, simplifying fiddly contours, ensuring minimum spacing for steps, etc. Most O maps would throw up a huge amount of red if put through the OCAD legibility checker - and this would be a good place to start.

I think what detail to include in OOB depends a lot on the area. Take a look at this example; the distinction (on the ground) between public roads and private driveways isn't all that clear, and including both the out-of-bounds driveways and the buildings will certainly help stop runners from inadvertently going OOB - especially distinguising between the two heading NW and W near the centre.

[Len]

If the olive green block has normal roads round its edges and no pathways through it then mapping the buildings adds no value.

Not true at all. To give the clearest example, at a UKUL event a couple of years back, I arrived at the centre of the circle to find no flag. Went a bit further, no sign. To assure myself I was in the right place I had to count the houses from the previous junction, where there was a telegraph pole that I decided was where the control should have been hung, and I carried on assuming it had been removed or hung somewhere else. With no houses mapped this would have been more time consuming and inexact.

[pete.owens]

If the olive green block has normal roads round its edges and no pathways through it then mapping the buildings adds no value.

Not true at all. To give the clearest example, at a UKUL event a couple of years back, I arrived at the centre of the circle to find no flag. Went a bit further, no sign. To assure myself I was in the right place I had to count the houses from the previous junction, where there was a telegraph pole that I decided was where the control should have been hung,

Controls must be hung at mapped features, with a matching description. So either the telegraph pole itself should have been mapped, and given as the CD - or it was a convenient thing to use that was immediately adjacent the the mapped and described feature. Your control description will not have been "middle building, 20m west of".

Presumably the raw results will not have been allowed to stand - measuring how much time different competitors spend searching for a non existent control is not really part of the sport.

[Len]

It was just “path, north side” as is quite common in urban races, rightly or wrongly.
Therefore, to reiterate, the way I assured myself I was in the right place was via checking the number of houses.

The results are not really relevant to the point being made. If I had been in the wrong place and the control in the right place, I’d have still counted the number of houses.

[greywolf]

I've seen some bizarre interpretations of the rules / spec but this is quite special and clearly not in line with either IOF guidance or usual practice. I hope the mapper spent as much time ensuring all the gaps and features meet the minimum distances/sizes in the spec...

[awk]

The map for yesterday's event at Bedale followed the same pattern as Richmond will today*, with no houses mapped - mainly because it was a first map for someone who had been taught by Richmond's mapper. It caused quite a few problems, not least people going up driveways and private roads/entrances that they thought were the marked passages. The feedback (numerous people) I heard was unanimous in feeling that this was a backward step, but then I might have spoken only to people who felt that. Personally, I had no problems in terms of time losses, but did find the map harder to use, not in a way that improved the orienteering.

As for 'washing dirty linen' in public, I think, as ever, the whole story is not in the public domain. I do know more of the background, but as a third party not enough to detail publicly as I'll obviously get things wrong, but from what I do know, think this was about the best compromise allowing the event to go ahead. Certainly, as a controller, I wouldn't want anybody to be under any illusion that I as controller approved these (late) changes by the mapper for what is meant to be a national league competition.

(*I'm not running)

[King Penguin]

Richmond 3 b.jpg (8.39 KiB) Viewed 1873 times

Richmond 3 a.jpg (8.09 KiB) Viewed 1873 times

A great course at Richmond today. I had no problem with the missing buildings (though I still believe they should have been left on the map). However some of the narrow gaps should have been widened to make it clear they existed. Can you get through the wall at the top of the steps south of 3 ? The answer is yes but I still can't see it on the printed map and have to enlarge it on screen to see it. (Circle was smaller on the printed map)

[Len]

Agreed, the lack of buildings was not the main problem with the map. It was any narrow feature not being clear enough. I really struggled with clarity in several places, and I don't usually. Most notably the control you could only access from the north above the market place, where the mapped canopy (essentially an archway) looked like an uncrossable wall, making it impossible to access. There was too much detail in places, which as a mapper I have been guilty of, so a learning point for me too.

I note the map says "original cartography by an online bot" which seems unusual.
Would be interesting to understand what that means. Presumably not open O map, or it would say so/ be credited.

[IanD]

Really like the cartography of the houses-in-olive-green on today's Canford Heath map: https://www.otools.uk/maps/view?code=wsx&id=93

The houses are mapped, and at one point I counted them to find the right alley to turn into.

However, the normal dark line around them is missing (and possibly they are a slightly paler shade of grey). The overall effect is that they are still clear on the map, but the contours and purple numbers show up much better than normal.

Seems the perfect solution to me.

[rf_fozzy]

Really like the cartography of the houses-in-olive-green on today's Canford Heath map: https://www.otools.uk/maps/view?code=wsx&id=93

The houses are mapped, and at one point I counted them to find the right alley to turn into.

However, the normal dark line around them is missing (and possibly they are a slightly paler shade of grey). The overall effect is that they are still clear on the map, but the contours and purple numbers show up much better than normal.

Seems the perfect solution to me.

Except it completely ignores the ISSprOM specs on several levels - and for no good reason. (If I were controlling this event, I would have insisted in changing this map back to ISSprOM2019 specs).

https://omapwiki.orienteering.sport/sym ... uilding-2/

It might be the screen, but the contours are so dark too. I find it extremely difficult to read that map.

We should stick to the specs as far as possible, but with minor 'bending' where required for Urban represenatation (rather than sprint).

There are easier ways to solve the difficulty in reading the numbers (bold, white outline, move to better locations) and circles/lines (thicken and overlay, but with appropriate cutting), plus a tweak to the purple colour to C20, M100.

You don't need to reinvent the whole specs by not mapping buildings or coming up with other non-standard solutions that are just confusing.

[pete.owens]

Missing out outlines of buildings outside the competition area is rather less of a violation of ISSprOM than changing the dimensions and thicknesses of the purple symbols.

[rf_fozzy]

Missing out outlines of buildings outside the competition area is rather less of a violation of ISSprOM than changing the dimensions and thicknesses of the purple symbols.

What a surprise, Mr Know it All thinks he knows best. On every topic that comes up on here.

We've spent a lot of time trying tweaks to improve readability and given no-one noticed from the 2022 British Sprints, the most recent UKOL and UKUL events I've mapped/planned, personally I think we've got it right....

The purple overprint is still the purple overprint and it's clear what these mean to any competitor to any country - it's just clearer to read.

Whereas changing the underlying symbols away from the spec is just confusing.

[IanD]

Except it completely ignores the ISSprOM specs on several levels - and for no good reason. (If I were controlling this event, I would have insisted in changing this map back to ISSprOM2019 specs).

I agree that the Canford map had other deviations from ISSOM which I wouldn't advocate (although I can't say that any of them caused me any trouble).

My point is solely that I think omitting the black line around the edge of buildings within olive green does improve readability. Certainly I regard it as preferable to missing the buildings out altogether.