It's nothing special. They are using standard garmin tools AFAICanTell. They learned from our maps that proper bicycle/topo maps will only provide good routing if preference is given in general for bicycleroutes.

The autorouting is pretty good for cyclists, however because of 2 reasons:
1. their map data quality is very good for normal standards
2. Abundance of cycle routes exist in the netherlands.

Making maps for the netherlands is easy, you just put heavy preference for cycleways and you get great routing. These maps are the first proprietary maps by Garmin that have good outdoor autorouting. (our efforts pay off in Garmin working harder/copying from us)

Our main problem is as allways with OSM data unconnected streets (though much less than some month ago as after months of complaints potlatch got better in this regard), and too sharp turns (this would need to be solved by preprocessing of osm data befote compiling with mkgmap) .
Garmin seems to straighten curvy sections (I know that they do this for the topo Swiss, which frequently on very curvy small mountain trails shows too short distance, in my eyes done on purpose so that such routes are chosen even though garmin gps penalise any curve/corner. This straightened data is only used in the NOD sections. the ways themselves as they show on the map are longer than the underlying routing data. I don't know whether onroute maps have bin built using the same principle, but this could be well possible.

Felix

2009/8/29 Valentijn Sessink <valentyn@blub.net>
Paul Johnson schreef:
> On Sat, 2009-08-29 at 07:29 +0200, Valentijn Sessink wrote:
>> Paul Johnson schreef:
>>> Routing involving cycleways (by bicycle or by car) makes me wonder why
>>> nobody's bothered getting Garmin's SDK and create new software for those
>>> units...
>> http://onroute.nl/
>
> What is it?

Sorry for the confusion. I know them for their bicycle map - they have a
motorbike and walking map, too, it seems.

Here's the Babelfish-translation of http://www.onroute.nl/fiets/112,
edited by me to have one meaning. (I didn't fix the computer translation
at all, I just made the meaning of the text clear, it's stil computer
generated English).

"By who were the OnRoute bicycle map developed?

The OnRoute bicycle card were developed by a shop named WayPoint.
WayPoint a shop is, specialised in leisure navigation. Started from the
hobby, but nowadays we have three shops. Beside the main shop in Twentse
Notter, there are two in Moordrecht (Gouda) and Vessem (Eindhoven).

Waypoint sells GPS devices for a lot of years especially for walk and
bicycles. But observed thereby that these devices for many people are
too technical. This is what Waypoint has wanted to change with their
OnRoute bicycle map.

The map was made in association with the Belgian company RouteYou.
RouteYou introduced especially technical mapping knowledge, which it
made possible to connect our "beautiful roads network" to the maps of
TeleAtlas. The conversion to Garmin-kaarten did WayPoint themselves. The
"beautiful roads network" work came about on the basis of several
sources, especially on the basis of the collected tracks of people who
themselves cycled a certain route. Thus the site www.gpstracks.nl have
for example made an important contribution. "

Valentijn
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