MTB visibility at high and low zooms

[michaelblyons]

Thank you for including mountain biking stuff on your map!¹ I'm having trouble with two things relating to MTB-focused ways, and one of them interferes with the obvious solution for the other:

1. When I am zoomed-out, I want to see an overview of interesting areas for mountain biking. The obvious thing to do is to tag them with route=mtb relations, so they appear with the brown glow, even at low zoom. BUT

2. When I zoom in closely to see the features of a location, the brown glow really obscures all the helpful stuff you've put into the base layer. It's harder, for instance, to distinguish the difficulty levels (which may already be hard without the overlay; see #479).

   My experience with road & trekking cycling is that the surface of a route does not significantly change moment-to-moment (exceptions exist: I'm looking at you, cobblestones). But in a MTB area, different difficulties can be almost on top of each other. And if I make them "routes," they all look the same—brown.

Would it be possible to do something like this (or another method?):

• When you're zoomed out, say from 11-13, all mtb:scale and mtb:scale:imba ways get the brown line.
• When you're zoomed in on a route=mtb relation (≥16?), can you dim the glow or move it underneath the way render?

That way, when my wife says "Hey, let's go here for vacation," I can pull up your map and scan for MTB facilities within 30km and zoom in to examine the interesting ones.

_{¹ As a road cyclist, too; your road/path cycling is my favorite OSM bike map as well.}

[Florimondable]

Hi, thank you for the kind words :) Do you have examples to show, I do gravel bike but never did MTB so I’m not an expert. We’ll look to the issues you raised, though feature balance is always difficult.

[Florimondable]

I see issue here https://www.cyclosm.org/#map=18/46.59918/8.66042/cyclosm

[michaelblyons]

Do you have examples to show

Sure, here's another one. Your link is also good.

I do gravel bike but never did MTB so I’m not an expert.

I'm no expert, either. I rode gravel/trek on a CX frame for years, but just recently started MTB during the pandemic.

We’ll look to the issues you raised, though feature balance is always difficult.

I understand. 👍

• The z11-z13 proposal is low-impact in my area, but it might be annoying in other places.
• The z16+ proposal… I don't know if that's possible in the engine.

Other alternatives or suggestions are welcome. 😃

[Phyks]

When you're zoomed in on a route=mtb relation (≥16?), can you dim the glow or move it underneath the way render?

This should already be dimmed but it might not be enough.

[ultibo]

Hello, I'm having issue with mountain bike visibility as well. I've found a solution with the application OSMAnd they have a toggle to enable mountain bike highlighting After a lot of research I've found this is the easiest and more visible for me when biking, it's super clear and easy to catch in a glance where you are heading

mtb:scale / mtb:scale:imba is rendered with a color (see screenshot and legend) mtb:scale:uphill is rendered with a small black mark parrallel to the path (1 to 5) both (especially the first one) are really useful and easy to read, I would recommend doing something visually similar in open cycle map.

source : https://osmand.net/docs/user/map-legend/osmand/#routes

Same area in CyclOSM, really hard to read while biking