Elevation ProfileFORUMS HOME SEARCH FORUMS

Hello, 

I run a Cycling Tours company and I very often use plotaroute when creating new rides. I find the website very good but from my point of view there is a lack of having different elevation profiles. I´m missing tools to change colours, show different gradients, etc. I´m just looking to create more professional elevation frofiles and can´t find anything else. 

Thank you very much and have a great day. 

Thanks for this feedback Alberto.  I'd be interested to know more about about the features you'd like us to develop - are there any examples you can give?

Also, just in case you're not aware, you can show gradients on route maps, with steeper graidents being shown in darker shades of red or green depending on whether they are uphill or downhill.  You can read more about this in our guide on How to Show Gradients on a Route Map.

John

Hello John, 

Thank you so much for your reply. 

Please see the link of a bike sportive that we really like their climbing profile. It´s called  Vuelta Al Teide and as you can see they have what we think it´s a professional cycling profile. 

It would be great to be able to change colour, change the scale all the profiles we usea during a week are under the same scale, to show the gradient also on the profile and not just on the map, be able to add simbols, etc

I don´t know if I have explain myself or not. 

Regards

Alberto D.

Thanks for that Alberto.

I'm not sure if you're aware but you can already add labels to the route profile chart (aligned horizontally or vertically as in the example you gave) - have a look at this example: https://www.plotaroute.com/routeprofile/135741. The labels don't include symbols but this might be something we can look at adding.

You can also change the chart to show gradient rather than elevation by clicking the "%" button above the chart.

Can I check on a couple of the other things you mentioned? 

Changing the colour - do you mean an option to change the colour of the chart itself, from green to something else?

Changing the scale - are you looking for an option to specify the maximum value of the Y axis? We already have a slider to change the minimum value of the Y axis but we could certainly look at providing some way to set the maximum value too.  As you say, this would make charts for different routes more visually comparable.

John

Hello John, 

Thanks again for your kind anwer. Please see below my replies to your comments. 

The labels don't include symbols but this might be something we can look at adding.

That´s what I would like, to have symbols to add to the profile such as the category of the climb, a feedstation, a danger point, food stop ........

You can also change the chart to show gradient rather than elevation by clicking the "%" button above the chart.

I know that button but that change completely te profile. I meant to make different for example the climbing part, different colours depending on the gradient. 

Changing the colour - do you mean an option to change the colour of the chart itself, from green to something else?

Yes.

Changing the scale - are you looking for an option to specify the maximum value of the Y axis?

Exactly. Let´s say in the same week I have 6 different rides and in 5 of them the different from the highest point to the lowest is more or less 6000ft and in the ride number 6, the difference is 1500ft because it´s a recovery ride and the climbing is not that much. When I compare the 6 profiles, the different one will look very unaccurate due to the scale on the Y axis. 

Alberto. 

Thanks Alberto - that's really helpful. We'll put this on the list to look at - I think it would be something that lots of our users would appreciate. The only thing I'm not sure about is how we provide options to both change the colour of the whole chart and also show different sections of the chart in different colours depending on the gradient, but we'll give it some thought.

John

Thank you 

Dear Plotaroute. First, what an amazing site: a great resource that, from what I have read elsewhere, seems to enjoy a reputation for the most accurate/reliable processing of uploaded gpx data. Are you able to share details about, or to put me in contact with someone who knows about, what smoothing algorithms you use for the elevations when computing the total-ascent data? When I look at my elevation data in Garmin Basecamp it's up and down like a yo-yo, but it looks smooth here ... AND, the results here agree very well with laborious contour counting from paper maps whereas Basecamp has been out by as much as 50% when using the yo-yo data. Many thanks in advance, Mark, Yorkshire, UK.

Hi Mark - glad you like the site, thanks for the kind feedback. We don't apply additional smoothing to our elevation profiles as standard, but we do use fixed interval sampling which will iron out some bumps and dips. Our Route Profile tool enables you to apply additional smoothing by increasing the sampling interval and filtering our more short bumps. You can access this by clicking "Explore Hills in More Detail" from the View Route page (just above the elevation profile) - this is an example: https://www.plotaroute.com/routeprofile/2. 

Thanks PAR Admin. I'd spotted that 'Explore' button, but my question was related to the underlying maths involved. I'm a maths prof at a UK Uni and this whole area fascinates me. I'd actually like to work with sites such as yours to improve the estimated distances and ascents from the raw gpx data and, indeed, I'll be launching a new Masters project on this very shortly. I've already got some basic ideas about data smoothing and the mathematical modelling of data error, so I'd be really keen to talk to you g[uy/irl]s (perhaps offline) about taking such a venture forward. I think it could be a good symbiosis. Keep up the good work ;-) M

Feel free to contact us directly Mark - we're pretty busy at the moment but I'll do my best to help. John