mapmyride vs google earth

Rooner

I'm sure lots of people here use both these tools, but what do you think about the hill / climb accuracy? The reason I ask is I went on a ride recently, and went up a beast of a hill (goes from the car park for the Dewerstone up and through Shaugh Prior if anyone knows it). Hardest hill I've done yet, and my home turf isn't exactly flat.

Thing is, mapmyride said the climb was 4km, averaging 3.7%, whereas if you measure the exact same climb in google earth, it says the climb is around 1.5 to 2km, average 7.9% with a maximum of near 18% (which felt more realistic).

I'm sure I read somewhere that they both use the same 'info', ie google earth, but this does seem weird? And this morning, I rode in a different way, mapmyride gave the final short climb (250m at 4%ish a climb) a category 5.....yet it was only 250m??? Thinking of not bothering with any of it and just enjoying the rides!

Phil_D

Where are thiose two places?

briantrumpet

It looks a bit confused in both cases - re Google Earth, there's a discussion here:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/e ... 5280&hl=en
and a Wikipedia piece here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Ear ... d_accuracy

For any sites that use Google Maps, I think the resolution of elevation data is quite low, and so it underestimates climbing quite severely in some cases - comparing it with programs that use Ordnance Survey 50m-resolution data, it seems to miss out all the lumps and bumps.

Rooner

The place I mentioned is southern edge of Dartmoor, basically linking Bickleigh with Lee Moor.

Rooner

I think the distance accuracy seems pretty good, so that's probably good enough. I'll just judge hills on how hard I find them, and that's a good one.