Suggestion: Interoperability/Integration with other route planners

[Tim Thompson]

For what it's worth...

MRA has the ability to import routes from other sources/planners. However, I don't see a way to do it with custom Google Maps routes. Playing around with My Maps, from what I can tell, MRA doesn't play well with My Maps KMLs.

Scenic seems to play with Google...

Scenic Google Maps import

You can create custom routes in Google Maps or My Maps and just past a link in Scenic's web app and boom - you have it. Might be handy if somebody shared a route/link with you that was created with one of those apps.

Want to use Kurviger.de? Create your route and just tell Kurviger.de to send to Scenic. Open Scenic and there it is.

Send to Scenic

Might be cool if there was another option to send it directly to MRA. Same thing for Furkot fans (I raise my hand here), Of course this would take some collaboration obviously. Perhaps not likely to happen, but just throwing it over the fence as a nice to have.

[Hans van de Ven MR.MRA]

@Tim-Thompson
Hi Tim,
Why? MRA has everything in-house, why would you create a route in another application?

[Con Hennekens]

@Hans-van-de-Ven-MRA-Master, probably for the same reason some people make routes for their Garmins and TomToms with MRA

I too sometimes use Kurviger to predefine a "better than straight" route, and finetune that with the Michelin layer (green roads). Many navigation planners claim to make "beautiful" routes, but in reality it is always up to the user to make a route beautiful. The only map that really works is OnRoute (does that still exist?), because that one prefers roads that are often used in other people's routes. There is metadata in that method that could be gathered by MRA from their own "bigdata", but I think it wil become unpredictable when automated because people also make AtoB routes over highways. Better would be an option to automatically follow as many as "Michelin Green Roads" as possible. But I guess that is difficult, since it is a layer and not a routable map...

[MyRoute-app community]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your suggestion. It is a good one. As Hans mentioned, we aim to offer everything needed to plan and experience your routes.

That said, our core business has always been to be an 'open platform' with maximal interoperability to competitors and partners.

No promises on my end, but note that your suggestion has been seen. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Timo

[Tim Thompson]

@Hans-van-de-Ven-MRA-Master said in Suggestion: Interoperability/Integration with other route planners:

@Tim-Thompson
Hi Tim,
Why? MRA has everything in-house, why would you create a route in another application?

No offense here Hans, but the word that immediately jumped into my mind when reading this was "myopic". As I've mentioned before, I don't use MRA as my primary route planner. I disagree with your viewpoint that MRA has it all - eliminating the necessity for any other. I'm not wedded to any platform. I tend to look at - and run through their paces - as many options as time allows. What I end up using in the end depends on which one (or ones) best accomplishes - in my view - what I need from it (or them). There are - in my view - other options that are both more useful and more capable for route planning than MRA (in particular in meeting the needs that are important to me). Don't get me wrong, I think MRA is a decent option for what it is, but I don't think it's the be all - end all.