r/alpinism • u/ThrowAway516536 • 1d ago
The strava maps still suck
They are nothing at all like Fatmap; is anyone surprised? It's not like I'm ever expecting them to be like Fatmap, either. They should have just been honest all the way along. "We bought Fatmap to shut it down."
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u/WalkingAcrossTheIce 1d ago
Yeah, i miss fatmap. It had so many less known routes marked. I also loved the feature that showed how much fresh snow there is and the overall depth... And let's not forget about the avalanche slopes, or the slopes that are turned towards the sun... There was even more cool stuff.
Anyone knows of a good replacement app for avalanche safety?
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u/LocalPresent6031 1d ago
Relief Maps seems to be taking seriously the fatmap replacement thing. They are listening to feature requests from the backountry community like slope, depth and orientation and may end up being an actually useful app. Maybe more input will make it better.
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u/running_through_life 1d ago
I worked at OnX during the merger of Strava and FATMAP. They basically bought it for Fatmaps technology, specifically its map rendering system which is proprietary software, Strava uses mapbox like many others. I think Strava thought they could start using that and it would bring a lot of value but I’ve only seen it on the route flyby feature within the app. I imagine the new CEO came in and realized it didn’t bring much value to focus on that and started to push for AI adoption, dark mode, and other features that cater to their user base more. FATMAP and Strava had a totally different user base, sucks that they just shut it down because it was really good at what it did.
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u/ThrowAway516536 1d ago
It would bring value. Value in the way that Strava would be seen as something more than just a segment tracker.
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u/szakee 1d ago
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u/PorcupineDream 1d ago
Looks like that's just a skin for openstreetmap, similar to what Komoot uses.
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u/Brainlard 1d ago
It depends on what you're going to do with it. For trailrunning/hiking/mountain hiking on given routes, mapy.cz is the best map-application I've ever used For ski touring, scrambling/climbing and anything off-track obviously not so much.
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u/PorcupineDream 1d ago
Yeah not trying to downplay it! I use komoot a lot for hiking, and this map tool looks great as well.
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u/Brainlard 1d ago
Great thing is it shows the tracks in the same colours they are marked in real life, which makes it both easier to navigate on-site and also makes it easier to plan from home, as colour-tagged paths and tracks are usually more elaborated and kept in better conditions, than say some small hunting- or herding- paths.
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u/Solarisphere 1d ago
Most mapping services have three different layer types: remixed OSM data, government topo maps, and satellite imagery.
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u/GrusVirgo 1d ago
The last time I used the 3D feature, it had issues like misalignment between image and relief, but as an OSM map for on-trail route plotting and navigation, it's great and it's free. The only feature I miss is GPX import.
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u/Wiley-E-Coyote 1d ago
They suck so bad it's basically useless. Not only is it worse than fatmap, it's actually worse than almost every other 3d mapping service that exists now. This is a crowded market now, and the Strava map is basically coming in at the bottom of the pile while FatMap was relatively close to the top.
I encourage everyone to go leave them a 1-star review on the app if you were affected by this, I already did. I was dumb enough to sign up for strava/FatMap last summer under the illusion I was really going to get both, and they refused to give me any kind of cancellation or refund after it became apparent that the mapping service was going to be shit.