Suunto navigation tendency to auto-reverse route when it shouldn't. Bug or misguided feature?
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On a few occasions I noticed a tendency of navigation to inappropriately auto-reverse the route where I wouldn’t really expect it to. Here is one recent example:
I ran counter-clockwise starting at the point at the top of the watch screen. At some point towards the end I decided to take an alternative trail with an intention to later merge into the original route. You can see the point at the bottom of the screen (above the 0 digit) where I diverged. To my surprise, when I was about to merge back, the light blue directional arrow appeared on the map, and it pointed me away from the end (down on this screenshot) of the route as if the route reversed at that point. The problem is that with the map zoomed in it wasn’t obvious which way was towards the end. I decided to stop and double check the map because this seemed wrong.
To make this even more misleading, the distance field at the bottom shows the distance along the original direction, not the one that corresponds to the light blue part. So it made me believe that it was only 1.4 miles to the end, but have I followed the light blue directional arrows, it would end up being a much longer way. At minimum, the distance must always be consistent with the direction guidance.
I think route auto-reversing is potentially a good feature, but it should be activated only if I already run on the route in the opposite direction for some distance, meaning I know what I am doing. It cannot just decide to flip the direction when I go off-route for whatever reason. In this case I didn’t run any distance in the opposite direction, so it definitely should have preserved the original route direction. What it did was misleading and borderline dangerous! Imagine someone who has ran out of water being sent on a long detour away from safety of their car. I should add that this isn’t the first time this happened. I’ve definitely seen this issue in the past.
If I could further improve this feature, it would be nice to keep seeing light blue directional arrows even when I am off-route - on the part of the route that it closest to me. That way, if I zoomed out I’d still see not only where the original route is but also which way it goes. That would give me a better idea how to merge back.
Note to mods or beta testers: could anyone please mention this issue to the development team.
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@sky-runner I do think it would be handy to notify somehow that the route is reversed. Different colour maybe or chevrons. It is very easy to go the wrong way and not realise it…
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@Audaxjoe there is already a different color (light blue vs dark blue) and arrows on the screen. But the problem is that it decided to reverse the original direction, so what it is showing me on that picture above is misleading.
Yes, maybe having a notification that it reversed the route would be good. That should be an absolute minimum. Ideally, I would prefer the watch to never reverse the direction automatically. It has to be a menu command. I have to make a decision to reverse.
Alternatively, I have to be running on the actual route for a substantial distance, at least a few minutes, before it reversed. But that wasn’t the case here.
Can anyone who has contact with the Suunto team comment on this?
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S sky-runner referenced this topic
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@sky-runner I’ve encountered the exact same situation and share your thoughts. I think the auto-reverse function causes more problems than it solves. One issue is that not all of the navigation features reverse at the same time. As you’ve noted, it seems the light blue directional arrow reverses first, but the distance remaining and turn notifications lag behind and don’t update until well after.
For sure there should be at minimum a notification that the route has reversed. However, I agree that reversing the route should only be done through the menu. Navigation -> Route -> Select Route -> Do Route in Reverse. This is how others do it.
