Wednesday, October 26, 2011

A Helicopter View of Cycling Routes


Google Maps recently added a popular option to view a quick preview of your driving directions using the Google Earth browser plugin. The Google Earth tour was quickly dubbed 'helicopter view' by many users.

Perfilderuta is a website that lets you plan bicycling routes and it also features a 'helicopter view' of your routes using the Google Earth plugin.

Creating cycling routes with Perfilderuta is very easy. You just need to right click on the map once to set your starting point and once to set the destination (you also have the option to use main or secondary roads in your route).



The map will then display your route on the Google Map and tell you the distance, the maximum and minimum altitude of the route and the total ascent and descent on your route. Users can then view an altitude chart of the route or view a tour of the route in Google Earth.

Perfilderuta includes a lot of other very handy options, such as adding localities to the route (this will tell you how far it is to different towns and locations along your route). You can also download the route to use with a GPS unit.

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