Velo Flow is a great way to visualise your rides but it really comes into its own when used to view group rides, be they club runs, sportives or races. Watch as you try and drop your club mates on a climb or get left behind with a mechanical before meeting back up at the cafe stop.
How-To videos now available!
Whichever the type of ride, the steps to go through to get the best Velo Flow of your ride are the same and very easy.
- If you haven’t already, get your data on VeloViewer!
- Click on your “Rides” tab.
- Find your ride and click on its title to view the Ride Details page.
- Click on the “Segments” tab to view all the segments on this ride.
- Look down the list to the 1st segment that everyone will have ridden. The closest, short one to the start fo the group part of the ride would be best to catch the most riders.
- Click the Velo Flow link for that segment (arrow on right hand side), load all the rides and you’re away!
How to use the Velo Flow page
Now you’ve reached Velo Flow you’ve got many options in what to do next. If it’s your first time then just press the “Load rides” button using the default values and see how it goes. However, if you want more then have a play with some of the settings:
- Number of rides: You can choose to load 10, 25, 50, 100 or all rides (the total number of rides for this segment on the chosen date is displayed below the segment name). The more rides you pick the more memory will need to be used on your PC/Mac/tablet/phone. If your browser crashes then you probably don’t have enough memory for the number of rides you’ve requested.
- Time gap (seconds): This is the time gap between the animation points and you can choose between 1, 2, 5, 10, 30 and 60 seconds. The smaller the time gap then the smoother the animation but there is a sweet spot to find for your device between this time gap and the frame rate (described below).
- Time bar: This is the slider that runs the full width of the screen. Drag it back and forth to see the riders whizz around the map.
- Auto center: This is shown when your ride has been passed in as context. Check the box and while you (the blue blob) are shown on the map it will automatically follow your progress. If the frame rate is high then your browser might not get chance to fill in gaps in the map as it follows you. Hit the pause and play and it’ll refresh the map, or drop your frame rate.
- Frame rate: This drop-down determines how many times a second the script will try and render the next frame in the animation, the higher the frame rate the smoother the animation but also the faster it will play (adjust your time gaps to find the sweet spot). If you’re browser/device isn’t fast enough to keep up then it’ll skip frames so work out what your setup can cope with.
- Button bar: Back to start, normal speed, double speed, quadruple speed, go to end.
Note: The initial map view is based upon the extremes of latitude and longitude of the data (including any dodgy GPS data that does seem to happen) and the best fit of those points to the available map space and zoom depths. You might need to zoom in a bit to see the detail of the rides.
Post links to any good Velo Flow examples you have in the comments section below. Would be great to see them!