Discussion: ISSprOM2019 Again

As usual there will be surprises, misinterpretations, conversion issues, work-arounds, etc, and this community has been helpful to tease these out. So I start this topic for the purpose. A similar thread has diverted into ISOM scales.

Can I postulate that this is not so much a SPRINT spec but an URBAN spec. How do you suppose it will work in forest or rural open land? While we use a lot of schools and campuses, we've had some wonderful rural sprints - apart from the legibility.

I've always had trouble seeing the brown path symbols on a rough open background, and the new spec doesn't let me use a darker brown infill any more. It is reserved for traffic. At least the small black dashed track has been increased in size, maybe it was an error before.

Yeah I've always had difficulties differentiating between rough open and the lighter paved symbol too, even on the screen.

I completely agree with gruver's URBAN / SPRINT distinction, and the brown path symbols have always been the most problematic symbol in non urban settings.
Why can't the traditional black path symbols be an option, other than MC's campaign to eradicate that word.
Oh, I know, because that would involve mapper's judgement, and the use of eyes in the terrain and on paper, which would not produce a quantifiable violation.

Well there IS a reason not to use black dashed lines in the urban situation, where we use thick black lines to represent barriers. But that doesn't generally apply in rural areas. I have been using the small black dashed track at 150% of ISOM size, and I have been using the larger black dashed track too (also at 150% of its ISOM size). The former has now been legitimised, any support for the latter?

For larger tracks (large enough to think of as having edges) the brown infill track symbol would be OK subject to the sideline thickness and darkness of the brown. The changes document says we mappers have trouble determining what is urban and rural. Is that enough reason to make the symbol invisible in the countryside?

I like the way that the passable wall has been defined as a TWO-SIDED thing, by separately defining a one-sided wall. Plus they are black, the gray ones were often invisible as well as being ambiguous.

What do APers think about the smaller threshold for knolls and depressions, and the absence of a minimum for boulders? I have been used to applying the same minimum on sprint maps as for ISOM.

I'd always had issues whether to map a retaining wall as a wall or a cliff. Now I know.

I really like that the wall is defined as two sided (i.e. its something you know can see as you approach). And I'm pleased they ditched the grey wall which too up lots of space while still being invisible.
In practice, I doubt it will be possible to see the difference between the wall and one-sided retaining wall symbol.
The spec has gone silent on uncrossable retaining walls. I picked up an injury and a DQ falling off one once, since when I always mapped them as cliffs with tags. That was technically wrong in ISSOM, but maybe it isn't wrong any more?

"What do APers think about the smaller threshold for knolls and depressions, and the absence of a minimum for boulders? I have been used to applying the same minimum on sprint maps as for ISOM."

I have been waiting for others to take up gruver's query on this worthy topic, in part because I don't claim any expertise on sprint/urban map standards.

From an ISOM, or general mapping perspective, I believe context is everything, from the regional setting down to the immediate surroundings of a feature.

Sure, for a nice round number, the 1.0m min for boulders is a good place to start, but I've always believed this could / should vary up to ~50% in both directions, and I sense that most mappers and users understand this, although not necessarily active AP debaters, nor regulators.

I found reassurance for this on the last WOC maps I've been on (Trondheim Norway 2010) where I noted many 0.6m boulders on the maps in appropriate places (at least from my perspective) where the visibility was good, and there weren't other features competing for attention, and the boulders were clean, not camouflaged with moss, or high ground cover.

Boulders are probably the best case for a generally lower standard, because the symbol is the most compact on the map, and the feature is an "up" feature, usually highly contrasting in the terrain, and unlikely to move :-) .

U depressions and V pits are a little tougher to justify, being "down" features and also occupying much more map space relative to their visual impact.

Urban contexts usually provide exceptional visibility, justifying lower standards, but often with more competing features nearby.

Yes, when mapping, I usually have a metric number in my head, as a helpful guideline. Nevertheless, the main question is not what a feature measures, but how does it strike honest eyes in the terrain and on paper, relative to other features, mapped and unmapped.

Map specs are a bit like legislation. The legislature passes the law, and then the courts interpret that law.

The problem with that analogy is that our legislature and courts are often (usually?) the same entity, and sometimes the same individual.

I accept the fact that we don't have a democracy, nor proper separation of powers, but I do expect our system to be a benevolent form of governance, with some checks and balances, that prioritizes the activity on the ground, not the self importance of the bureaucrats.

I can't claim to be central to the IOF, MC, and SEA activity, and I probably don't hear about the well functioning situations, but almost everything I hear sounds like headbutting dysfunction, authoritarian will enforcing the nth degree of the spec vs reasonable requests for modifications from the people doing the work.

Like I said. ;-)

Eric thank you for your views, and also the elegance of your writing.

I don't have the pessimism about our institutions that you and Log express - isn't there a new convenor of the MC? But more importantly I hope this thread can return to questions of "how do we do this?" and "is that what the authors intended?"

I welcome the 5m contour interval (as it makes what I was doing legitimate:-)) Round here the terrain is either steep or flat valley floor (where a contour line is meaningless). The public reserves which form the majority of our close to home orienteering are, guess what? The land that was too steep for farming in the early days, or too steep for urban development in recent times. The ownership system here does not allow orienteering through people's' back yards, as I read in another thread.

I am not pessimistic. I think I am realistic. No matter how much good work is put into a specification, the use of the specification will bring to the fore issues such as are being raised in other on-line forums. Recognising this is not a criticism of the work done by the MC. I just wonder if the process of developing the specification should have included time for the development of maps in different terrains as was done with the previous spec. I think that approach might be less difficult than the working document approach being used for this spec. In making my legal analogy I was in the main referring to the perception of judges as being on a spectrum from black-letter law judges to interpretative judges. I can see a similar range of application of the spec in mappers. I do have concerns about both specs, but I am taking a black letter law approach (stronger than the MC) to implementation of the spec as a tool to test the spec for our terrains.

The ownership system here does not allow orienteering through people's' back yards

Quite unfortunate if you own your back yard but still can't give permission for orienteering.

I didn't mean that Jagge. I can give permission if I choose.

What I meant was that there's no "freedom to roam" here. That means no presumption of access, a lot of owners to ask in the urban areas I was thinking of, and such a low "yes" rate that it's not usually worth asking. Fences are the norm, often high ones. If you landed from a space-ship, you would think, "don't these people LIKE each other?"

Our "freedom to roam" does not give us permission to arrange any orienteering events or access back yards. Just hike alone in forest with no buildings nearby.

Around here public land/parks are too "open" for sprints, no complex route choices. So private land is needed, that means plenty of land owners needs to be asked, I know a case where was hundreds. Huge job, sometimes insane, forest races are a lot easier to arrange, often just couple of dozen land owners. Like you wrote yes rate is crucial, that yes rate may sink if map fail to show OOB clear enough.

The top world events always provide food for thought. Bulletin 4 for JWOC has some notes about the sprint mapping, eg some local features that would and wouldn't be shown. https://www.jwoc2019.dk/sites/default/files/2019-0...

Now that the event has been run we can get a feel for the place via the TV, and the published maps. I see the available routes were largely dictated by olive green and the green/black no-go colour of ISSOM, which presumably were different in the terrain - maybe gardens vs taller vegetation. Now that green/black is going to disappear, I wonder if everything being olive is going to be a problem. (Not that I was a fan of green/black, it wasn't different enough from dark green for me.)

It a bit weird that they carefully defined what man made features were mapped (good) but didn't explain the difference between green/black and olive, which has always been subject to mapper interpretation.
AFAIK the new ISSprOM is leaning toward it being illegal and difficult to go through 100% green. So by implication, olive will be illegal and easy to get through (e.g. flowerbeds)

Graeme remember that all the "thou shalt not" stuff is to be removed from the spec and put in the rules. The rules will no doubt say "don't go thru olive green" but what will they say about 100% green? And in practical terms will the rules committee be as staunch as the former mapping committee about variation requests, heh heh.

@gruver I do remember that being said, but (what I think is) the latest ISSprOM valid from 2020 still has it in...

section 1.1 "Shall not means that the definition is an absolute prohibition."
and
section 410 "Impassible vegetation shall not be crossed"

https://orienteering.sport/iof/resources/mapping/

Maybe by splitting the definition it in two the mapping committee are hoping the rules committee doesn't notice...

Hmmm, also 515, 518 and 529 "shall not be crossed". And 301 water. And 520 olive green. Maybe there are others. I dunno what's happening there.

So, 410 the ordinary 100% green "shall not be crossed" and the Danes, had they been under the new spec, could have used 410 where they used green/black.

Have begun to build a local version of ISSprOM, prior to propagating it thru the club's collection of close-to-home maps. I have some personalisations to plug in - additional road widths, GPS and boundary lines for the mapper etc.

The mapping includes a lot of steep terrain, bushclad and farm - that mysterious land which lies between what is suitable for mapping at 1:15,000 and the urban landscape which the sprint spec is focussed on. It's our bread and butter because its in public ownership and its close to where people live. Our people by and large are not elites. It works well for us at 1:5000 and I may leave the scale there.

The crunch question - what am I going to do with the brown track symbols? At present I am pretending everything is "rural" and using the darker brown and thicker sidelines, and they are sort of legible But they are DEFINITELY NOT heavily trafficked!

I will (and always have) used the larger black track from ISOM - used to be 506 now 505 - at its 150% size as most sprint symbols are. Maybe I should go further and use ISOM 504 vehicle track.

A bit of advice at this stage could prevent time-consuming re-work later on. Maybe I should go the whole hog and use ISOM with say 150% symbol sizes - but the mapping seamlessly extends into downtown areas and ISSOM seemed to work for us. Thanks.

My thoughts on this are that ISSprOM was always intended for an urban or park environment. It was never well suited to forest (or farm). In particular (as you mention) the brown/black track symbols are often very hard to see in non-urban areas and that will be more of a problem withe the new version.

I have never understood why people use it for forest maps. Using sprint mapping symbols on forest maps I find everything looks terrible - too thin and spindly.

If I am mapping forest areas at a larger scale I stick with the ISOM symbol set, but don't fully enlarge the symbols So for example a map at 1:10000 with no enlargement of symbols or with 125% enlargement, instead of 150% percent.

Or in the case you mention of a forest map at 1:5000 I have found a symbol enlargement of 200% works well. (If you do the maths that is the same proportion as a 10000 map with no symbol enlargement). That way you have contours that are 0.28mm and you can use the ISOM tracks.


The other advantage of doing it this way is it is then much easier to take extracts from larger forest maps to use at 5000. All you have to do is change the scale and the symbols sizes (both simple operations). There is no need to convert from ISOM symbol set to ISSprOM - which is much more difficult.

gruver and robplow: here you can find my map for the Oz sprint champs which has a lot of forest tracks (click on either of the maps to go to his archive). I used the lighter brown shade (C5 M17 Y25) and they show up quite well. Didn't have any complaints. You can find details of shades I used for other symbols in the previous issprom discussion.

(The map quality in this archive isn't too good; unfortunately the actual map file never got posted on a website anywhere, but I can send you a copy if you email me at iinet net au)

Simmo, looks like a fine map (and terrain) using the Sprint standards, but to my eyes, one thing is inescapable, The small black dash trails are actually visually stronger than the trails which are presumably one or two grades stronger, but drawn in Sprint standard light brown. This is simply absurd.

In an urban or even park setting, I have no disagreement with the Sprint standards. Here the runnability significance provided by trails is not important, because everything is fast runnability, but in a forest setting, trails are very important, especially in a terrain which has significant green as well, like this one.

Also, the 4000 scale map is helpful for reading the light brown rails, but this enlarged scale would not be needed if the trails were drawn in black.

I'm glad you got no complaints, it reflects well on the map content, and possibly the course setter, but I think it is clear that mapping all the non-urban trails in black (with proportional enlargement) would be an undeniable improvement.

The two problems are using black for tracks and walls/buildings (ISOM) vs brown for tracks and contours (ISSOM) at .a recent event we tried to address this within ISOM by "overuse" of paved area where there are buildings. It worked really well: although there are big inconsistencies across the map, it is clear to read everywhere and the runners have enough cues to know whether they're in the urban/parkland north or the steep/forested south.
It's allegedly "ISOM" because, like gruver, we wanted the black track symbols in the woods.

Thanks for posting, and thanks to those responsible.

So what is so difficult about this, and why can't the IIssSprrrrosoOM simply adopt these urban/forest options, not politically, that's a risky issue, but simply in language and mapper/ mapreader reality?

There is too much black in ISOM. I found this recently at the Wawel Cup (Poland) with intermittent tracks running along the bottom of cliff lines. Very hard to distinguish between the two.

@tRicky: This is exactly why we were supposed to get the grey vs black option for rock vs path/track symbols in ISOM 2017, but it was removed during the final rounds. :-(
It would have been perfect for the O-Festivalen maps in Larvik this year.
As leader of the Norwegian Mapping Commission I accepted a request by the organizers to use "light black", i.e. 80-90% for rocky objects: Visually this is still darker than most offset printed black, but it was sufficient to make the paths stand out a bit, making them significantly easier to read.

On this link they seem to use the same shade though:
https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/Norsk-o-festival-la...
checking...no, same for the gps tracking:
http://www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps/20193006H21jakt/

ISOM: Too much black
https://www.instagram.com/path_or_crag/

EricW the brown tracks are drawn to scale; I was able to do this because the hill-shading from the LIDAR showed the graded edges of the gravel tracks exactly. Had they been drawn in black, the lines would have been almost 2mm thick in places, - and how for example would you draw the junctions accurately?

There is no black line symbol for such tracks in ISSOM or ISSProm. If I used the ISOM symbol, 0.35mm at 1:15000 scale translates to 1.3mm at 1:4000 scale. Compare this to 0.4mm for impassable wall or 0.5mm for impassable cliff. It would, in my view, make a mockery of using thick lines to indicate impassability.

Then there's the decision to choose between a solid line for driveable road (most of them were) or dashed for a vehicle track (a few of them). Some varied in driveability along their length, so which do you choose?

In contrast, the black footpaths varied in width on the ground from 30cm to over 2 metres, but were not gravel. The narrower ones were barely more than animal tracks, while most of the wider ones could barely be noticed if crossing them. I actually toyed with the idea of leaving them at the ISSOM spec of 0.18mm, but in the end decided to use the new ISSProm 0.27mm. Had I stayed with 0.18mm then they wouldn't have appeared (to your eyes) stronger than they actually are.

In my previous post I should have mentioned that under 14s and over 45s all used 1:3000 scale. See Bruce's log to view this scale.

We have recently mapped several sprint maps according to ISSOM2007. For our event in August we are considering converting to ISSprOM2019. We have made a Facebook poll to get some feedback from participants on what they prefer. In one area we have used the black-green for hedges that are not allowed to be passed, although they just are 1m high. Using olive-green doesn't work well for the hedges as they are very short (8m), so we will use dark green and hope that competitors will not jump over them.

Does anyone already have a ISSprOM2019 OOM symbol set?

simmo, the main point that I and others are making is that black trails better perform the most important function of trails in a forest setting, that is most clearly displaying the route choices, for quick-glance decisions.
I don't see anywhere in your comments that you argue against this. Can we rest our case on this issue?

I will grant you this, much of your area is right on the edge of the urban/forest definition, which makes it a great venue, but also more challenging to apply forest principles than with graeme's example.

On your map, my eye could be satisfied if the brown trail symbols were simply stronger, with darker brown fill and/or thicker black edges, but as shown, they are unnecessarily weak. given their importance around the green, and possibly through white as well.

To address your questions-
"...how for example would you draw the junctions accurately?"
"Some varied in driveability along their length, so which do you choose?"

The mapper draws trails as accurately as the scale allows, just like mappers have done for decades, without it ever becoming an issue. These trails could easily be done at 5000, avoiding/minimizing the overly thick black line issue. I can agree that going to 4000 and 3000(?!) would aggravate the black line problem, and helps the readability of these brown trail symbols, but that strikes me as a self defeating rational, or at least illustrates the absurdity of the situation.

most clearly displaying the route choices, for quick-glance decisions.

Generally in ISSOM, you run on light colours: pale brown, yellow and white.

One way to get contrast is to make forest green. In sprint "normal running" means paved surfaces, and green forest is anything <80% normal speed. So I think its right to map typical ISOM white-woods as ISSOM-green, using white only for super-clean parkland with trees.

The reason I do this is not nitpicky rules-purity, its because the fast running brown paths show up clearly.

Won't somebody think of the scattered trees symbol???

You could use scattered trees.
Fundamentally I don't like it when ISOM white generally means "where you want to run" and ISSOM white means "where you don't want to run"

I don't like scattered trees symbol.

It is very hard to distinguish between 402 and 404, thats why I would prefer if mappers keep on using "white" instead of 402 for urban "forests"

Fundamentally I don't like it when ISOM white generally means "where you want to run" and ISSOM white means "where you don't want to run"

Of course if you put it like that it seems illogical or inconsistent. But it is not the only way to see it.

What ISSOM/ISSprOM are saying: irrespective of the type of map (sprint or forest) white means runnable forest and all other yellows and green are relative to that same base line. Seems very logical and consistent to me.

You might argue that your philosophy is MORE logical. Maybe. Others would disagree. Both ways of seeing it have pluses and minuses but the fact is ISSOM/ISSprOM have gone with the latter and that is not likely to change.

So do your sprint maps have no white? Or white is what others would map as scattered trees.

Either way that would mean when running on one of your sprint maps the runners need to adjust to a classification of vegetation that is different to all other sprint maps? Is it really worth the trouble?

ISOM 2017 page 6 has a runnability table, indicating that yellow and paved areas are faster than white (forest). While ISSprOM doesn't have the same table, the principle would be the same. Therefore at sprint events, runners should assume that white is potentially slower, and it shouldn't need to be mapped as green as suggested by graeme. Green should be reserved for areas that are much slower.

I don't see why white in ISOM and ISSPrOM would be any different.

I don't like scattered trees symbol.

I guess we shouldn't use it then.

@simmo at sprint events, runners should assume that white is potentially slower,
Yes, and that's exactly the problem: you can't pick the best route from the map because the white might be slower or it might not be.
I use ISSOM white where I'd advise runners to go straight, green when they should at least think about going round. No runners ever had a problem with it.

you can't pick the best route from the map because the white might be slower or it might not be.
you can if you use the scattered trees good running symbol.


What you suggest above was to map what would be white on a forest map as light green on a sprint map. If that had been done on the map Simmo linked to above the map would look very different and I am sure most runners WOULD have had a problem with it

For another thing light green means poor visibility as well as slower running.

White is slower than yellow, I think that's the inference. Yellow dot should essentially be the same speed as yellow (with the occasional requirement to sidestep a tree).

For another thing light green means poor visibility as well as slower running.

I could grumble about this statement, but I think it gets too far off the topic.

I agree with tRicky's point, I think. White with yellow dots is basically mowed grass with trees here and there. Light yellow with white dots is a meadow with some trees. White in some cases can be essentially as fast as yellow, but it's uncommon. But maybe white with yellow dots doesn't have a place on a sprint map if you're mapping every tree.

After a couple of days away from the internet, thank you for the contributions in the meantime. Coming back to building a symbol table for my mixed urban/rural situation, I think I'll have to reconsider the decision to tweak ISSprOM to cope with the rural character, or to tweak ISOM to cope with the urban character and the larger scale.

Erik asked about an OOM ISSprOM symbol set. If OOM cant open the one from OCAD2018, there's an OCAD 11 version here which you can probably open. www.mapsport.co.nz/mapresources.html

JJ: ISSprOM says

406 Vegetation: slow running (A)
An area with dense vegetation (low visibility) which reduces running to about . . .

The wording in ISOM 2017 is identical.

So what exactly is there to grumble about? Do you not like my use of 'poor' as a synonym for 'low'?

I agree with graeme. As I see it white forest has been used for years in urban sprint maps just the way he describes. The new ISSprOM looks worse that that old interpretation, the new speed table there illustrates how speed needs to be slowed down 40% from normal hard surface speed to be mapped as lightest green. So 0% ... 40% speed is quite a lot, plenty of luck factor there.

Where des this 40% figure come from?

I am saying if, for a sprint map, if there is a treed area with better running than normal forest (typically that means trees with mowed grass underneath,ie: park like forest) - I would map that as open land with scattered trees (402 in ISSprOM) thus indicating 'very good runnability' which is the wording used in 401 and 402. As soon as there is mowed grass under the trees you have to use 402 because (as Graeme says) it is vital to show the better runnability.

There is nothing in the definition of 401that defines 'scattered' - no minimum distance between trees for example.

In ISOM 2017-2 there is a table about runnability (Section 2.3) which defines 'lawns paved areas, paths' as 'easy running' or '>100%. 'Normal running speed ' (80 - 100%) means rough open land or forest

Interestingly there is no equivalent table in ISSprOM 2019. But I would say a similar classification is implicit in the wording of the individual symbol definitions.

An interesting twist. I've been mapping big trees with mowing underneath as 402, but for another reason. The edge of the mowing is normally quite distinct whereas the edge of mature trees is hard to define at sprint scale.

Though there's no speed table in the sprint spec, the same relationship must surely hold. Is this going to create any surprise among mappers and runners? Or just a minor blip that won't be noticed? (We changed the green percentages from ISOM2000 to 2017, and then back again in 2017-2, did anyone notice?)

Page 14, in picture distance covered in 4 minutes, below 800m is green. At 3min speed (hard surface speed) cover ~1333m. Here "run light tones" thinking leads you wrong. Old ISSOM just referred to "normal speed". Typically forest patches near urban area can be so beaten they are super super fast. But some patches just normal slow white forest. That's why white forest has been used the way graeme wrote. Wonder how it goes with the standard.

There is a speed table though, on page 14 of ISSPrOM 2019 or is it another table you're referring to? It says if you (or at least an elite) can cover 800m or more in 4mins in the forest then it should be white.

(We changed the green percentages from ISOM2000 to 2017, and then back again in 2017-2, did anyone notice?)

That was only the shade of green, not the runnability percentages - they have been constant:

100-80 white
80-60 light green
60-20 medium green
20-0 dark green

hardly anyone would notice the different shades because of the range of
variations in printing.

Point taken Rob.

Let's call the picture on p14 of ISSprOM "the graph". I had thought of it as an illustration rather than a specification. All elite athletes don't have the same speed do they? And that "typical open forest" is not the same everywhere.

Maybe you can also think of the symbols within the document as illustrations rather than specifications, that way you can draw whatever you want.

If you look at the results of the last JWOC male sprint, after the 13 seconds between the winner and the rest of the field, the average margin between placings from 2 to 100 was about 1.2 seconds. If a sprint map includes green in plausible route choices, then the 20 per cent speed variation between colours suggests that the final placing is a bit of a lottery.

Here's that graph extended up to 120%. On the left is how I see it with the base line white being normal forest (same as for a forest map). On the right is what I think Graeme is saying. Is that right or have I misunderstood you?

TILog, A great topic, but more of a course setting issue than a mapping issue, and way bigger and outside this thread.

Indeed, route choice legs hinging on white/ green mapping, are very risky and often unfair, and not limited to Sprints. The Swedish WOC 2016 Middle comes to mind, a critical green RC leg near the end of the course, had a major influence on the men's results ( I forget the women's situation.) Heck, even the pivotal 2016 Long, #2 (men and women) is related to this, even though this was simply a white vs trail issue.

No problem with using the charts as definitional guidelines, but even with experienced mappers, it's not humanly possible to be as accurate on % running speed as the charts might lead people to believe.

Let's just accept that the sport is unfair and do away with it.

"Løypeleggerboka" (The course setter's handbook) which was the course planning bible in my younger days had one overarching principle:

"All courses should be as fair as possible."

This means eliminating as many sources of random chance as possible, one of the examples given was a route choice on either side of a long hill, with one side having fresh logging residue and the other being nice forest. (This was in the days before green for vegetation!)

The key lies in the "as possible" term: We can never make orienteering perfectly fair, but we can at least strive for that elusive target. Statistics shows clearly that the best tend to win no matter where a WOC takes place. I.e.Thierry + Daniel + Olav filling the podium on 5 (?) consequtive WOC Longs.

It is quite natural that a Middle or Sprint, with far shorter competition times, are more exposed to random events.

@rowplow yes, your figure illustrates what I said.

You chopped off the x-axis which only goes to 1km/4min. It is so obviously necessary in sprint to do exactly as you did, extending to 1.25km/4min, that I find it hard to believe any thought went into that ISSprOM table.

What's most important is that "120%" and 80% runnability shouldn't be the same.
Current practice in UK seems to be to use 402 wherever there's just sky above, and white if there are branches, regardless of runnability.
http://omaps.worldofo.com/index.php?id=204241
Regular forest with this sort of map should be light green (like I said).

Recent WOC maps use almost no white, with 402 for canopy-parkland
http://news.worldofo.com/2017/07/01/woc-2017-sprin...
Regular forest with this sort of map could be white (like you said).

We are losing track of the reason I brought this up: a solution for making ISSOM paths more visible in terrain.

One way to get contrast is to make forest green...
The reason I do this is not nitpicky rules-purity, it's because the fast running brown paths show up clearly.

Ok at least now I understand exactly what you are saying. But doesn't it mean you are using light green for what would otherwise be white on a forest map? I just can't really accept that. 2 reasons:

1 I think it is not a good idea to have two different systems of green/white/yellow classification - it is something very basic and ingrained and needs to be constant across all maps.

2. you are then using light green, which is defined as 'low visibility'*, for forest with good visibility - that makes no sense to me.

*grumble away JJ.

Terje,"Løypeleggerboka"
I still have that book, NOF, 1981, red cover.

If you are doing this mainly to get better contrast versus brown/black paths then a better solution would be to use thicker black borders and/or darker brown. Yes I know that was what happened in ISSOM 2007 (and had its own problems) and is now not allowed. But unless it is a WRE or above . . .

Perhaps what is needed is an extra area symbol called "park like forest" to represent areas that have full tree cover but mowed grass underneath. In the meantime I think the least worst option is to just use open with scattered trees for that.

those maps you link don't really prove much - they are just maps of areas where there happens to be no open forest - common enough in city centres like Riga or SE England university campuses. But on maps where there is real forest adjoining an urban/park area (very very common in Australia) it becomes a real issue. Like the map Simmo and I linked to above (Narrogin). Are you seriously suggesting that all the white on that map should be changed to light green?

My grumbling, in case it isn't obvious, has to do with the vertical green line symbol, the need for which is implied by the mention of visibility. Originally it was just to designate something that looks like open land at a distance, but that is actually overgrown and very slow. You still need to map it as open land, but it's not a place where you want to go. Over the years the symbol has mutated to mean slow vegetation (even slightly slow) that you can see over, and it's used with white instead of just yellow. We have vegetation where I live that grows waist high and slows you down some, and people insist on mapping it with vertical green lines because you can see over it. But the visibility isn't actually good, because it does obscure boulders and landforms and trails. And worse, it's a terrible symbol because it acts like a camouflage screen and makes it very difficult to read the map, obscuring contours in particular. It also has very vague edges, especially when people use it for small patches. Grumble, grumble.

Co-grumbling with jj about the green stripes.

I haven't been to Narrogin, obviously. As with the map I linked above, the boundary into the "forest" is distinct and people will cope adjust fine.

But I took a look from the road on google maps, and the woods look a lot nicer than anything round here - that bit I'd map as white.
Against which, the 17+ winning time for 4km suggests elsewhere, and the way people take path routes suggest it's maybe slower than the course setter expected.

But lets assume all the white was light green, and the greens one shade darker... Looking at the routes on the linked maps, its hard to see where anyone would do anything different and even EricW would be able to see the brown paths - which was the point ;)

I'd actively avoid anything mapped green on a sprint map. In Narrogin I happily went into the white. White is obviously slower than yellow/brown (features are more subtle) and the course setter (who was also the mapper) forgot this fact.

You keep moving the goal posts Graeme, first you say you use green instead of white because you use white for park like forest, then you say it's to make the brown paths easier to see.

My bottom line - you have to use the same classification of vegetation for forest and sprint maps.

Obviously there is no convincing you.

If 100% speed is the goal post then maybe they ARE mobile.

Someone said it - there doesn't seem to have been much attention to the speed illustration in ISSprOM - perhaps just copied across from ISOM. Where it rests on a shaky basis (*) but at least the shakiness seems to have little effect on long distance results.

* The shakiness is that speed is relative to "typical open forest for the particular type of terrain". A variable frame of reference doesn't let the map convey the track:forest speed ratio. But I guess that athletes have got a handle on this through model events; and maybe good planners have ensured that forest routes, if well executed, were faster than round the tracks.

This discussion has highlighted the greater shakiness of that speed basis in sprints, with their small time differences and greater use of paved surfaces. Maybe "typical forest" is mowed, maybe it is hard bare ground due to lots of use; or maybe it has long grass, small branches, a lumpy surface or soft soil. Worse, maybe it has zones of different character. What then is "typical forest"?

We may not solve the fundamental shakiness here, but ideas for lessening the effects are useful. I've had a justification for using 402 for mowed big-tree park, thank you. I think I'll get raised eyebrows if I use more light green than my gut-feel suggests. And someone is correct that it should strictly be a stripe - yuk!!! Keep the ideas coming!

Graeme - the white on the Narrogin map varies from 80% - 100% runnability. The M21E course were designed so that, except for 3 very short legs of 30m, and 3 sections of 100m, runners would only need to go off tracks and into the white for 5-30m at a time. Of the three 100m sections, one was near 100%, the other two 80% runnability. W21E and tRicky's course (M40) had the 3 short legs and one of the 100m legs.

I acknowledge the courses were slightly long, as I underestimated my relative speed factor when converting it to M21E speed, but in analyzing the M21E's actual splits, an error-free run should have been just under 15 minutes. My analysis showed that this was not due to slower speeds in the white areas, but mainly to route choice errors in the school in the second part of the course. This can be attributed to the forest part of the course, not to the runnability factor, but partly due to fatigue and partly to a failure to re-adjust navigation technique from forest to urban.

you can say it Simmo - Australian elites just aren't as good they should be;)

You keep moving the goal posts Graeme, first you say you use green instead of white because you use white for park like forest, then you say it's to make the brown paths easier to see.
The problem with this claim is that people can read the thread from the beginning and see it isn't true.

Rob, it wasn't just the elite courses that didn't come in under 15 mins. The only courses that came in under that time were W/M12, M10 (which was under 12mins), M60 and M80.

Simmo's claim about M21E is laughable. Adding together all the fastest splits on that course still puts the time at 16:17.

It seems Australians are useless at sprint, and obviously no amount of JWOC gold medals will convince me otherwise.

I was joking Tricky 　－ it is a standard fallback for course setters - if the winning times are too long you just say the athletes were not as good you expected

Aston wasn't there - I was disappointed about that. It wasn't the strongest sprint field that we could have had.

tRicky, I was comparing my running times on the 21E legs with the fastest elite split, and I beat them (on adjusted time) by 2.5 minutes. There were several legs (mostly route choice legs within the school) where the fastest elite split was 15-20 seconds slower than my adjusted time. Admittedly, I knew where I was going, although I didn't take the shortest route on several legs. Remember we're talking about a less than ideally fit M73, and 100-250m legs, so my conclusion is poor route choices (or errors) by the 21Es. In particular, there seems to have been a clear reluctance to take the Eastern route around the long building by Istvan and Bruce (they're not elites I know!) but on several legs this was the shortest and fastest way. I was stationed at the map change for the whole of the elite race, and most of the elites didn't use the Eastern route more than once.

The women were similar - in particular the leg after the map change (to 15 on Istvan's course) going East and around to the South was 20m shorter, but you had to be able to see that route before exiting the marked route after the map change. I saw less than half a dozen out of 3 dozen elite women take that route, and none of the favourites took it.

So it must be the athletes' poor choices then (across pretty much the entire competition) rather than the arbitrary kilometre adjusted rates issued by OA, just like how I got beaten on handicap in a clean run at ECU that one time by a M70, M75 and an M80 who made multiple errors (no I haven't yet let that one go). Makes sense!

Note, one reason why white is cleaner in sprint maps is generalization. If you have some small patches of slower forest here and there you will still map it all as white forest in 1:15 000 scale if patches are too small to be mapped as minimum size green blob and in general area is fast enough. At 1:4000 you don't generalize that much, so you will map those patches as green leaving only those cleanest parts white. As the result, your sprint map white ends up being faster and cleaner compared to your ISOM map - even if you didn't plan to do it that way.

Aside. If you map to allowable minimum size for a 1:4,000 map you get more detail on the map for the fastest orienteering discipline, yet in other event formats such detail will slow runners down. [Switches back out of irony mode]

No trouble. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/atlas-ti...

While this thread has been hibernating I've been pottering away with some conversions. This has revealed a few (tiny) errors in the OCAD symbol set and I think there was a colour anomaly too. They have acknowledged and corrected these so a heads up that a symbol set you would get today (if you have updated your OCAD) is not identical to the one you would have got in May. There are bound to be more. These changes are generally too small to be flagged in the update notes.

Now to a couple of other things. Can someone tell me what 714 is for? Yes I know that there are a couple of examples but shouldn't there be something more fundamental than that? Why isnt a closed area for spectators and speaker mapped as 709? Why isnt a footpath restaurant 520?

The other one I'm mulling over is deciding high and low traffic areas. In practical terms perhaps footpath vs roadway though the emergence of electric scooters could confound that. A footpath could even be packed with pedestrians. Do we have to predict the time of day our map is to be used? Are there vehicle areas which would qualify for low eg carparks? In practice this may settle down once we look at enough cases. Conversations here may throw light on the topic - or heat:-))

We typically use 714 on our sprint maps for al fresco areas that sometimes occur at uni campuses. I have also been known to use it for totally enclosed (or sometimes unenclosed) areas that house some kind of machinery (usually air conditioning workings) although that may not be correct. Our recent Easter sprint used 714 to signify the pre-start area for the age group runners during the elite event (which had a different start), so sometimes it wouldn't necessarily be out of bounds. 709 seems to be more permanent.

520 is typically used for areas that look like you shouldn't run through them (e.g. garden beds) whereas outdoor eateries usually look like pavement with chairs and tables on them.

High and low traffic, well again I know what the wording states but general consensus here is that high traffic relates to anything that ordinary motorised vehicles (e.g. cars) drive on whereas low traffic relates to things that you'd probably hurt as much as they'd hurt you if you ran into them (pedestrians and cyclists). At least if they were sensible that's what they should have put in the standard rather than once again making it ambiguous as it was previously.

For better or worse, I've gone with a tailored version of ISSprOM for my close-to-home contiguous mapping which includes everything from city centres to steep bushclad gullies. It is used for club events, some of which are described as sprints. I record for condemnation, admiration or discussion, the main variations.

1. Scale remains 1:5000. Puts a brake on detail, we mappers are always tempted to put too much in. We print as large as we can. Old people use these maps.
2. The wider tracks and roads all use the darker "low traffic" brown. Edit: I should have said the darker "high traffic" brown. We have a shortage of traffic counter devices round here.
3. Small unpaved tracks are 506 (formed by feet) or the larger 505 from ISOM (some evidence of construction)
4. Reduced the size of dots and increased the spacing for scattered tree symbols. Makes it less of a "tone" and more like, well "scattered".
5. Reduced the thickness of lines and increased the spacing of purple lines in out of bounds 709 so you can see what's under it.

2. The wider tracks and roads all use the darker "low traffic" brown. We have a shortage of traffic counter devices round here.

The standard has the low/pedestrian only traffic as the lighter brown colour. As both a runner and a mapper, my preference is to have anywhere that cars have right of way as the darker (more obvious?) colour.

Unless I really need to show low/high traffic I prefer to use the darker brown for forest trails, i.e. selecting the color that shows up best in forest sprints. The old standard allowed for urban/non-urban paths.