Off The Road app – gauging interest & gathering feedback

[azmorf]

Hey everyone,

TL;DR: we're looking to create a mobile app that would make it easier/safer/more enjoyable for y'all to get into off-road/overland adventures, and are gathering ideas and feedback.


Myself and my wife – both veterans of software/tech industry and also fans of 4x4/overland travel – have been looking for best ways to track, share and consume off-road/overland trail info, be it public trails or trails within private off-road parks.

Have you found yourself frustrated of using paper maps (being non-informative or non-accurate)?
Ever wanted to see what a trail looks like before arriving there, or wanted to know if it's passable given your skill level and rig prep?
Wondered if that trail is scenic, or has good camping spots?
Wanted to track your ride through a trail for a future reference, or to share it with others?

The closest answer to these question we've found was alltrails.com – but it's a product that is mainly focused on hiking trails and such, with a number of disadvantages if you were to use it for the purposes of off-roading or overlanding. There are also products like Gaia GPS, which are nice for trail tracking, but don't provide any helpful secondary benefits.

So, in order to solve those problems for ourselves, but also for the larger community, we've committed to learn more about what an average user (ie, any one of you) would want in an application like that.

Here's a number of potential features that we're looking at:

• Available on mobile phones (iOS & Android), possibly with "view" capabilities available on web
• List of trails – US/state/smaller-region-wide
• Description of a specific trail – basic info, type, photos, difficulty / skill level / rig prep recommendations, key POIs, camping info, scenic points, dead ends, tips & tricks, and so on (downloadable and usable offline)
• Trail reviews by other members of the community
• Map of a specific trail – based on track(s) recorded by the community (downloadable and usable offline)
• Ability to record your own track of a trail (recordable offline)
• "SOS" button – ask nearby travelers for help (eg, if you got stuck and don't have a CB)
• Social element – comments within a trail, ability to mark a trail that you've done, ability to ask someone a question about the trail
• For off-road parks (private establishments) – a way for the organizations to "officially" maintain trail info

That's a basic list of ideas – many things to be refined and specified, but you get the idea.

How you can help:
- Do you have any ideas to share? Anything you'd really like to see in a mobile application like that? Anything we should pay attention to, or anything we could take advantage of?
- Any positive/negative experience you've had with similar applications?
- Please sign up on https://www.offtheroadapp.com/ – if you'd like to get updates and help shape the product to your needs further. I hate spam – and won't be messaging you any more often than one time in 1-2 months, and that would be either an update on where we are, request for feedback or recommendations, or access to a beta version of the application. If any features of the app end up being "premium", you'll have full access to them, as long as you are signed up as early as now.

This is a project that we've willing to put a significant amount of effort into and possibly grow it into something bigger; hopefully benefiting the community of overlanders, and not just in the USA, but worldwide (being from Eastern Europe, we're also starting to work with communities based over there).

Thank you!

 

[Sleeter]

We primarily use Gaia GPS while moving.

Things I would like to see:
Dispersed Campsites with descriptions
Public vs private land
Dirt roads clearly identified
Map chat-see other users nearby
swimming holes
Gas stations
First aid locations- hospitals, fire stations
Overlooks and other cool places
Updated trail information- closure dates, difficulty, fire bans...

Just a few of the first things that came to mind.

Good luck!

 

[outwest]

This would be a huge help!

When I lived in the eastern part of the country, specifically Pennsylvania and Tennessee, I was always searching for the unpaved or dirt roads. In Nebraska, unpaved roads are just out of town but true dirt roads are still hard to find.

Here are some key features I want in an app like this:

• Dirt and unpaved road locator.
• Length of the dirt road.
• Downloadable GPS maps that work based on a phones GPS and do not need cell coverage.
• Route finder that would take me from point a to b on dirt roads.
• Basic road rating.
• Messaging to see who else will be out on that road that day.

This would be an awesome app to have so that we can find where the trails are in whatever part of the country we live. Thanks for starting this up!

 

[DZNUTS]

Thank you for the opportunity to help shape this app. Very excited to see where this goes


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[techno]

Over here on the east side of the country, we only have a fraction of the trails that are available to the west and mountain areas. Given this, the app would be of limited benefit for me, unless I was to do a big serious trip at sometime in the future. However, you did mention having something for offroad parks and this is something I would support. There's several parks in my area, but their mapping is usually crap and they seem to be run by people with no interest in technology or related skills. Perhaps you could bring them into this century with a simple app?

 

[azmorf]

We primarily use Gaia GPS while moving.

Things I would like to see:
Dispersed Campsites with descriptions
Public vs private land
Dirt roads clearly identified
Map chat-see other users nearby
swimming holes
Gas stations
First aid locations- hospitals, fire stations
Overlooks and other cool places
Updated trail information- closure dates, difficulty, fire bans...

Just a few of the first things that came to mind.

Good luck!

That's a great list – btw, many of those things are already covered in applications like iOverlander – have you given it a try? We've been looking to see what's missing in terms of already existing apps, and information about *trails* themselves was something that wasn't covered very well, hence the focus of the description in the original message.

 

[azmorf]

When I lived in the eastern part of the country, specifically Pennsylvania and Tennessee, I was always searching for the unpaved or dirt roads. In Nebraska, unpaved roads are just out of town but true dirt roads are still hard to find.

Here are some key features I want in an app like this:

• Dirt and unpaved road locator.
• Length of the dirt road.
• Downloadable GPS maps that work based on a phones GPS and do not need cell coverage.
• Route finder that would take me from point a to b on dirt roads.
• Basic road rating.
• Messaging to see who else will be out on that road that day.

This would be an awesome app to have so that we can find where the trails are in whatever part of the country we live. Thanks for starting this up!

That's a great list of things that corresponds very well with our idea, and I think pretty much all of that would definitely be a part of the application (maybe "a->b route finder would be something that comes later, since it's technically fairly complicated and not straight-forward). Thanks for sharing!

 

[azmorf]

Over here on the east side of the country, we only have a fraction of the trails that are available to the west and mountain areas. Given this, the app would be of limited benefit for me, unless I was to do a big serious trip at sometime in the future. However, you did mention having something for offroad parks and this is something I would support. There's several parks in my area, but their mapping is usually crap and they seem to be run by people with no interest in technology or related skills. Perhaps you could bring them into this century with a simple app?

True – my experience is very similar with the off road parks here in Texas; that's where the idea originally has come from. Giving off road park owners a way to create a digital map is certainly on the list. Thanks for the insights!

 

[Ryance39]

First, this is cool. Thanks for posting here and being interested in working on something like this. It's certainly needed.

The problem I have with the apps that are out there is much of the data is inaccurate or outdated.

Like others have mentioned, camp locations, dirt vs. paved, open vs. closed, public vs. private, and other things are nice to know. Localized chat or SOS button would be great. One of the biggest "fears?" I'll call it is what happens when catastrophic failure happens. It would be interesting to have access to recovery contacts if that's possible? Understanding that would be very difficult to provide for everyone since it is so situation dependent, it feels unrealistic.

Some type of a rating system would be awesome. I'm less interested in offroad parks, and more interested in seeing trail systems and how they connect.
It would be great to have a state by state map of all the trail systems and how they connect to each other. The tough nut to crack is that these conditions change dynamically and it would be really difficult to keep an app up to date for the whole US for example.

for me personally, I tend to just go back to the same areas over and over, because it is tough to plan for someplace you've never seen, that is potentially hours away when the last time any info you can find was posted on a forum in 2015 or something. There is nothing worse than driving two hours to a set of coordinates only to learn a gate has since been put up and locked.

 

[Gergin]

yep

I have a Coconino FS map that works offline with Avenza maps. I love it. Better if a topo was available. It's the only one that I understand enough to use. lol
Hope this helps.

 

[Runn4est]

I'd love to see a map of dirt/fire/logging roads near me. I have very limited options here in MD, but if there were a consolidated map that I could use for exploring that'd be fun.

 

[JohnTheLuck]

Many times, a trail is rated moderate or difficult, but for a small portion only. This can discourage some people for some reason. One thing I love about FunTreks books is that the difficulty level of any trail segment is shown on the trail track using a colored coded. This way, someone could decide to do only a part of a trail according to its ability.
.

 

[KNorm92]

Great idea.

I live in MN and there are really no good guides or info from what I've seen. Would love this and definitely use it on my trips West.

Good luck and keep us posted!