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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@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.
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I’ve been surprised by this feature a few times:
- Sometimes it gets confused when the first and last parts of the route are the same and there’s a loop. It thinks I’m going backwards on the loop instead of forwards as planned — but it usually catches up after a while.
- It works well when I spontaneously decide to repeat a loop. After a bit of running through the loop, it recognises the pattern and continues guiding properly.
- It also works if I decide to reverse course and go back the way I came. It takes a while, but eventually it registers the change and adjusts accordingly.
So overall, it’s a bit weird at times, but in these use cases it correctly figures out unplanned route changes. Probably difficult to get it perfect for all edge cases, but the current implementation seems to get it mostly right.
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@mando said in Suunto navigation tendency to auto-reverse route when it shouldn't. Bug or misguided feature?:
Sometimes it gets confused when the first and last parts of the route are the same and there’s a loop. It thinks I’m going backwards on the loop instead of forwards as planned — but it usually catches up after a while.
I had exactly same problem few weeks ago. It’s annoying. My route was same for there and back with loop between. I started the activity and after few meters I got “you’re in finish” alert. Whyyyy? So stupid bug, if the watch know already walked distance… The map was OK, but the line on elevation profile was showing from the end to the start
. Everything else seems fine, ETA, ETE… I returned Fenix 7Pro because of bugs, but the Race starts to surprise me a lot with these bugs.
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I’ve hit this issue of auto-reversing the route on today’s run right from the beginning. I started with a slightly different parking slot than planned and merged into the route about 0.2 mile from the beginning. Somehow much decided to reverse the route, so it basically started from the end of the out-and-back route and went through it backwards. That would be OK, except the elevation profile started like this (see below) and was moving backwards (right to left) the entire run.
In my opinion, this is not working as it should. I never run on this route in the opposite direction during this run. We’ll technically I did - you can say that because it was an out-and-back route, but what this watch did was just unreasonably stupid! Just because I was off-route for a very brief moment at the start before merging into the route, that isn’t a good reason to reverse the route and have a very confusing elevation profile.
A similar issue happened a week ago too. In that case the route was slightly wrong and I turned around a very short distance before reaching the turn-around point in the route, but otherwise I followed the route correctly. After I turned around, instead of skipping a short distance forward and continue on the route, the watch decided to reverse the route. As in this week’s case, the elevation profile started to move backwards. This has to be fixed!
Has this issue been reported to Suunto development team?
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@sky-runner This has been reported many times already, afaik. I also have this issue sometimes when I plan a route with start and end at the same place. I started to experiment a bit and now place the end point away from the start point, this usually helps, but it’s not 100%. It’s quite annoying.
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@timecode I can’t understand why there is so stupid bug. The solution must be simple. The watch knows already walked distance, so it should know the position on elevation profile. Where is the problem?
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@Jan-Suchánek
probably it’s not that stupid … -
@sky-runner This will only happen if the start and end are at the same place and you have a complete out and back. The watch has no way of knowing whether you are going in the original or reverse direction, which are identical. To solve this (only an issue on out and back with no deviations) simply put your stop point somewhere further away than your start. Do not be at the stop point when you start navigating. I am not sure this is an easy fix but is only an issue for routes that are identical in the forward and reverse direction. Then it doesn’t really matter for the data or altitude profile whether you are backwards or forwards because they are identical.
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@Brad_Olwin I respectfully disagree. I does matter. When the route is reversed, the overall profile starts moving right to left showing me on a downhill when I am actually ascending and vice versa. That is confusing and not a good user experience.
Fixing this should not be difficult. The algorithm should prioritize matching my movement against the route in the original forward direction and reverse only when that isn’t possible, and if I am already moving in the opposite direction. In other words, reversing should be the least resort, when no other way to match against the route is possible. In my case it should have just skipped the first 0.2 miles, then there wouldn’t be a reason to reverse. In fact if the route was a loop route, it would do just that and everything would be fine. It looks like the algorithm actually prioritizes reversing rather than the forward direction when the watch goes off-route for any reason. For example, see my top post on this thread. That doesn’t seem like what most people would expect.
I guess there is probably a category of users that always route one way to reach some destination, then they may expect the algorithm to reverse if they turn around. But every trail runner that I know always builds a complete route including a return path because the goal usually not to reach some destination but have a run with predictable distance and elevation gain. In fact, a lot of times I use navigation not because I need directions but because I want to have climb guidance and overall elevation profile, or distances to waypoints. This is how I use navigation during races. By the way, going a 6+ years back when I owned Suunto 9 Baro, I remember the same incorrect route auto-reversal during a 100k race because my watch briefly went off-route, and how incredibly frustrating that was because that messed up the overall profile and distance to next aid station.
Also, I should add that planning the way you described may not always be possible. In my case the original parking lot was full, so I had to park in another spot. It would be unreasonable to expect me to redo the entire route. Also, the route may be imported from another activity of another person.
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I tend to agree with @sky-runner on this. And we’ve discussed this problem elsewhere. I remember pointing out that not all of the navigation features reverse at the same time anyways. First the directional arrows reverse, then later the ETA, distance remaining and waypoints, and even later the elevation profile. And all of this happens without any notification, so the user is unaware.
I think Suunto outsmarted itself when it decided to create the auto-reverse navigation feature. It really causes more problems than it solves. I think the best solution is to offer a menu option to navigate a route backwards, so the user must knowingly select it.
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@duffman19 said in Suunto navigation tendency to auto-reverse route when it shouldn't. Bug or misguided feature?:
I think the best solution is to offer a menu option to navigate a route backwards, so the user must knowingly select it.
agree, simpler and safer
it would be also nice to have the elevation profile flipped horizontally while navigating backwards
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A bigger problem (albeit related) is losing the correct direction when the route intersects. For example, figure 8 or other variations of the route intersect.
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