Ride with GPS today officially unveiled their all-new Surface Types feature, allowing route planners to finally visualize road surface types as they plan, view, and navigate routes. Now available on the Ride With GPS web and app platforms, the Surface Types feature allows route planners to distinguish paved roads from unpaved roads or trails while planning or viewing routes. Likewise, surface types will appear as you plan, view or navigate your route using the mobile app as well.

Surface type categories

• Paved - Paved surfaces include asphalt, concrete, and chip seal. Paved surfaces are shown as a solid line.

• Unpaved - Unpaved surfaces include gravel, dirt, and natural/unimproved trails. Unpaved surfaces are shown as a dashed line.

• Unknown - When there is insufficient data available about a surface it will show up as unknown. Unknown surfaces are shown as an outlined white line.

Like many other services out there, Ride with GPS relies on surface type data from OpenStreetMap (OSM), an open-source mapping service of the entire world. But recognizing that this data can be incomplete, they made it possible for users to manually adjust the surface types of their routes using the Ride with GPS Route Planner. For permanent changes, they also offer the ability for users to contribute up-to-date surface types information directly to OSM.

See it now at RideWithGPS.com