Deduce elevation from the map

[icefinger]

Dear developers,
Since sportstracker is able to load the OSM map to draw the track, It could be a great improvement if it extract the elevation at each point from the map (in the case it's not already measured during the tracking).
Thanks for the great work

[ssaring]

Interesting idea. Currently there's no API in the project which provides access to the altitude data for geo positions, but I think there will be appropriate libraries. The lookup could be added as an option in the exercise dialog next to the altitude data input (just a first idea).

[arampp]

I was a contributor to open street map (osm) for a few years in the past. During my active time (2007-2013) osm did not contain much altitude data. Main reason was that most GPS devices are not very accurate in altitude.
As an alternative you could use NASA''s STRM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) data. They measured the whole earth altitude with a Space Shuttle in 2000. The data is available under public domain.
I think there shold be some Web services where one can query the altidude of a specific coordinate. But keep in mind that in the OSM community, there were discussions about quality and resolution of the data. I did not follow these discussions but I think there might be a potential risk when using the STRM data.

[ssaring]

@bitSchupser Good point, thanks!