XBackcountry; useless?

Does anyone actually pay for this?

We will pay for this one way or the other once they start incrementally locking parts of MP behind a paywall

I just don't understand what it's for.

Full transparency, I'm an onX employee who worked with Adventure Projects before the change of ownership so take what I say with that grain of salt. 

The onX Backcountry app is for multi-activity adventure planning and navigation. It consolidates most of the Adventure Projects' trail and climbing content into one app and brings in much better tools and features than what is currently available in the Adventure Projects apps, like recent satellite imagery (e.g. see snow coverage from the previous week), a 3D map layer, local weather, and private land data. There are also a lot more options for personalization like custom waypoints on the map, building routes, and creating folders to house all of that for, say, an upcoming trip, that you can share with other onX users. All of that and more are outlined on this onX + Mountain Project page. 

Happy to answer any other questions. 

Yuval B wrote:

We will pay for this one way or the other once they start incrementally locking parts of MP behind a paywall

OnX has committed to keeping what you know and care about on MP free.  

That is great to hear Zander and I appreciate your response.  Has OnX shared any plans/official commitments with the public on their plans with MP?

My concern is that OnX is a private company and their best interest is their bottom line.  In the short term that may not be concerning but things change stakeholders and shareholders make decisions to cover their pockets during difficult times.  Maybe today OnX has a good enough plan to create value out of the data they get from MP in their paid platform that they don't need to charge but that isn't a given and it's fair to be both grateful for what OnX is contributing by funding the costs to run this service and skeptical at the same time of the long term prospects under private ownership.  Hosting a service like this is not cheap(mainly resources, storage, data transfer) and has some continuous operational costs(probably fairly small relatively) and it's hard to see how once the initial data has been extracted into the main platform that it can continue to be a revenue source.  A lot of work from a lot of people has gone into making this a high quality database and I guess the core of the point im trying to make is private ownership comes with (in my opinion) greater risk.

All that said there is no free lunch and I'm definitely thankful to OnX for supporting this platform for free and hope it can remain that way

I think that's well said, Yuval, and a very valid concern. Technically, MP has always been under private ownership but I think your point is that onX has a much clearer business model around subscriptions and monetization. 

Speaking as myself and not onX, the fact that onX has a proven business model with outdoor digital navigation apps gives me hope for the sustainable, long-term support of MP (and many of the folks who are closest to MP at onX were MP users previously). Especially comparing to what MP has tried in the past, which included ads, affiliate links, and even charging for the MP app back in 2014. It's clear that striking the right balance is hard and I know onX doesn't take that responsibility lightly. 

Putting my onX hat back on, our goal is to communicate honestly with the MP community so that whether you agree or not, you understand why. We don't always hit the mark and appreciate being held accountable as that shows how much this community cares. We'll continue to provide support and answer questions as best we can and hope to get out a Changelog update here soon. 

Here are a couple posts made in the last year that re-iterate the commitment to keeping the core of MP free:
1) https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/124804492/onx-and-mountain-project
2) https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/125526673/the-changelog-december-2023

Zander thanks for trying to be up front with US.
The latest thing OnX did, locking US out until we created an account- that really only required to give your E-Mail- spooked several people I know who are prolific “setters” ( to use the modern term). Many are telling me …. “Nope, not going to list anything else ever….”
So what exactly was achieved?

Personally I have zero use for electronic MAPS.

I know how to use the tried n true paper maps and actually prefer older maps because the new topo maps- issued by the Government are woke and leave off a lot of things that might be helpful if you’re lost. Example: many dirt roads leading to abandoned mines, places the government doesn’t want you to visit etc.

How historic are onX maps? 

I thought people were complaining that the OnX phone app wanted access to all the photos and contacts on your phone?

One thing that would be useful is updated high res photos and snow coverage. Snow coverage is for skiing and ski route planning. I have noticed these sometimes on other software but generally they either aren't high res enough or not current enough to be useful.  Sentinel-2 at 30m res is not what I would like.  I haven't tried the pay version of those services to see how much better it is.  Companies like Maxar and Airbus supposedly have images as good as 30cm resolution.  Here are some at typ 2m, which still isn't that great, but maybe okay.  https://intelligence.airbus.com/newsroom/satellite-image-gallery/spot/ Then again, it might never be great for detailed skiing, since many spots are in shadow and appear mostly blacked out.

Skiing is low impact since you can always hike but the same types of images can get motorized vehicles into trouble and problems since they may try to force their way though routes that are closed or should be closed. Satellites know nothing about good management, and neither do old maps.

I've been really impressed with OnX.  It mostly has feature parity with its peers (Caltopo, Gaia, Fatmaps, Garmin) and has several nice features that haven't been replicated on other platforms.  Integration with MP and its sister sites (MTB, skiing and hiking projects) is nice, you get the info overlaid into your navigation app.  They've been doing a lot of experimentation with the skiing stuff specifically which is cool, including trying to add ATES info and adding essentially mini guidebooks of info (I think this is a mixture of novel written material and crowd sourced stuff from the Project sites).  Price point is reasonable and almost always on sale.  They also are constantly soliciting feedback from users to make it better.

Honestly I understand the "corpo bad" mentality, but Onx has so far been putting their best foot forward. They seem like they care about the communities they're working with. If that changes then of course we should call them out, but that hasn't happened yet.

Guy Kessee - Thanks for that, calling topo maps "woke" is honestly the funniest thing I've heard all week

Eric Roe wrote:

....
Honestly I understand the "corpo bad" mentality, but Onx has so far been putting their best foot forward. They seem like they care about the communities they're working with. If that changes then of course we should call them out, but that hasn't happened yet.

I'm not even coming from a "corpo bad" standpoint just to make that clear.  I'm just expressing the risks I think are present to the platform and It has been more in my mind since the requirement of an OnX account to access MP as someone else mentioned above.  And Zander is right that it's always been under private ownership and this risk isn't exactly new but it feels escalated a bit by the subscription models in all the other parts of their platform and regular emails trying to sell me stuff I never signed up for.  If OnX were to provide a data dump of MP data on an annual basis to a well established climbing nonprofit under some sort of non-compete agreement saying if OnX were to restrict access to MP (paywall) they are free to distribute the data just so that we know all the hard work people have put into documenting climbing is safe I'd personally feel better about it but I can't see that happening as outside the users themselves the data I think would be the biggest value in owning MP.  It's just a lot of generally very high quality data and a huge ammount of effort by the global community that went into documenting all these routes and lots of history and regardless of ownership (private/non-profit) it being centralized is just a risk.  Reddit and their IPO is a great example of in the absolute worst case what can happen to a platform where content is created and moderated by the user base but is owned by shareholders who want to see returns on their investments

OnX seems like a cool platform and just beyond a quick 3d zoom around Icicle Canyon on the OnX free trial I'm not really familiar with the offerings of the platform so its cool to hear some of you finding useful & novel offerings in the new services!  Maybe I'll have to check it out more at some point.

Appreciate the candid communication Zander, you definintely have a super unqiue perspective on all this having been with MP both with REI and under OnX and just having you here in on the forms definitely shows a lot of care for the MP community so thank you!

Eric said….. 

“Guy Kessee - Thanks for that, calling topo maps "woke" is honestly the funniest thing I've heard all week” 

But what would you call a map scrubbed of all European history? (Mines, abandoned towns, settlements etc) Go and compare a map made in 1966 to one made in 2016 - a lot of stuff is missing. Jess saying 

Guy Keesee wrote:

Eric said….. 

“Guy Kessee - Thanks for that, calling topo maps "woke" is honestly the funniest thing I've heard all week” 

Happy to make you smile….. 

But what would you call a map scrubbed of all European history? (Mines, abandoned towns, settlements etc) Go and compare a map made in 1966 to one made in 2016 - a lot of stuff is missing. Jess saying 

Are you saying there's a shortage of maps with European history on them, Guy? These days, unlike 1966, digital maps come with different layers. So base maps tend to be less detailed. And if you want, "Great bass fishing spots" you click that layer. Likewise for ghost towns, mines, etc. 

Why am I forced to create a new account to be spammed at when I already have an account to be spammed at? How much is this going to cost! I can’t search an area without divulging personally identifiable information and consenting to being spammed 

Its shady that for hunting, vs hiking, vs climbing you have to pay.

Capitalism at its worst. 

Its pretty dope if you backcountry ski, but if you only rock-climb it's probably not worth it.  If you develop routes the high quality 3D satellite topo's and terrain and pretty useful for virtually scouting areas and creating approach trails / waypoints to get to that choss pile you found wayyy out in the distance. 

All of the websites that have user content , volunteers, forums have this problem. Couchsurfing.com was built and staffed by volunteers. The original founder said it was always to be free. Then he sold it and now it’s paid subscription. Even for the volunteers. Lonely planet thorn tree travel forum had thousands of pages of info. The company deleted the whole thing.  All we can do is make our own websites. 

Not Sure wrote:

All of the websites that have user content , volunteers, forums have this problem. Couchsurfing.com was built and staffed by volunteers. The original founder said it was always to be free. Then he sold it and now it’s paid subscription. Even for the volunteers. Lonely planet thorn tree travel forum had thousands of pages of info. The company deleted the whole thing.  All we can do is make our own websites. 

We can make our own website but hosting and maintaining something like this is not cheap, I don't know the costs but everything together including maintenance costs I'd gander its over 5k/month probably 10k+ unless they have their infrastructure set up really well.  I think our best bet for something like that is having public data backups (which would require breaking TOS and scraping the site) 

8. (g) use spiders, crawlers, robots, scrapers, automated tools or any other similar means to access the Service  or substantially download, reproduce or archive any portion of the Service;

and if the day comes where it is not longer a free public resource hoping an established climbing non-profit will back hosting the publicly-sourced data archive as a similar easy to use website which also is against TOS.

7. (d) Except with respect to Your Content, you may not: (i) use, reproduce, modify, adapt, create derivative                works from, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, make, have made, assign, pledge, transfer or otherwise grant rights to the Service, except as expressly permitted under the TOU;

TOS - https://www.adventureprojects.net/ap-terms

Zander Göpfert wrote:

Full transparency, I'm an onX employee who worked with Adventure Projects before the change of ownership so take what I say with that grain of salt. 

The onX Backcountry app is for multi-activity adventure planning and navigation. It consolidates most of the Adventure Projects' trail and climbing content into one app and brings in much better tools and features than what is currently available in the Adventure Projects apps, like recent satellite imagery (e.g. see snow coverage from the previous week), a 3D map layer, local weather, and private land data. There are also a lot more options for personalization like custom waypoints on the map, building routes, and creating folders to house all of that for, say, an upcoming trip, that you can share with other onX users. All of that and more are outlined on this onX + Mountain Project page. 

Happy to answer any other questions. 

Yeah I'm just not gonna use any of that for climbing. Seems way extra, but cool for backpacking, alpine, hunting, etc.

I don’t see the pricing for onX.clocked the link and it wants me to login but not show the prices