Qalasi builds a walk that is prettier than the fastest route without costing you much more time. Four settings in Profile control how it does that. This page explains what each one does, and how they work together.
The hard limit - the most stops a route can ever have, including ones you add yourself by tapping the map or from Browse all scenic places. Set it to 8 and you can never end up with 9. Default: 8.
How many stops Qalasi picks for you automatically when it first builds the route. It can never be more than the max above - if you set it higher, the max wins. You can still add more afterwards by hand, up to that max. Default: 3.
How much extra walking time you are willing to spend on the stops Qalasi picks for you.
Short walks always get a few minutes of room for detours. Default: Balanced.
What counts as scenic. Parks, gardens, squares, sights and historic landmarks are on by default. Botanical gardens, museums, art galleries, monuments, viewpoints, marinas and hiking areas are there if you want them. At least one kind stays selected - with none there would be nothing to route through. The same kinds are used for the list in Browse all scenic places.
When you open Browse all scenic places to add stops by hand, Qalasi lists places up to 20 km from your route on foot, 30 km by bike and 50 km by car. It only affects that list, not the stops Qalasi picks automatically.
You choose how you travel on the map, above the route search: Walk, Bike or Car. Under Walk you can also pick Stroller or Wheelchair - those routes avoid stairs, and wheelchair routes also keep kerbs low and slopes gentle where map data allows.
The settings above apply to every mode. What changes is how far from the direct line Qalasi may look for stops: about 3 km on foot, 6 km by bike and 15 km by car - so even a long trip between two cities gets scenic stops all the way. Loops can last up to 60 minutes on foot, 3 hours by bike and 4 hours by car.
Say your walk is 20 minutes direct. You set Scenic stops added automatically to 8 and How scenic to Balanced, which allows about 60% longer - so 32 minutes.
Qalasi finds 8 nice places and builds the route. It comes to 45 minutes, over your 32. So it drops the stop that pulls furthest off the path and tries again: 38 minutes, still over. It drops another. Now 30 minutes - that fits. You get 6 stops, not 8.
So added automatically is what Qalasi tries for, and How scenic is what it is allowed to spend. How scenic always wins. Stops you add yourself are always kept - the time budget only trims Qalasi’s own picks.
Almost always because the walk was short. A 10-minute walk on Balanced allows only a few minutes of detour, so there is little room for stops no matter how many you asked for.
Three things help: set How scenic to Wander, which buys more time for detours; turn on more Kinds of places so there are more candidates near your path; or add stops yourself from Browse all scenic places.
Qalasi · Javid Rzayev (Germany) · hello@qalasi.com
Qalasi