Route Finding Algorithms
RouteFinder finds routes by treating the carriage road system as a mathematical graph consisting of nodes and
edges. A node is a location such as parking area, a signpost, or a bridge. An edge is the
segment of carriage road that directly connects two nodes.
A route is a sequence of one or more carriage road segments, and surprisingly, there are thousands of possible
multi-segment routes between any two nodes. Since finding all routes would produce an
overwhelming number of choices, Route Finder stops searching after it has found several routes. You can,
however, make it search a little longer and find more routes.
Fastest Search vs Extended Search
The bottom of the Route Options page has a checkbox that lets you choose between the fastest search algorithm
and an extended search algorithm.
- Fastest: Works well in most cases most of the time. Returns up to 100 routes.
- Extended: Finds a wider variety of long distance routes but can take a long time to run. For shorter distances it behaves the same as the fast algorithm, but for longer distances it may find routes that the fast algorithm did not find. Returns up to 200 routes.