[NEW UPDATES] I made a site for drawing beta

https://betaspray.net/

2/19/23 Update: I've been working on a lot of improvements over the last 6 months, and IMO the site is a lot more usable than when I originally posted it. I'm still looking to collect feedback on the user experience, so please try it out and give me feedback. Original description is below, here's some clarifications though:

• You can upload a photo of a boulder/route and draw beta on it
• Useful for thinking through beta from home, sending to a far away friend to collect ideas, record beta for later, etc.
• This is not a site for sharing videos of people climbing. Thank you to the people who shared those ideas, but that's not what I'm going for.
• This is primarily meant for indoor boulders/routes, but is usable on rock too (it's just a lot harder to see holds)
• Right now, all uploads are public and changes are global, but this is not the intended long-term solution. It was just the easiest thing to implement so I can find out how to make this useful (and if people even want it).

Here's one example of a gym route:

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I've spent the last few months working on this site. The idea is to make it easy to share bouldering beta with people who aren't standing next to you, or just to save it for yourself later. You take a picture of a boulder, upload it, then use the palette on the right to add holds and then moves in sequence. Send the link to a friend and you can edit collaboratively.

This is generally intended for indoor boulders because it's easy to fit the whole thing in one picture and have the holds be visible and obvious. Feel free to try it on outdoor boulders or taller routes though.

As the big colorful banner on the site says, the project is in the alpha phase right now, meaning it's got a ton of known issues and I'm just trying to collect feedback on the general usability/experience, and to see if this is even something people would want to use. Try it out and please let me know what you think.

Kevin DeWeese wrote:

Soooooo like, I don't really see a way to know where in the world any problem is. Is the idea more of a unsearchable database that people upload and then directly share with their friends? And I didn't want to try, but it looks like anyone can go there and change the beta or delete the beta for existing submissions?

Yeah, the idea is more around private sharing rather than having a public database of beta. Since it's oriented around gym boulders which are temporary, it didn't seem to make sense to try to curate a permanent database.

And yeah right now there's no private sharing/permissions since that adds a lot of technical complexity (also forces users to log in), so yes anyone can edit/delete beta. The plan long term is to prevent that, but right now it didn't seem like the best use of time.

If you live in the pacific time zone, this already exists and is called andyliu84 ‘s youtube channel

I am interested in this as I recently tried recording personal beta for an outdoor boulder I wouldn't return to for a while. That was a challenge and I was curious to see if yours would have worked better than my system.

Some notes:

1. The holds should not be "highlighted" with frosted white, that defeat the purpose. I need to see the holds. Everything ELSE should be frosted if anything. 

2. Usually beta is not a simple ladder of right hand, left hand, right foot... etc. I think there needs to be A LOT more granularity to be useful. Even simple things like "drop knee" or "flag left" or "undercling not sidepull" are not currently available. (I see there is some indication of smearing.)

3. I think in experimenting with it I fucked up several problems.(Not intentionally, sorry.)  There needs to be a way to save???

4.  I don't understand what many of the lines really mean between the hand/feet. Why they are occasionally dotted, sometimes solid. 

5. Maybe a stick figure you can draw/place to show body position?

I think you have an interesting idea. If it actually worked, better than a video, you would really have something. I think the challenge is making something that can explain a complicated system of body positions, AND that is editable by the masses. This is a pretty huge task. I wish you luck. 

tobias bundlewrote:

I am interested in this as I recently tried recording personal beta for an outdoor boulder I wouldn't return to for a while. That was a challenge and I was curious to see if yours would have worked better than my system.

Some notes:

1. The holds should not be "highlighted" with frosted white, that defeat the purpose. I need to see the holds. Everything ELSE should be frosted if anything. 

2. Usually beta is not a simple ladder of right hand, left hand, right foot... etc. I think there needs to be A LOT more granularity to be useful. Even simple things like "drop knee" or "flag left" or "undercling not sidepull" are not currently available. (I see there is some indication of smearing.)

3. I think in experimenting with it I fucked up several problems.(Not intentionally, sorry.)  There needs to be a way to save???

4.  I don't understand what many of the lines really mean between the hand/feet. Why they are occasionally dotted, sometimes solid. 

5. Maybe a stick figure you can draw/place to show body position?

I think you have an interesting idea. If it actually worked, better than a video, you would really have something. I think the challenge is making something that can explain a complicated system of body positions, AND that is editable by the masses. This is a pretty huge task. I wish you luck. 

Thank you for the detailed feedback! There's a lot of complexity to distill into a diagram so this is helpful in figuring out how to do it.

1. I like this idea! FWIW there's a button in the palette to hide the overlay if you need to see the boulder temporarily, but I see your point.

2. You can add arbitrary notes to any move to designate flag, drop knee, etc. Did you find and didn't thing it was flexible enough, or was it just not discoverable enough?

3. No worries! I like the idea of an explicit save

4. I get what you mean. The dotted lines are supposed to be the stick figure you talked about, they only show up when you hover a move (tap on mobile). I should probably make it more clear what that is though.

5. The stick figure is implicitly available on any move now, but is clearly not obvious/intuitive so I'll work on that

This is really helpful, thanks for the suggestions. I'll try to work on them this weekend.

John Clark wrote:

If you live in the pacific time zone, this already exists and is called andyliu84 ‘s youtube channel

His beta is so hard and makes it so smooth. 

I've made a lot of improvements to the site since I originally posted this thread, and I'd love to get another round of feedback from anyone interested in trying it. The link is in the first post. It's free to use, no account necessary.