doc: updated README

README.md

@@ -1,2 +1,35 @@
-# JaVelo
- Planificateur d'itinéraires vélo en Suisse
+# JaVelo - Cycling route planner in Switzerland
+
+This project is a semester project for the course **CS108 - Object-Oriented Programming**, given to freshmen in Computer Science faculty at EPFL. 
+
+It's a cycle route planner, allowing the user to select a departure point, an arrival point and several optional intermediate points to determine a route optimised for cycling. The interface features a navigable map of French-speaking Switzerland, using [OpenStreetMap](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=6/46.449/2.210) data. Once the route has been determined, it is displayed on this map above the vertical profile, which shows the detailed gradient over the entire route as well as a few statistics such as length and altitude. The route can be exported in GPX format to the user's computer. 
+
+![JaVeloScreenshot](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/rkF-vB0EA.png)
+
+This project uses an in-house implementation of the [A*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm) search algorithm, which is an extension of [Dijkstra's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm) algorithm. It relies on [JavaFX](https://openjfx.io) for GUI and [JUnit](https://junit.org/junit5/) for testing. When the user clicks somewhere outside the supported area, a simple error message is shown on the screen. 
+
+## Run instructions
+The project uses [Gradle](https://gradle.org) for build and dependency management, which makes run instructions pretty straightforward. Once you cloned the repository, simply run the following command from the `JaVelo/` directory. 
+
+###### macOS
+```shell
+./gradlew run
+```
+
+###### Windows
+```shell
+gradlew.bat run
+```
+
+
+You can also run the tests or simply build the project using the same `Gradle` wrapper as above, running `./gradlew build` or `./gradlew test`.
+
+If you wish to extend the supported area for other countries, currently used data is located into `src/resources/ch_west/` folder. You must provide the following binary files corresponding to OpenStreetMap data for the zone you wish to use: 
+- `attributes.bin`
+- `edges.bin`
+- `elevations.bin`
+- `nodes.bin`
+- `profile_ids.bin`
+- `sectors.bin`
+
+This project only offers support for French language, including documentation.