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Cellular forums Home > Archive > Garmin GPS > August 2005 > CityNav NA v7 observations
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CityNav NA v7 observations
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| Seagull 2005-07-31, 5:49 pm |
| Just got my City Navigator North America v7 update DVD today.
It's interesting that there are fewer map segments than with v6 and
v5, and that each segment is (obviously) larger as a result. Garmin
is breaking the maps down by states instead of by rectangular grids.
When states are split into pieces, it appears that they try to break
them up into "logical" geometries (e.g., Oregon and Washington are
split into west and east, which makes a lot of sense if you live here,
and densely-populated states like California and New York are arranged
around their metro areas).
This move to larger regions probably makes sense now that we have
untis with lots of storage, though it's bad news for those who have
been using their second unlock on limited-memory devices like the
60C (though more data seems to be fitting in less memory, which
may alleviate this).
Also of note: all the image files in v7 total up to about 1.29 GB,
which is a small jump from 1.21 GB in v6. The jump from v5 to v6,
on the other hand, was much larger: v5 came in at 1.04 GB. (For
those familiar with IMG file internals, it looks like Garmin has done
something to reduce the individual IMG file sizes, possibly in the LBL
section where the label encoding seems to have changed from previous
releases).
Cheers,
-+JLS
--
\ carpe cavy!
seagull @ aracnet.com \
http://www.aracnet.com/~seagull/ \ (seize the guinea pig!)
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| Dave M 2005-07-31, 11:48 pm |
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"Seagull" <seagull@aracnet.com> wrote in message
news:dciqp001b7b@ene
ws3.newsguy.com...
> Just got my City Navigator North America v7 update DVD today.
>
> It's interesting that there are fewer map segments than with v6 and
> v5, and that each segment is (obviously) larger as a result. Garmin
> is breaking the maps down by states instead of by rectangular grids.
> When states are split into pieces, it appears that they try to break
> them up into "logical" geometries (e.g., Oregon and Washington are
> split into west and east, which makes a lot of sense if you live here,
> and densely-populated states like California and New York are arranged
> around their metro areas).
<<>>
This sounds good. In the areas I traveled with my SP3, I often had to
include extra maps because the places they devided regsions made no sense.
Two places that stand out for me our Columbus, Ohio and Atlanta, Georga.
These are places I pass through on freeways an they alwas seem to miss part
fo the area that the road runs trhough.
As I plan on buying either a 2610 or 2720 this summer, memory should not be
an issue, but plan to use the SP3 in the future.
>
> --
> \ carpe cavy!
> seagull @ aracnet.com \
> http://www.aracnet.com/~seagull/ \ (seize the guinea pig!)
| |
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| > This sounds good. In the areas I traveled with my SP3, I often had to
> include extra maps because the places they devided regsions made no sense.
I doubt that you'll find the new format to be advantageous for any
units (incl. your SP III) that have a limited amount of memory. There
will always be cases where the chosen boundary doesn't meet our needs,
and dividing based on state lines will frequently divide logical metro
areas (such as Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri). But using relatively
small regions lets each user pick a reasonably efficient area that
covers the area he needs - so even where the chosen boundary requires
an extra region this only adds a small amount of memory.
The new larger (in many cases state-sized) regions mean that far more
memory will be required to fully cover cross-country routes or
situations like a business traveller who wants the metro areas where
his branch locations are but doesn't need all the surrounding areas.
| |
| Seagull 2005-08-01, 5:48 am |
| In alt.satellite.gps peter <prathman@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> The new larger (in many cases state-sized) regions mean that far more
> memory will be required to fully cover cross-country routes or
> situations like a business traveller who wants the metro areas where
> his branch locations are but doesn't need all the surrounding areas.
The big outstanding question I have is: what does City Select v7 look
like? City Nav is the flagship product for the SPs with expandable
memory, but City Select is the "recommended" autorouting product for
all other devices. Perhaps CS is using the "old" style and CN the
"new"?
According to Garmin, CS updates ship on 8/15, so I guess we won't know
until then...
Cheers,
John
--
\ carpe cavy!
seagull @ aracnet.com \
http://www.aracnet.com/~seagull/ \ (seize the guinea pig!)
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| I have to agree that I like the old divisions better. I have a 64meg card
for my SPIII and have been able to use it for pretty long trips without
reloading map segments by picking out the ones on my route. No longer!
Looks like I'll have to go for a bigger card. I don't think this is
progress.
"peter" <prathman@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1122865835.290013.98660@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> I doubt that you'll find the new format to be advantageous for any
> units (incl. your SP III) that have a limited amount of memory. There
> will always be cases where the chosen boundary doesn't meet our needs,
> and dividing based on state lines will frequently divide logical metro
> areas (such as Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri). But using relatively
> small regions lets each user pick a reasonably efficient area that
> covers the area he needs - so even where the chosen boundary requires
> an extra region this only adds a small amount of memory.
>
> The new larger (in many cases state-sized) regions mean that far more
> memory will be required to fully cover cross-country routes or
> situations like a business traveller who wants the metro areas where
> his branch locations are but doesn't need all the surrounding areas.
>
| |
| Seagull 2005-08-01, 11:48 pm |
| In alt.satellite.gps BK <miatabill@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have to agree that I like the old divisions better. I have a 64meg card
> for my SPIII and have been able to use it for pretty long trips without
> reloading map segments by picking out the ones on my route. No longer!
> Looks like I'll have to go for a bigger card. I don't think this is
> progress.
I think it's a transition point. On the one hand, you can view the old
division system as archaic, designed for the limited-memory devices
of previous generations. On the other, you can view it as a hostile
change that leaves older device owners with potentially ugly choices.
At some point, it makes sense for Garmin to adapt their map products
to the low cost of flash memory. Whether or not this is the right time
remains to be seen (and how City Select is divided will be a big piece
of this, since it's supposed to be the product of choice for low-memory
devices).
Obviously, on the hardware side, they are behind the times (the 376 comes
to mind).
Cheers,
-+JLS
--
\ carpe cavy!
seagull @ aracnet.com \
http://www.aracnet.com/~seagull/ \ (seize the guinea pig!)
| |
| peter 2005-08-01, 11:48 pm |
| > > Looks like I'll have to go for a bigger card. I don't think this is
[color=darkred]
> I think it's a transition point. On the one hand, you can view the old
> division system as archaic, designed for the limited-memory devices
> of previous generations. On the other, you can view it as a hostile
> change that leaves older device owners with potentially ugly choices.
I could see the first viewpoint if there were a clear benefit to the
larger regions, but I haven't heard one yet. Yes they might save a
little on overall memory if you're going to load the whole CDROM/DVD,
but I don't see that anyone will care much if that takes 1.7 GB rather
than 1.6 GB. And selecting large number of maps to cover a big area
can already be done easily by click-dragging a rectangle on the map.
OTOH, it's clearly a big deal to the user who wants the second unlock
for his VistaC and finds that the region size is incompatible with his
24 MB memory. So at the moment I'm inclined toward the negative second
viewpoint.
As to CitySelect, the first time I heard of the larger region size was
in a review of the c320 which came with a large region variant of
CitySelect-NA, v6. But presumably Garmin still needs a version of
CitySelect to sell to the Legend/VistaC buyers so maybe there'll be two
versions.
| |
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| Is it City Navigator or MapSource that decides the size of map segments? I
upgraded both about the same time.
"peter" <prathman@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1122935481.060561.270770@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> I could see the first viewpoint if there were a clear benefit to the
> larger regions, but I haven't heard one yet. Yes they might save a
> little on overall memory if you're going to load the whole CDROM/DVD,
> but I don't see that anyone will care much if that takes 1.7 GB rather
> than 1.6 GB. And selecting large number of maps to cover a big area
> can already be done easily by click-dragging a rectangle on the map.
>
> OTOH, it's clearly a big deal to the user who wants the second unlock
> for his VistaC and finds that the region size is incompatible with his
> 24 MB memory. So at the moment I'm inclined toward the negative second
> viewpoint.
>
> As to CitySelect, the first time I heard of the larger region size was
> in a review of the c320 which came with a large region variant of
> CitySelect-NA, v6. But presumably Garmin still needs a version of
> CitySelect to sell to the Legend/VistaC buyers so maybe there'll be two
> versions.
>
| |
| Seagull 2005-08-02, 11:50 pm |
| In alt.satellite.gps.garmin BK <miatabill@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Is it City Navigator or MapSource that decides the size of map segments? I
> upgraded both about the same time.
It's the map product that is broken up into segments. Map Source
doesn't change anything.
Cheers,
-+JLS
--
\ carpe cavy!
seagull @ aracnet.com \
http://www.aracnet.com/~seagull/ \ (seize the guinea pig!)
| |
|
| "BK" <miatabill@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is it City Navigator or MapSource that decides the size of map =
segments? I=20
> upgraded both about the same time.
MapSource is the front-end to load about all Garmin's street-level maps,
so I don't think MapSource has much to do with the street-level maps =
besides
loading and doing whatever being told to do. Or the "Map Segment" is the
option of each individual street-level map (like CN, CS, BC, RC etc. and
different version may have different option).
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