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A couple of years ago I reviewed OCN6 and gave it a pretty good rating. Now the folks at OnCourse Navigator have updated the software and maps, and the good news is that a good system is now even better. OCN8 has again raised the bar for routing and mapping applications.

Testing Environment
I tested OCN8 with a Dell Axim X51v with Lenny’s L11 ROM of WM6.1 and with an ETEN Glofiish X610 also running WM6.1. With the Axim I used two different BlueTooth GPS receivers including an i-Blue 757 receiver and a GlobalSat 338. The X51v has been upgraded to 128 Meg of RAM, the X610 has the original 64 Meg.

Installation
Installation is still dead simple. When you buy the system you get a micro-SD card with the software and maps on it, plus a micro-to-mini adapter and a mini-to-SD adapter. The combination allows you to use the system in just about any device that can read any size SD card. The 2 Gbyte card is “straight” SD, the 4Gbyte is SDHC. I tested the 4GB version.

To install, you simply insert the card into your device. Because the Axim doesn’t have a micro or mini-SD slot, I used the adapters. The security scheme is tied to the hardware, meaning you cannot copy the software to another card and run it, but it does let you copy the entire card for a backup. The OCN folks continue to recommend you do that right away as a backup precaution, then you can delete any maps you don’t want from the card and use the extra space for anything you want to put on the card. The 2Gb card will be pretty full, so you may opt to delete some of the maps (after the backup, of course) to make space available. I’ve kept all the maps (US and Canada) and have thus far added about 60 Meg of other files to the card, leaving me with 1.9 Gig still free. When you install the card for the first time it runs to install the software. The install files are in a folder in the root of the card called 2577. Inside that folder are two files named Autorun.exe and Autorun_8.nng. After installation, the Today screen has a bar added for OCN8 as a launcher. I didn’t want to give up the real estate, so I opened the Today settings and unchecked the OCN8 item to have it not display. Then I renamed the two files in 2577 to add “not” in front of the name. That renaming means it won’t put the bar back on the Today screen if I decide to remove the card and then reinsert it. If you don’t rename, then the OCN8 bar will return to the Today screen each time you re-insert the card. If I need to reinstall for any reason, I’ll just rename the two files to their original names and insert the card.

When you start the software you get a splash screen showing the progress of the loading. That runs for about 10-12 seconds. Then you get to the main console screen:

From this screen you can do most of what you need. “Find” will open up a window to allow you to find locations. “Route” will give you information about the route you presently have planned and allow you to save/retrieve a route. “Manage” opens up a menu to let you manage data and logs. “Settings” is pretty self explanatory.

I’m not going to go through all the setup screens. You can see a ton of screenshots at the OCN website in the link above. Suffice it to say that you can configure just about everything about OCN8 to suit your personal desires. What I have, you may not like, so don’t let my choices affect your decision on the look of the various screens. Trust me, you can do a LOT of configuration changes with OCN8!

What is really unique and new about OCN8 is the 3D function. Where the map data contains elevation data, the display will show the terrain. Here is one example. I’ll talk about the rest of the screen, but for now look at the hills and valleys it shows:

Here is another terrain shot that shows the hills on another portion of the highway with a route planned:

As you can see, the road, shown as yellow on the left side and green on the right, goes through a gentle valley between two hills, then down a slope and across a river to climb up a small hill on the other side. The river is the Shenandoah, in Virginia, by the way.

Let me take you through the icons and controls on the screen. I’ve shown the display in landscape because I liked the landscape display in 3D. If you prefer portrait, the same data is shown, but in a slightly different configuration. In the upper picture, on the upper left the round “monocle” window has a set of binoculars depicted. That icon means there is no route planned. In the second shot you can see that in that monocle shows that in 6.1 miles I will need to bear to the right. The smaller windows just below then indicates that in a further 0.2 miles I will need to turn left. Other icons display U-turns, exits from highways, merging onto highways, entering roundabouts, etc.

To the right of the lower arrow are four icons. The top one is dim, but would be bright if the sound was muted. The red dot indicates I am recording the route. Just below it is “TMC” which is dim because I don’t have TMC in my area and the final one is the standard Bluetooth to indicate if I have a bluetooth GPS engaged. That last one is dim because I use Franson’s GPSGate to control my GPS, so to the OCN8 software it looks like a hard-wired GPS on a COM port. If I used the BT GPS receiver directly, the BT symbol is brighter.

Below the directions are the navigation data. In the second shot you can see that I am traveling 57 MPH, headed WNW at an altitude of 640 feet. Note that in the upper image I am also traveling 57 MPH, headed between East and ENE, and the time is 11:49. The display in the non-route mode is not configurable, but if you have a route planned you can select which three items to display. To make that choice, or just to see the data, you tap on the set of display items and this screen opens:

On this screen you can see the little set of three boxes in each data area. The one that is highlighted shows where on the map screen that data is displayed. In this case the center speed dial is upper, the compass is middle and Altitude is lower. The others are not displayed. You can also see that I have 2.1 miles to go, 4 minutes, will arrive at 11:34 and the speed limit is unknown on this road so it shows as zero.

Back on the map display the bottom two icons on the left are the battery indicator and GPS indicator. The little car icon beside them shows I’ve chosen the “car” option for routing. There are other options, including bus and pedestrian. The latter ignores one-way restrictions. There is a safety calculation in that if your speed gets too high and you are in pedestrian mode, you do get a warning. Also, if you exceed the speed limit, you get a warning both visual and auditory. You can set the tolerance for the speed limit warning, but there is one caution: if the speed limit of the road is unknown, you don’t get any warning at all. So, although it’s useful, I found that I could not absolutely depend on it to keep from speeding. Here is a shot of the screen when I exceeded the speed limit. The circled “50” is the speed limit, which only shows when I am above that value. Since I am at 61 mph, that is clearly above the 50 limit and the 8 mph I have set for tolerance.

Also on that shot is something called “lane assistance.” Across the bottom you see five arrows, two white and three yellow. The lanes that I need to be in are the yellow ones. The two on the left are going to depart from the Beltway, so I need to be in the three right lanes. This assistance is not available everywhere, but where it is, it is very handy to get into the proper lane in advance.

On the lower map screen the buttons on the right are transparent, with only the bottom one highlighted. That is the “menu” button and opens up the main screen in the very first image. Above that is “position” which opens up a menu to manipulate the present position. You can use “position” to set a POI, pushpin, traffic camera or to add it to your favorites. Above the position is “detour” which allows you to replan the route avoiding some portion of the road ahead. I won’t go into the details, it works like most detour options. The top button allows you to choose between 2D and 3D display. Here is a 2D display. Note that I have chosen to show terrain on the 2D maps, so you see shades of green showing higher and lower elevations:

Finally, the bottom bar shows the road you are on, and the upper bar shows the next road onto which you will turn, if you have a route planned.

What I can’t show is the sound that goes with the software. I had chosen Amy, an American Female voice, as the default. Amy does well, giving good notice of upcoming turns at 2 miles to go, then announces once more to “prepare” to maneuver and finally gives an authoritative “turn” command just as you get to the point to maneuver. On both the X51v and the X610 the prompts came in plenty of time to see the turn coming. The maps lag slightly, but I found that by the time I had made the turn and could look at the screen it was generally done with the turn also. I had someone else drive so I could focus on the software in the turns and I could see the 1-2 second lag that way, but the voice prompts were always prompt and timely.

In the middle of the review I got an email from OCN8 saying that if I had extended memory there was a Text-to-Speech module available. I emailed back that the X51v had 128 Meg of RAM and they promptly sent me the TTS upgrade. There is a new voice, named Susan, that is the only TTS option. Susan’s voice is also pleasant and she does a pretty good job, too. There are a few idiosyncrasies. She pronounced Ashleigh as “ash-lye” instead of “ash-lee,” for example. She also does not know that NE is NorthEast. In one town I drive through daily there is a Mill St NE that I use. Susan doesn’t pronounce North East, but spells out N-E. She also doesn’t know that St is Street, but tries to pronounce it, so “Mill St NE” sounds like “Mill sit any.” She knows NW is North West, and both SE and SW are ok, it’s just NE that confuses her. In addition to not pronouncing St properly, she pronounced “Dr” as “Doctor” so East Dr NE became “East Doctor any.” Finally, she pronounces “onto” as “onta.” It must be a regional thing, but I would prefer it pronounced as it is spelled. Nevertheless, I still use Susan as she does get it right most of the time and her idiosyncrasies are not as annoying after a couple of days. I now know that “Turn right onta Mill sit any” is my turn!

There is a day and night color scheme. The night scheme is shown here. Note that it is mostly black, which is easier on the eyes. You can choose to have the switch happen automatically at sunset/sunrise in your location. The timing seemed to be pretty close for my area. Although it’s hard to see, the terrain is still being depicted in the night mode. Just like in real life, terrain is harder to see at night!

Other features

In addition to what I have shown, the OCN8 package supports many other features common to good navigation software. It has:

1. Favorites—it can store addresses and coordinates in a favorites list. You can use the favorites as destinations or as via points.

2. Via Points—you can have multiple via points on a route. You can add via points and let the software optimize the route for you. I found it worked well when I used that function, but I didn’t try to stump it. I will say it optimized two via points and a destination just fine.

3. POI—the system has a suite of 284,000 POI locations. In this picture you can see two icons for gas stations, one closer in and one further away. As the POI gets nearer, the icon gets more visible. The POI database was relatively accurate for my area. You should be warned, however, that POI are notoriously hard to keep current and accurate, so you may be disappointed, no matter how hard the companies work at it. The good news is that you can add POI yourself, so you can customize to the POI you are interested in having.

4. You can search for POI around your location, destination, via points or by name. Once the list is generated, you can sort by name or by distance from the center point. That combination of options means it should be easy to find what you want.

5. Routes can be stored and retrieved—This feature is really nice if you have multiple journeys planned. You can preplan and save the route, then retrieve it and not have to replan it. It worked for me just fine.

6. Data can be saved—You can save trips. The little red dot shows that I was saving the trip. You can export the saved trip to a .gpx file, display it on the PDA or replay it in OCN8. You can also save the GPS raw data as it comes in. The raw data is saved in a separate file as a text file with .bin as the extension. That process worked well. Each time it loses the GPS it ends that file and starts another, so you may end up with multiple .bin files for a long trip if you lose the GPS under bridges or if the BT connection is interfered with by some other signal. I found that the BT signal to my X51v gets interrupted about every 45 minutes to an hour, on average. With more and more cars being equipped with BT, I expect that interference to increase over time.

7. Three-D data is more than maps—there are two interesting byproducts of the 3D capability. One is shown in this image:

This intersection is a triple stack of highways. Note that there is a shadow under some of the bridges and roads, showing which is above and below the others. The image is not totally accurate because of the way the terrain actually flows, but it does show that some roadways are above others. It’s another good visual representation of what is ahead of you as you travel through the complex intersection

The second by-product is that buildings are shown where known—I didn’t drive into Washington, DC, which is nearby, but major buildings are shown in the city area where they are in the database. The images are recognizable, and should help with the navigation. Here is a link to the OCN8 website where you can see a lot of images and other screenshots: OCN8 Screenshots at OnCourseNavigator.com.

8. Updates are provided by naviextras.com—This feature is, for now, announceware. The website is in beta, but the plan is for the site to offer updates for maps and POIs. Pricing is unknown at this time, but the idea is intriguing. I hope it works well.

9. OCN plans to offer an upgrade from OCN6 to OCN8. That option is not ready yet, but they do promise a “favorable” price for the update. On the website, OCN says the upgrade will be $60 and will load onto your original OCN6 SD-card. They do warn that if the new software and maps won’t fit on the original car, you may not be able to upload it all at the same time.

How well did it work?

In a word, the experience with OCN8 was “excellent.” I found it worked well on both the X51v with a ton of memory, and on the X610 with not so much memory available. Both devices kept up with the demands of the software. Of course, the X610 has a QVGA screen, so the display calculations only had a quarter of the pixels to compute, meaning the workload was smaller, but overall the display was excellent on both the X610 and the VGA X51v.

Routing was quick, as was rerouting. The voice selections were good, and the voices were all pleasant and readable. With the exception of the strange pronunciations of Susan already listed, the sound was accurate and prompts were given in a very timely fashion.

The system is heavily configurable. I haven’t even started to cover the details of the system. My copy only came with the card, adapters and a thin “getting started” pamphlet. I downloaded the full user manual from OCN’s website. It’s an 11.1 mbyte download and is eighty-eight pages long of detailed instructions. Fortunately, there are two modes of operation, and you get to choose. The default is “Simple,” in which the menu items are limited to those you should need in typical use. In “Advanced” mode the menus expand and you have many, many more options to consider. I selected “Advanced” because of the review and the fact I wanted to play with it, but I think “simple” will do for the average user just fine.

In the previous review of OCN6 I pointed out that there were a few errors in the database in my area. All of those errors are now corrected. The version I received came with April, 2008 maps, which seem to be pretty up-to-date. I did find one intersection that was reconfigured about a year ago that was not accurately shown, but that intersection was between two smaller roads and not a major highway. Even with that error, the direction to turn was obvious to me, so the error in configuration was not a fatal flaw.

The only criticism I have is for the default day color schemes. The daytime scheme is low contrast, and in bright light it’s harder to see those yellow roads on the grey background than the images here would make you think. At night the contrast is great, and it works well on the green background, but when the background is grey, the contrast is very low and sometimes hard to see. I’m still looking for a more high contrast scheme to use!

Closing Words

After my three-week evaluation of it, I can say that OCN8 has stepped up to the reputation of its predecessor. It remains far and away the best product I’ve tested in a long time. It has retained the quick operation, bug-free and highly configurable features to fit your personal likes. It works flawlessly on long and short journeys and never caused any problems at all. It’s a great system!

Pros:

• Excellent GUI – highly configurable
• Quick routing/re-routing
• Good POI database, customizable
• Full Featured
• Pleasant voices, including TTS
• Can be used in multiple machines (security is tied to the card, which you can move from PDA to PDA)
• 3D mode shows terrain, bridges and buildings

Cons:

• Strange language choices (quirky, not fatal)

Developer/Vendor: Easy PocketNAV, Inc. (OnCourse Navigator)
Price: $75.00 for 2Gbyte card, other sizes available

RATING:

• Maps – A-
• Speed – A
• Voices – A
• Options – A
• Configurability – A
• Reliability – A
• Overall rating – A

JakeRich (8 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Program Executive for a large international IT company. I've been using PDAs since the Casio Cassiopeia! Currently have an iPhone, HP211, Axim X51v, Axim X50v and an Axim X50. I was a navigator in A-6 Intruders in the Navy, became interested in GPS navigation a few years ago and now do reviews of GPS related products for Chris.