Mobility Site - View Single Post - Pros and Cons of Major PPC GPS Systems from Users

jackb_guppy · 10-13-06, 09:01 PM

The Long Trip w/ iGuidance and Mapopolis

Just got back from a cross state tour of Eastern Tennessee, and have a trip report of iGuidance and Mapopolis working their magic.

First the environment:
1) Large Car with 5 occupations
2) An in-car video system and lots of DVDs
3) Axim x50V and x51V
4) GPS: SEIDIO G4850 cradle, also Pharos iGPS 360. Both are wired to Axim, so they also supply power to charge the PPCs.
5) iGuidance V3 and Mapopolis 4.70

Mainly, we used x51V, in the G4850 cradle with iGuidance for driving. We switched to Mapopolis only in congested or when I wanted to play, but already knew the way. The iGPS 360 was used with iGuidance and x50v so my oldest daughter playing Nav in the backseat could get into the act; else she was playing Monopoly the rest of the time.

My biases:
Yes, I have biases. I like iGuidance for long haul driving (100’s of miles per day). I like Mapopolis for running around town. So I want to put that up for going into the good, bad and ugly. My other bias with GPS software, is that I am a 2D person. I like the ability to get a “bird’s eye” view of the area around me, so 2D all the way.

The first leg: Driving from Memphis to Gatlinburg…

iGuidance worked ok. Three complaints: the color of the 2D daytime displays, handling of off road driving, and forcing driver to look at display to get enough information. One the plus side, iGuidance supplied helpful little quips like “Now drive for 149 miles”. These were quite and helpful, because it gave you idea when you will hear from it again. Also the continuous on screen count down of miles to go helped a lot too. Wife did like the idea of various random voices come out like bad Humphrey Bogart imprestion, to keep it lively on the way down the road.

Yellow with White secondary roads on the daytime display of 2D maps is VERY hard to read, and such makes seeing the “bird’s eye” view impossible. It makes finding a secondary road / bypass quickly an active of a stopped car, and fight with the Navigator (wife) about which way to go.

The off road driving issue makes starting in a parking lot a guessing game what to do next. At one point, we were driving out of parking, had the voice say make a left turn, we turned left, then the voice came back and said to make a U-Turn. The reason? The iGuidance started the trip (and directions) as if you where on the road and already driving the right way. Not coming to the road at a right angle. This caused many issues when trying to start on drive in town.

The forcing the driver to look at the screen is in direct response to off road driving issue. Since, iGuidance will not assume a direction when started, and only helps once you start driving, including rotating the map, so up is direction of movement (EVEN BACKWARDS!). You need to drive a short distance forward and then look at the map to figure out, how iGuidance has assumed you a getting on the road, going to destination.

Driving the Gatlinburg area…

Big issues here with iGuidance: where starting out on trip (noted prior) and announcement to upcoming turns.

The big plus was GPS in general, when we needed to find backway to our hotel. Gatlinburg, TN is a ONE ROAD town, getting from one end to the other is like 1 ½ hr trip for 2 miles. We were at the wrong end of town from the hotel and just turned on side street and headed up the fill, the iGuidance being used at the time and was set to shortest distance, it first said U-Turn, then found a route though the back-roads to the hotel.

The issue with upcoming turns in iGuidance seamed to set at 2mins, 1mins, 30secs, 15secs and BOING. This count down is helpful at high driving speeds, like “2miles Exit on Right, follow sign for 40 East”. But at in town speeds and TRAFFIC the messages are not helpful spaced, or with units of messages that are just poor, like “2,300ft Turn Left”. At half mile, or “5/10 of the mile, Turn Left” would be more of help. The other complaint with these messages is the distance given though accurate is based on the when the sentence is started. So “2miles, Exit on the Left” is helpful on freeway driving where road signs work the same way, but is harder to use in tight city driving, by the time you hear and process the message, you may have traveled 1/4mile so the turn is only 1.75mile away.

Also as a note, the maps have a few issues. I had two times while driving iGuidance reported in NC that we had left the road. It would be hard to do at those locations because of driving on ridge. Leaving the road would have been deadly.

The Mapopolis was also used for driving around Gatlinburg, including driving over the “Great Smokey Mountains” via US 441 into NC. I generally do not have issues with Mapopolis but this drive showed two issues: loading a local map for the next state and what appeared as an old map in the Mapopolis map set.

The first issue, with loading a local map, is basically based on how Mapopolis loads maps and that is by counties. So planning a trip in to a neighboring county may first require you to load the map of state with freeways and major roads. After loading that you need to zoom into the local area and load the county. Since my Mapopolis is generally setup to run around Memphis area, I had to clear it, to get to the full map list on my CF Card. The fast way to clear Mapopolis is pull the CF Card and open Mapopolis. It will then complain of no maps, and then you close it. Insert CF Card again, and restart Mapopolis. PRESS CANCEL when you have a chance or else it is going to try to load EVERY Map. I have all of US and CANADA on my CF Card and believe me it will take HOURS for it to read all the maps for “Finding Contiguous Map Sets”.

The second issue was while driving in NC, we found one area around Bryon City, NC that Mapopolis report that an invalid map was found, this stopped Mapopolis from working until we cleared the maps. The message referred us to Mapopolis webpage to buy the map. Which is way I believe it is an old map, even down load the entire US set at one time.

Leave Gatlinburg to Chattanooga…

Using iGuidance issues was reading the daytime 2D display to find bypass. GPS plus is using a bypass and getting back to the main road.

There was a major accident leaving Knoxville that closed the I-40 for a few hours. We got off the highway and had to parallel the freeway for 6 miles, then with iGuidance noting when to turn in the country to get us back on the freeway. What was the problem since the 2D daytime screen is hard to read, we asked directions to give us a basic starting point a drove of awhile to get a bearing then zoom out the map to see if we are paralleling the freeway correctly.

Running around Chattanooga…

We dumped iGuidance and reset Mapopolis for Chattanooga. When driving around Lookout Mountain with it short, quick turned streets I wanted the overall quickness of Mapopolis prompting and directions that tell you “600ft the Turn Right” and that is 600ft, from when the sentence stops! So you still have 600ft to go, very helpful in blind corners and steep hills!

Leaving Chattanooga and going home…

iGuidance all the way home. The only new burp was just leaving Chattanooga, I-24 dips into Georgia then back out to Nashville. When coming out of Georgia, iGuidance jumped from reporting on I-24 Westbound, to a service road, telling to turn in 6miles. Then when a lake started to separate the real from it’s imagery location, it final jump us back on to I-24.

Over all observations…

iGuidance runs about 2 seconds behind actual position on the display. It seams to want to know exactly where you were, even when it is wrong (See leaving Chattanooga). I wish I could find a option screen in iGuidance to set the nighttime 2D display for full time. The blue and dark blue roads are easy to see and help at the bird’s eye view. Also I would like an option to select measurement scales (like 1/10 of mile) over 2,300ft. Lastly an option to time messages and distances based on end of phase, instead of begin.

Mapopolis is still my preferred running around town software. I would like them to fix map loading with a option like “surrounding counties” or “counties with-in X miles”. So as you drive, the next counties are auto loaded and old counties are dropped. This way, if I am in new area, just dock to GPS, and the correct map is loaded and surrounding counties are also loaded, making it more a contiguous map.

10-13-06, 09:01 PM	#33 (permalink)
jackb_guppy Aximsite Major League Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 318 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	The Long Trip w/ iGuidance and Mapopolis Just got back from a cross state tour of Eastern Tennessee, and have a trip report of iGuidance and Mapopolis working their magic. First the environment: 1) Large Car with 5 occupations 2) An in-car video system and lots of DVDs 3) Axim x50V and x51V 4) GPS: SEIDIO G4850 cradle, also Pharos iGPS 360. Both are wired to Axim, so they also supply power to charge the PPCs. 5) iGuidance V3 and Mapopolis 4.70 Mainly, we used x51V, in the G4850 cradle with iGuidance for driving. We switched to Mapopolis only in congested or when I wanted to play, but already knew the way. The iGPS 360 was used with iGuidance and x50v so my oldest daughter playing Nav in the backseat could get into the act; else she was playing Monopoly the rest of the time. My biases: Yes, I have biases. I like iGuidance for long haul driving (100’s of miles per day). I like Mapopolis for running around town. So I want to put that up for going into the good, bad and ugly. My other bias with GPS software, is that I am a 2D person. I like the ability to get a “bird’s eye” view of the area around me, so 2D all the way. The first leg: Driving from Memphis to Gatlinburg… iGuidance worked ok. Three complaints: the color of the 2D daytime displays, handling of off road driving, and forcing driver to look at display to get enough information. One the plus side, iGuidance supplied helpful little quips like “Now drive for 149 miles”. These were quite and helpful, because it gave you idea when you will hear from it again. Also the continuous on screen count down of miles to go helped a lot too. Wife did like the idea of various random voices come out like bad Humphrey Bogart imprestion, to keep it lively on the way down the road. Yellow with White secondary roads on the daytime display of 2D maps is VERY hard to read, and such makes seeing the “bird’s eye” view impossible. It makes finding a secondary road / bypass quickly an active of a stopped car, and fight with the Navigator (wife) about which way to go. The off road driving issue makes starting in a parking lot a guessing game what to do next. At one point, we were driving out of parking, had the voice say make a left turn, we turned left, then the voice came back and said to make a U-Turn. The reason? The iGuidance started the trip (and directions) as if you where on the road and already driving the right way. Not coming to the road at a right angle. This caused many issues when trying to start on drive in town. The forcing the driver to look at the screen is in direct response to off road driving issue. Since, iGuidance will not assume a direction when started, and only helps once you start driving, including rotating the map, so up is direction of movement (EVEN BACKWARDS!). You need to drive a short distance forward and then look at the map to figure out, how iGuidance has assumed you a getting on the road, going to destination. Driving the Gatlinburg area… Big issues here with iGuidance: where starting out on trip (noted prior) and announcement to upcoming turns. The big plus was GPS in general, when we needed to find backway to our hotel. Gatlinburg, TN is a ONE ROAD town, getting from one end to the other is like 1 ½ hr trip for 2 miles. We were at the wrong end of town from the hotel and just turned on side street and headed up the fill, the iGuidance being used at the time and was set to shortest distance, it first said U-Turn, then found a route though the back-roads to the hotel. The issue with upcoming turns in iGuidance seamed to set at 2mins, 1mins, 30secs, 15secs and BOING. This count down is helpful at high driving speeds, like “2miles Exit on Right, follow sign for 40 East”. But at in town speeds and TRAFFIC the messages are not helpful spaced, or with units of messages that are just poor, like “2,300ft Turn Left”. At half mile, or “5/10 of the mile, Turn Left” would be more of help. The other complaint with these messages is the distance given though accurate is based on the when the sentence is started. So “2miles, Exit on the Left” is helpful on freeway driving where road signs work the same way, but is harder to use in tight city driving, by the time you hear and process the message, you may have traveled 1/4mile so the turn is only 1.75mile away. Also as a note, the maps have a few issues. I had two times while driving iGuidance reported in NC that we had left the road. It would be hard to do at those locations because of driving on ridge. Leaving the road would have been deadly. The Mapopolis was also used for driving around Gatlinburg, including driving over the “Great Smokey Mountains” via US 441 into NC. I generally do not have issues with Mapopolis but this drive showed two issues: loading a local map for the next state and what appeared as an old map in the Mapopolis map set. The first issue, with loading a local map, is basically based on how Mapopolis loads maps and that is by counties. So planning a trip in to a neighboring county may first require you to load the map of state with freeways and major roads. After loading that you need to zoom into the local area and load the county. Since my Mapopolis is generally setup to run around Memphis area, I had to clear it, to get to the full map list on my CF Card. The fast way to clear Mapopolis is pull the CF Card and open Mapopolis. It will then complain of no maps, and then you close it. Insert CF Card again, and restart Mapopolis. PRESS CANCEL when you have a chance or else it is going to try to load EVERY Map. I have all of US and CANADA on my CF Card and believe me it will take HOURS for it to read all the maps for “Finding Contiguous Map Sets”. The second issue was while driving in NC, we found one area around Bryon City, NC that Mapopolis report that an invalid map was found, this stopped Mapopolis from working until we cleared the maps. The message referred us to Mapopolis webpage to buy the map. Which is way I believe it is an old map, even down load the entire US set at one time. Leave Gatlinburg to Chattanooga… Using iGuidance issues was reading the daytime 2D display to find bypass. GPS plus is using a bypass and getting back to the main road. There was a major accident leaving Knoxville that closed the I-40 for a few hours. We got off the highway and had to parallel the freeway for 6 miles, then with iGuidance noting when to turn in the country to get us back on the freeway. What was the problem since the 2D daytime screen is hard to read, we asked directions to give us a basic starting point a drove of awhile to get a bearing then zoom out the map to see if we are paralleling the freeway correctly. Running around Chattanooga… We dumped iGuidance and reset Mapopolis for Chattanooga. When driving around Lookout Mountain with it short, quick turned streets I wanted the overall quickness of Mapopolis prompting and directions that tell you “600ft the Turn Right” and that is 600ft, from when the sentence stops! So you still have 600ft to go, very helpful in blind corners and steep hills! Leaving Chattanooga and going home… iGuidance all the way home. The only new burp was just leaving Chattanooga, I-24 dips into Georgia then back out to Nashville. When coming out of Georgia, iGuidance jumped from reporting on I-24 Westbound, to a service road, telling to turn in 6miles. Then when a lake started to separate the real from it’s imagery location, it final jump us back on to I-24. Over all observations… iGuidance runs about 2 seconds behind actual position on the display. It seams to want to know exactly where you were, even when it is wrong (See leaving Chattanooga). I wish I could find a option screen in iGuidance to set the nighttime 2D display for full time. The blue and dark blue roads are easy to see and help at the bird’s eye view. Also I would like an option to select measurement scales (like 1/10 of mile) over 2,300ft. Lastly an option to time messages and distances based on end of phase, instead of begin. Mapopolis is still my preferred running around town software. I would like them to fix map loading with a option like “surrounding counties” or “counties with-in X miles”. So as you drive, the next counties are auto loaded and old counties are dropped. This way, if I am in new area, just dock to GPS, and the correct map is loaded and surrounding counties are also loaded, making it more a contiguous map.