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Originally Posted by tankdriver
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With Stree Atlas you can pick blocks from a grid pattern I usally choose 3 wide along the road, that way if there is a wreck or whatever I can figure a way around it. SO my maps look like irregular rectangles rather than squares. Works great.
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Well, that's a little better than S&T (which is what I've got now), but it's still not the way I'd like it to work. I'd like it to work the way these programs work on a PC. In S&T, you get the whole world. Sure it only has maps for the US. But it doesn't load the whole map of the US into memory at the same time. Or maybe it does. But you see a part of the country and you zoom in. Then you scroll along a road. Zoom in more, and you see more detail. That's how I want it to work on a PPC. Without having to load and reload maps. I have the card memory for detail maps of the whole US.
If it has to be broken up to view in a PPC, then have the program automatically break up the whole thing into a directory the way road atlases break their maps up into pages, with a low res overview map. When you zoom in, autoload the relevant map for the area. When you reach a boundary, autoload the next map over and maintain continuity. It's not rocket science. And even if it were, these things are powerful computers in their own right, and could handle the calculations needed to figure out the next map.
Sure, if you're going from one place to another straight, you just need to know where you're going. But if you tour, where the ride or drive is the point and the interesting side roads are the adventure, you want to know where the side roads are and where they're going. You don't necessarily know in advance.
The way things are now, you get to the end of the map, and you have to stop, load a new map, and then go again. This isn't exactly the ease of use I'd like. It's astounding that anyone buys these crippled programs and raves about them.
It's starting to look like the product I'm looking for doesn't exist, or I'm just not comprehending how easy they are to use in day to day practice. Or I want to use it for something no one else uses these programs for.
Keep in mind that I'm riding a motorcycle. Often with heavy gloves. Exposed to the elements. All I want to know is where I am, and have a vague idea of where I'm going within the 175+ miles I can rely on before I run out of gas. And I don't stop in that 175+ miles and don't want to. To have to stop, put the stand down, take the gloves off get the stylus out and change the map is a major annoyance. The idea is to get away from paper maps yet maintain their utility. I don't think these programs really do it unless you're staying within a narrow territory.
I'm pretty happy that my MP3 players will automatically go to the next song, instead of having to stop and manually load the next one.