Most of the software I've seen for the PPCs seems to have discreet maps for a particular area. One city at a time sort of thing.
Here's what I want to be able to do. I tour by motorcycle. 600 to 1000 mile days aren't unusual. Frequently on remote two lane roads. I want to be able to find those cool 2 lanes and do a bit more improvisation, wherever I am, without having to load different maps every 50 miles.
I've got a 1 gig SD card which can easily accommodate detail maps of, at the very least, the entire western US. I don't think the entire data of MS S&T amounts to that on my PC, and that covers the whole US.
I don't have or plan on getting a GPS at this time, though a great deal on a BT308 or similar might change my mind. But maps are a big feature for me, and I want continuous mapping like my friends who have dedicated GPSes.
I would recomend Routis 2004, it makes
selecting maps by state easy and simple,
but I also recomend you use it with a GPS device.
you can set it to use local roads only.
Typically, just scrolling around maps and looking
through, I usually recomend Mapopolis, but its a pain
generally to load maps as you have to do them by county...
__________________
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
My recent reviews:
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Typically, just scrolling around maps and looking
through, I usually recomend Mapopolis, but its a pain
generally to load maps as you have to do them by county...
Slightly misleading statement there. You can put the county maps in a directory in any assembly you want, then load the entire directory at once. I have routinely used Mapopolis on long drives with all the counties I needed in full detail available to me without further effort from me.
As for the original question, most of the packages allow you to load more than 50 miles of maps. Some use regions, some states, some counties, some use radius around cities and finally, some use trip corridors. Read the reviews here at Aximsite for more details.
I am and love it. The only thing I have found is, You can select as lagre a map as you want. But I chose Palm Beach to Key West and the file was about 16 meg. I put in on a SD card and it worked. However, when going to the next screen area it took a couple seconds to load. So I cut the map in 3 sections and saved it that way. The problem is the amount of room in the memory, not the card. If you keep the size of the file about 7 megs, there is no delay. Then you can put as many as you want on the card. I use ajoing maps for a road trip. Like a Triple A trip pack. After about 500 miles pick the next map. Also just chose the area along the road and not a big square with info you do not need. 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.
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.
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.
I've been using a 30 day demo of Destinator, and at least for the western region, if you have a 256MB SD card, you can load the entire western region (So Cal --> Montana) which is about 220MB.
I'm not sure if you can load across regions (say, New Mexico to Texas, which are different regional maps) but I got the Western region working last night.
No population limitation like Mapopolis, though no GPS software appears to be ideal quite yet.
Like I said, you can load the whole US, it is up to you, just slowes down porformance. My laptop is 2.2 ghz. with 512 meg mem and a 40 gig hard drive. My destop is 2.4 with 512 meg mem and 2 40 gig hard drives. My Axim is the fastest thing out there 624 Mhz with 64 meg of ram and a 512 card.. Wonder why it does not proform as well? If you can live with a second or 2 screen up date load it all.
Frankenbike, it's obvious you've never actually tried any of the software. What you want, continuous access to maps over a long distance, is compeletely available. I just loaded on my X5 all of VA, MD, PA, DE and NJ and navigated over 250 miles without touching the Axim. I could have done more, but that was all I needed for my purposes. Using iNavigator (same as Routis, PrymeNav, Dell Navigator) that set of maps took up 175 mbytes of my CF card. I had full detail all the way down to 100 feet and as I zoomed out the details disappeared so that just the main roads showed. Zoom back in and the detail reappeared. With a route planned, as I got to a turn the display automatically zoomed in to show the detail of the turn, then zoomed out again after I made the turn.
Last summer I loaded VA, MD, PA, NY and Ontario on my axim and used a PPC GPS application to navigate from northern VA to Niagara Falls and into Canada. Again, I never had to touch the PPC after I had it loaded and planned. I just drove and it followed along. I never hit the 20 million population limit (In fact, I never have hit that limit, even though I have driven through NYC using the software!)
You said
Quote:
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.
As those who have answered you have tried to say, you can do exactly that with most, if not all, of the software that is available. Some applications do have requirements that you reload maps at regional boundaries, but those boundaries are pretty large, if you have enough storage area on your PPC to hold them. In fact, with the 1gig cards now readily available, you could probaby put most of the US on one card, if you chose to do so.
Frankenbike, it's obvious you've never actually tried any of the software. What you want, continuous access to maps over a long distance, is compeletely available. I just loaded on my X5 all of VA, MD, PA, DE and NJ and navigated over 250 miles without touching the Axim. I could have done more, but that was all I needed for my purposes. Using iNavigator (same as Routis, PrymeNav, Dell Navigator) that set of maps took up 175 mbytes of my CF card.
Thanks for the info and setting me straight.
I'd like to hear from some people west of the Rockies on how many maps it takes to cover all of California (which is 800 miles by roughly 300 miles alone), Arizona, New Mexico, etc. The distances you cover in a day here usually start at 400 miles or so.
Also you mention that some software requires loading at the boundaries. I'd like to know which software does this, so I can avoid it. By what you are saying, Routis does not require this.
For iNav/Routis/PrymeNave/Dell Navigator, etc, ALL of CA, NV, NM, UT, CO and AZ comes to 218 mbytes.
If you load those states on your system and drive into Oregon, you would be off the map and would have to download new maps from a PC, but as long as you stay in that six state area, the maps will open as you go.
All of Ca, Or, Wa, Id, Mn, Wy, Ut, Nv, Az, Co, Tx, Ok, Ka, Ne, Sd and ND take 550 Meg, so to get all of the West on one card you'd need a 1 gig card.
I live in Arizona. I drove over 2500 miles through Arizona, Nevada and California on my most recent walk about.
I use Mapopolis 4.33 with the NC map pack (Navigator edition). It is easy to use and the directions were perfect. No hangups.
I drove from Phoenix to Las Vegas; Las Vegas to Reno; Reno to San Francisco; San Francisco to Los Angeles; Los Angeles to Phoenix. You can't load ALL of the maps at one time without a hangup, but for each segment I could load the maps needed (which is simple) and got to my destinations without any problems.
Last weekend I used it on a car club drive to Southern California and it navigated me through traffic. Great program.
For iNav/Routis/PrymeNave/Dell Navigator, etc, ALL of CA, NV, NM, UT, CO and AZ comes to 218 mbytes.
If you load those states on your system and drive into Oregon, you would be off the map and would have to download new maps from a PC, but as long as you stay in that six state area, the maps will open as you go.
All of Ca, Or, Wa, Id, Mn, Wy, Ut, Nv, Az, Co, Tx, Ok, Ka, Ne, Sd and ND take 550 Meg, so to get all of the West on one card you'd need a 1 gig card.
Thanks, that's all within reason. Leave some maps out, get more space for MP3s ;)
Looks like Routis will be the way to go.
Can it work without GPS, and with GPS can you turn off voice directions if you want?
Funny story. A friend used a voice navigation system while in Boston. He wound up with a different car without navigation, and realized he had no idea how he got to where he was or where he'd been, or even what street he was on.
Yes Routis works without GPS, but only as a map display you have to manually move around. It's a bit of a kludge to get it to plan a route without the GPS, but it can be done. With GPS you can silence the voice and just have the screen prompts for turns.
Follow Us
RSS Feed
Follow on Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
Addicted Member
