PREVIEW COMMENTS: TOMTOM NAV2 USA

[ikesler]

I have been using the US Version for the last 2 days and it is okay. I have some problems with it, but overall I think it is better than the CoPilot LIVE I have been using.

The 3D navi is great..... however routes are NOT. I have had to edit or ignore 75% of the trips I have taken...... of course they are standard routes I drive all the time, but it was always giving me a bad way to go! Also when I am using the GPS and not using navigation mode, just having the gps follow me.... the map will NOT point up for Ahead...... it points all over which is VERY confusing and quite Annoying I think.

Still it looks nice and I get a fix really quickly!
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Ian

[DavidW]

When you're in Navigator mode (the screen shots without the title bar and clock at the top), the street name at the bottom of the screen is that of the *next* street you take. Whilst this may seem illogical at first, it is, in fact, the most useful thing to have on screen. Why do you need to know the name of the road you are on? In Navigator mode you have a moving 2D or 3D map on screen (you choose); the blue arrow on the map represents your current position.



In the 'safety screen' (you set a speed over which a safety screen instead of a map is displayed - I have 45mph configured which seems to work well at typical UK road speeds), details of your current location are displayed as well. That's the screen that's largely green amongst the preview shots - the white location at the top is where you're headed, the mid green location at the bottom is where you are.







Routing quality - certainly in the UK, Navigator 2 behaves sensibly. Maybe the road speed preferences configured by default in the US version don't provide the best routes.



No computer routing algorithm is going to have the local knowledge a human would. In my home area, there's a major problem with roadworks in a nearby town, and I keep an 'avoid area' over that most of the time at present. There's no way a computer could know about that!







David

[freeway680]

I have been waiting for the tomtom usa version forever but now it disappointed me. Looking at the screenshot above, I noticed there are no street name while you are navigating. Even the one that you are on. Looking at these map I have no idea of where I am at? Another major draw back is the routing. Many people over the gpspassion.com has pointed it out that tomtom suggested weird or unfavarable route 80% of the time until you hit the alternate route. But who wants to do this all the time and if you are in a strange place you wouldn't know if you should go with the alternate route or not. Software only cost twice as much as routis and not even as good. I don't know if tomtom will be as favarable as in europe or not but it just wouldn't cut it for me. I am going with the "lternate" software which is routis that has excellent review from many many user at gpspassion.com



thanks for the info dave

[DavidW]

Following gman's post - does anyone happen to know if the European maps include similar speed data?



Navigator 2 seems, in my experience, to choose sensible enough original routes in the UK, and the times when it chooses nonsensical routes for me are due to a couple of flaws in the map data near where I live (most notably a fairly useful road to head west being incorrectly marked as unavailable for navigation).





I will admit, though, that alternative routes (which the users of the USA system are complaining about as well in at least some forums) are often silly in the UK. The first one, occasionally the first two might be sensible. Beyond that they tend to get increasingly long and tortuous in nature, even when there's reasonable alternatives of similar length to the original remaining.



For example, there might be a decent cross-country route or one that avoids a major road that you might expect the alternative route function to find, but you'll only find that route either by placing one or more avoid areas, or by using the facility in the Navigator screen to avoid particular roads.



Indeed, my experience of alternative routes is that they often take you some distance out of your way to take you to and from a major road (A road or motorway in the UK). Maybe this is related to the problems people are finding with the American version. I wonder if, irrespective of your configured speeds, the current routing algorithm is too weighted towards the use of major roads.





A related problem to the possible over-preference of major roads is that I have heard it said it is impossible to set, for example, the speed for Motorways as slower than for "International roads" (seemingly major dual carriageways in the UK).



On version 2.24, however, you can do this, though you get a (reasonable) warning of possibly slow route planning.





It's unfortunate that you can't keep several speed profiles to hand if you drive regularly with different road conditions. It's also a shame that you can't draw in road blocks in the map mode, also you can't do 'snap to tap' routing where you can specify part of your route manually.







David

[gman]

TeleAtlas really needs to work w/TomTom to find a way to attach the proper speed data, as a part of the database, to each individual street and highway. That is what needs to happen if the routing algorithms are ever going to work properly, IMHO.



ikesler: I too have gotten some screen freezes when I tried using 'Strict' calculation on a route. When I just left it alone, after a really long time, it finally kicked back in.

[ikesler]

Well I have adjusted my speed settings in properties as have a few others on different boards and it seems to have little/no effect on the routing. I am always getting routed onto a highway/freeway.... even if it is only for 1-2 miles and it is 5 miles out of the way! That seems strange to me!

The profiles idea stated above would be great...... or at least a choice as the route is being made rather than after the fact. When I am driving in an area I know it is fine because I can just ignore it and have it follow me...... but if I am going somewhere I don't know, I feel I have gone WAY out of the way once I am there! And I hate that feeling!

No street names when navigating is annoying also.... in 3D or 2D view that would be a nice thing to have, but my co-pilot LIVE doesn't have it either.

The one thing I will say again is how fast I get a lock with my GPS. Less than 30 seconds even from cold start......... so much better than Travroute.

Anyone else getting screen freezes? Seems to happen when it is calculating a route somewhere.....

Best
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Ian

[gman]

I know that navigation programs here in the US that use Navtech data actually have speed data attached to the roads in the map database. Thus, the program automatically knows what the speed limit is for a given road (these programs have options whereby you can set it to automatically tell you if you are speeding on any given road). I think this is how programs like Routis and Mapopolis in the US are finding more 'intelligent' routes than TomTom.



Its apparent that TomTom Nav doesn't automatically know what the speed limits are for a given road - this would probably have to come from TeleAtlas anyway, which provides the map data for TomTom. I think this may be the key to the 'poor' routing of TomTom USA.

[DavidW]

See this thread (particularly the end of page 1 / beginning of page 2) for discussion about that.





Dave implies that because of the interest there might be something for users of Navigator 2 in Europe who just want the USA maps - though it was left as "watch this space".







David

[Cessquill]

Do you know if they're likely to start selling the US maps as a bundle a-la European? That would be handy...
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