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Destinator 7, any news?
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willton
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Joined: Jul 29, 2007
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 6:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is no U-Turn preference option any more - so rather than direct a u-turn on a wrong turning or a recalc, D7 simply maps a long winded round about route which you have to zoom out to verify.

Previous versions allowed you to use this feature to your benefit or turn it off - now the user has no choice.
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willton
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

TTS is now performing after the manual install, but i was surprised to hear the road number of A4146 read out as the "A four thousand one hundred and fourty six" as opposed to the "A four one four six". Is this how TTS is supposed to be ?

Also now working after the manual TTS install is the POI announcement.
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willton
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:19 pm    Post subject: Destinator Replies Reply with quote

Here are the first set of replies from Destinator:

Thank you for your email.
You have a question concerning Destinator 7.

1.Please, check your Settings as followed: Menu .. Options .. Settings .. Map settings .. Map Display Options ..allow zoom control.

2. At the moment you are installing TTS you have to select the street, number or both. Please re-install the TTS and select in the Menu .. Options .. settings .. speech .. enter streetnames.

3. This item is known by us and we forwarded it already to the development department. At present we don´t have a solution.

4.As the maps are extremely compressed a map cutting function isn´t possible. To install the maps on the SD-card we advise to use an external cardreader (this item is forwarded to the developers already)

5.Regarding your information, we assume, that parts of Destinator 6 haven´t been removed completely from your pc and/or pda.

6.Please notice, that the software only has to be installed on the main memory of the device and the maps on the sd-card.

7.Please, check your Settings as followed: Menu .. Options .. Settings .. Map settings .. there you can customise the Map Display Options.

8.Thanks for this information, we will forward it to the development department. At the moment it isn´t alterable.

9.We have tested Destinator 7 on the Asus 632 (installed the software on the main memory and the maps on the SD-card) and it works perfectly.

10. The first time, setting the GPS took about 5 till 10 minutes. Then, everytime after starting the programm, the Asus 632 needed aprox. 1 till 3 minutes to find GPS.

11. You can turn the clicking noise of as followed : File explorer .. my device .. Destinator APPS .. Destinator .. user data .. speaker with "click", please remove.

12.the system only give a spoken signal, a text warning isn´t supposted to be optional.

13. Destinator supports only additional POI files, installed over the favorite importer, in .csv format.
A patch or update for this item isn´t planned.

14. As desired by most of the Destinator customers, Destinator decided to remove this option.

Should you have further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

kind regards
Destinator Technologies GmbH Service Center
i. A. Saskia van der Sande
Combase AG Customer Service Center
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willton
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And here is my reply with updates and clarifications, and three new problems at the end:

Dear Destinator Support,
Thankyou for your responses so far.
Please find below further clarification of issues and further requests for assistance - New Problems No 15, 16, & 17:


1. Map scale display - I don’t think you understand the problem here - "allow zoom control" is already checked and set. The zooming works fine, it is the Map Scale Display which is not visible. This is the scale which shows what a measurement on the screen represents in yds / miles in reality. If you set a route and look at the destination display before you select "Go" you will see the Map Scale Display in the top left hand corner of the screen below the Destination Description bar - this Map Scale Display is NOT visible in the navigation screen whereas it was always visible in D6.


2. TTS is working now. There are two places where you have to select TTS to work: -
a) Menu.. Options .. Settings .. Language .. Say Road Names
b) Menu .. Options .. settings .. Prompts .. then choose Names / Numbers or Both

2. Continued .... TTS Road Number Description - However I have discovered that a numbered road is translated to speech using the full number format - eg A4146 is "A four thousand one hundred and forty six" as opposed to the more logical and sensible "A four one four six" which is the standard road number format in the UK.

3. CSV load failure – patch pending. Thankyou for acknowledging this fault.

4. Map Cutting – this feature was always previously available. Maps were compressed previously also - I think you also had uncompressed maps which were available for cutting. Why is this not now available? This is a step backwards due to problem No. 6 below. I have read that this is in fact a licensing issue which you have not elected to resolve for this issue.

5. Failure to upload maps to PDA - I have performed a hard reset of the device and reinstalled D7 as per advice from Asus. The problem is still the same - Trying to upload a new map (UK-Ireland) from the Destinator 7 CD to the 2GB Sandisk SD Card via the Console which works perfectly under Destinator 6, I get repeated error "Selected Target is Unavailable". It reads the card and reports correct available space, but after failing to upload it reports an incorrect available space and hangs the Console.

6. Map won't redraw quickly and freezes when zooming / scrolling the map whilst on the move. The software is always installed on the device main memory and the maps are always installed on the SD card. My complaint, although marginal, is still valid. Because the map can’t be cut, using it in 2D mode means it takes a long enough time to redraw / update at complicated times and when zooming in and out manually or scrolling that it makes using it “irritating” and “dangerous” (because you have to keep looking at the screen rather than the road). Previously when I (and others on global forums) have experienced this problem the answer was to cut the map. This was a particularly bad problem with the USA California State map on my earlier D6 US version – after cutting the state map into smaller chunks it was fine.

7. The Navigation and Info display bars on the PDA are supposed to be transparent – your answer to this is irrelevant and incorrect: the Map Settings Options have no control over the transparency of the Information Bars on the Navigation screen. In your marketing screen shots the Information and Navigation Bars and Menu Button are all transparent (i.e. you can see the Map through them) but on the device this is not the case. In Daylight Mode, only the Menu Button is transparent, yet in Night Mode I have noticed that the Menu Button and Information Bar is NOT transparent but the Navigation Bar IS transparent. Clearly this is incorrect and inconsistent meaning bad development.


8. Thankyou for acknowledging this fault.

9. I can still produce this fault on demand. I have since turned off Error Reporting within Windows Settings, however all this means is that the device stops hanging whilst trying to debug gwes.exe.
Destinator will still crash when the device is switched back on when D7 is still loaded in memory (in other words if I switch off the device when Destinator is loaded). What happens now is that D7 will crash and display a blue screen where the map should be and then shutdown, and I have to restart D7 to recover. I have to Quit Destinator every time before I turn the device off to avoid this.

10. I agree that finding GPS has not been such a problem since the first few times. This problem is resolved.

11. I have renamed click.wav. You have to agree this is a fault – the user should not have to go into the Application file system and start deleting files. This is bad development.

12. Show the name of the Favourite POI group when announcing an alert on proximity – you say that the system only gives a spoken signal. This was not the case in D6, why has it changed? This should be optional. Are you saying that if you don’t install TTS there is no POI alert??

13. Support for any number of POI groups – this is a key feature of D7. Are you saying this WOULD work if only we could install POI’s properly (this does not work as per problem No. 3)

14. No u-turn functionality – you say “as desired by most Destinator customers”: I for one have never been contacted by Destinator about this nor have I ever been asked. It would be easier and more sensible to keep it as an Option as it was previously in D PN and D6. Other GPS Nav software has this not only as an option, but as a configurable option (i.e. how far would you travel to avoid a u-turn) - This is how it should be.

NEW PROBLEM No. 15. Go To .. Address – County Option. In the D7 User Guide Chapter 2 Page 9 “Select Location and Generate Route” – The guide states “Note: When the United Kingdom map is selected, the first address screen is always Select County.” There is NO County option for address choice, although there should be as Destinator has to search the whole UK and Ireland database to find the first Town selection which is inefficient.

NEW PROBLEM No. 16. The Skins selector on the device in Options; Settings; Look & Feel: does not work - only the "standard" skin is showing in the selector bar and the left / right arrows do not change the selection!!

NEW PROBLEM No. 17. Destinator gives Direction and Turn warnings at 350 yds whereas previously this was 500 yards. Looking in the Voice ini files and spx files I can find no reference to 350 yards, but the two references to "in 500 yards.." relate to spx files sp0004 and sp0029. I believe this is an error and the wrong spx file has been used. I cannot refer to tenths of miles or meters as I never use that measurement.
The 200 yards warning is still the same.


Many thanks for your assistance.
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Quickbeam
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Joined: Oct 05, 2006
Posts: 30
Location: Entwade, Yorkshire

PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 5:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Can you still pull the map across the screen to see streets just off the screen area? I use this feature a lot on the V6, if so does it still go back to the original area after a few seconds?
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willton
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Posts: 150

PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 6:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes you can still move the map around and browse away from the navigation area view. It will always go back to where the current position is, unless you switch to free map browsing i.e.without GPS.
This functionality hasn't changed.
My gripe is that when you do this on the move in an area with alot of streets etc i.e. in a town / city it takes time to redraw - not long, but enough to be irritating. Its worse if you are zooming out a couple of notches. Once you zoom out to several miles then its not an issue. Its all about the map rendering, and if you cut the map down it doesnt do it so bad - but now you cant cut the map.
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TheRock
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi Willton,

Some solutions on your 'problems':

8. Open the destinator.inf with a editor and change this line:
::CT_VERT, MAINSCREEN_MANEUVER_BTN,1002,,0x4200000b,0,249,240,35,1,4,0xFF,100,0

into:
::CT_VERT, MAINSCREEN_MANEUVER_BTN,1002,,0x4200000b,0,0,240,35,1,4,0xFF,100,0

11. You can disable this in the destinator.ini
USE_CLICK = 0


14. U-Turn can be activated in the destinator.ini

16. As soon as you install a 2. skin, you can switch between skins. Wink

17. Switch of TTS and you are back to the old distances.
TTS can be altered in the voice.ini.
With TTS no spx-files are used.


Regarding your freezing and install problems, I would suggest a hardreset, re-format of the sd-card wt FAT16 and a fresh installation on a clean system.
These issues are definitely related to your hardware.
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Quickbeam
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 9:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the quick reply willton, a few more queries if you know the answers Smile

What are the camera sound alerts like? ie, I run TT6 in the background on a Mio PDA as I think they have the loudest (most obtrusive) sounds. I had a Navman 530 that lasted less than a month before I sold it as I couldn't even hear them over the radio on a modest volume (perfect hearing).

Also does it still have most of the roads in the navigation area named clearly as opposed to TT6 which names very few, or the name pops up when I've just passed the road end!
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willton
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 10:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quickbeam wrote:

What are the camera sound alerts like?

With TTS they are: "Approaching {name of POI}"
e.g. "Approaching Gatso" .
Volume is according to the setting you are using. On half to full volume its good enough. The voice is a little mechanical - i actually prefer the D6 standard UK voice.

Without TTS all you get is a 'bling bling' type noise, but in D7 there doesnt appear to be a text alert on the screen, whereas in D6 the 'name of POI' would appear on the screen in lower case text.

In fact i really prefer the first UK voice i had on my original D PN US version which was a sort of Joanna Lumley voice (not the crap one you can download which says 'darling' every other time) - ive not been able to find that one for some reason even after reinstalling with the original CD. (I dont have enough time to do all this reconfiguring of Destinator all weekends) It was very proper English with soft tones - very comforting!!


Quickbeam wrote:

Also does it still have most of the roads in the navigation area named clearly


I use 2D mode, and yes i would say that most or all of the roads in the navi area are named clearly - but of course it depends what level of zoom youre using, and if travelling how fast youre going Smile
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willton
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 11:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

TheRock wrote:

8. Open the destinator.inf with a editor and change this line:
::CT_VERT,

Cool - thats good to know. I can move everything in there Smile and i see that is where the transparency is set - they are set to 0xFF, but some are more transparent than others!!

TheRock wrote:

11. You can disable this in the destinator.ini
USE_CLICK = 0

Nice one Smile

TheRock wrote:

14. U-Turn can be activated in the destinator.ini

Nice one again - need to go and test it now Razz

TheRock wrote:

16. As soon as you install a 2. skin, you can switch between skins. Wink

Didnt D6 come with a number of skins?

TheRock wrote:

17. Switch of TTS and you are back to the old distances.
TTS can be altered in the voice.ini.
With TTS no spx-files are used.

Hmm - ive had a good poke around but i cant see any reference to 350 yds. I cant go into the TTS stuff as it 'in a box'. Im not sure yet if the 350 and 500 yards are actually a different measurement or just an announcement error. I'll have to road test it

TheRock wrote:

Regarding your freezing and install problems.

Im going to have a go at this when i have some more time Sad


Many thanks for your help - now I can rewrite the whole program to my requirements Very Happy
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TheRock
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

willton wrote:
TheRock wrote:

17. Switch of TTS and you are back to the old distances.
TTS can be altered in the voice.ini.
With TTS no spx-files are used.

Hmm - ive had a good poke around but i cant see any reference to 350 yds. I cant go into the TTS stuff as it 'in a box'. Im not sure yet if the 350 and 500 yards are actually a different measurement or just an announcement error. I'll have to road test it


D7 uses different distances with or without TTS. And they can not be altered.

But in the voice.ini you can adjust, what D7 is saying in TTS-mode.
You can define a different comand for each distance.
Example for normal turns:
TURN=in $DISTANCE $DIRECTION abbiegen, auf $OTHER
TURN.4TH_TO_LAST= in $DISTANCE $DIRECTION abbiegen
TURN.3RD_TO_LAST= in $DISTANCE $DIRECTION abbiegen
TURN.2ND_TO_LAST=in $DISTANCE $DIRECTION abbiegen, auf $OTHER
TURN.LAST=$DIRECTION abbiegen, auf $OTHER
TURN.FOLLOWING=danach $DIRECTION abbiegen

It's a German example, but you should be able to figure this out for you own needs.
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Robin2
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I borrowed a friend's Destinator 7 and my impressions match willton's. It is incredibly slow entering addresses or postcodes. For example, to enter a code starting with SA3, there is a long pause after the initial S before the next character can be entered.
Dragging the map is frustrating, the rendering is very slow.
I believe the A one thousand, two hundred and thirty four problem can be fixed by going into the ppen-GB0.text file in the EnglishUK voice file and inserting the line
(PM me for the line of text, with your email address. The HTML code is not accepted by your server, so my post was rejected when I included the line!)
near the bottom of the NAVI_RULES section. The TTS then spells out any road number above 100 as A one two three four etc. But you shouldn't have to do this sort of thing
I liked the "You are exceeding the speed limit" function, but the map data was so inaccurate that I turned it off. I got fed up with the warning coming up every few seconds when driving (legally) at 40mph on a road near home which the map data must have as 30mph.
The display buttons are far from intuitive. I'm sure I would have got used to them in time, but it was so clunky I didn't have the patience to persist.
The screen colours are are bit insipid. They showed up on a dull November day, but I think they would be completely washed out in bright sunlight.
All in all, I can't imagine why anyone would buy Destinator in preference to, say, TomTom, which seems to beat it in almost every department
Robin
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Plus a lot of other PDA GPS kit, seldom used


Last edited by Robin2 on Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:04 am; edited 2 times in total
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ramsses
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 4:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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ramsses
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 4:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Spotted another bug, if you have a road called 'XXX Place', it will call it 'Place des XXX' with the EnglishUK language. To fix, edit the Language\All\GloStreetTypes.txt and change the line:

Place des|Y

to

Place|Place des|N

Andy
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willton
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 7:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robin2 wrote:
It is incredibly slow entering addresses or postcodes.

It makes it just that little bit more irritating and difficult to use than it should be. They obviously are aware of the problem by stating in the manual that County must be selected first, but then failed to implement it in the application.

Robin2 wrote:
Dragging the map is frustrating, the rendering is very slow.

Thankyou for noticing this - there are plenty of threads on the pocket GPS World forums alone about the poor map rendering and sticky slow response - this was worked around very easily by cutting the map down to smaller chunks. It was an excellent solution and made navigating an absolute breeze - but now you cant cut the map so the software sucks.

Robin2 wrote:
I believe the A one thousand, two hundred and thirty four problem can be fixed by going into the ppen-GB0.text file in the EnglishUK voice file and inserting the line
ramsses has given the solution to this too - and works a treat. Take note Destinator.

Robin2 wrote:
The screen colours are are bit insipid.

I have never found the colours an issue - i tend to whack the screen brightness up in daylight and right back down at night even in night mode.

Robin2 wrote:
I can't imagine why anyone would buy Destinator
It used to be a great product, easy to use, very configurable, good mapping and adaptable to loads of hardware. I always use 2D, and never really liked the look of TT - it was too run of the mill!! But now Destinator has gone backwards, i really think that IGO looks fantastic but im not sure about the loss of screen real estate with that giant direction arrow and all that stuff up the side. But maybe that can be configured to my preferences with a bit of hacking.
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