Topo / Rural Roads for SatNav?

[myrrh]

I'm looking for a Garmin for my car and I wanted to know what was available as far as topo maps and back roads.

Are there topo maps available?

I used Garmin's map viewer and was not impressed with back road coverage. It seemed like the back roads did not show up until at a high zoom level, making it difficult to use.

Can National Geographic TOPO! be loaded to satnavs?

Suggestions, please?

[robertn]

I have lost track of all the software now avalible, but I have the same issue you have (Have just learnt to live with it)

Most in-car systems are road based, and do not have the ability to display Topo maps. Most Topo systems are not really suitible for cars, usually too small (Garmin series handhelds). The only thing I can think of is a PDA runnning say TotomTom and Memory Map together, which has anotehr set of problems.

The problem with rural roads disappearing is one that I dislike intensely. I would think the way to display maps would be to target a "road density" on the display. If there are too many for it to be readabale, display less, and too few displayed, display more. They have the "too many" sorted for urban areas by simply locking it to zoom level. biut thi ovisouoly won't work for rural roads.

Lets know if you find a solution.

I had a silly instance on one unit I had that side roads were not being displayed when I was driving, as the auto zoom level at 70mph, and the zoom level that very minor class raods were displayed at meant these roads were not displayed.

[mikealder]

There is a way to display Topo mapping on the TomTom units but the map must be copyright free so the use of OS or NG is at best dubious, I am not aware of any way to do this with the Garmin units.

The method to do this on the TomTom units requires some time and effort to cut the map display into a number of individual calibrated map tiles of a predetermined pixel size, these are displayed by the device as "dumb" images with the cursor position showing exactly where you are on the map, if you want any more information on this please ask - Mike

[philpugh]

I have loaded sections of the Scottish Moutaineering Clubs excellent contours/lakes mapping for GARMIN units onto my 660. It works very well (at least in the 2D view - the psuedo 3D view isn't very effective in my opinion. It's NOT OSGB standard - but it allows you to visualise the terrain. It's based on publicly availabledata from NASA. YOu do need to tweak it slightly to work with the nuvis.

See SMC for details. It's free to use but please respect their usage requests on the web site.
_________________
Phil

[damdifino]

I'm a brand new member. I'm glad I found you guys, 'cause I'm the only GPS nut I know and it gets lonely out here.

To respond to the topic: here's what I've done the past few years--though I'm in the market for a simpler solution. I have an eTrex Legend that sits on the dashboard. It's attached to a laptop on the seat beside me. On the laptop I run both MapSource Metroguide and USA Topo, so I can switch back and forth between them. Topo does a pretty good job of displaying really obscure rural roads--even dirt tracks, for that matter. I can monitor my progress through the bush from any altitude I want.

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