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It remains, however, that your explanation concerning percentage adjustments to "avoid" and "favour" does not stand up.
Not sure why you say my explanation doesn't stand up - maybe I didn't explain it well enough. Let me try again.
Imagine a section of A Road 1 mile long and a section of B road 1.1 mile long - both with the same start and end point. If you want the shortest route the program stores these two sections as 1 mile and 1.1 miles respectively and will choose the A road as the shortest. If however you use an "avoid" on A roads of 20% it stores them as 1.2 miles and 1.1 miles and will choose the B road as the shortest route.
Now imagine the section of A road is 2 mile long and the section of B road is 1.1 miles but the speed on the A road is 60 mph and that on the B road is 30mph. If you want the quickest route the program stores these two sections as 2 minutes and 2.2 minutes respectively and will choose the A road as the quickest. If however you use an "avoid" on A roads of 20% it stores them as 2.4 minutes and 2 minutes and will choose the B road as the quickest route.
PONDEROUS wrote:
Neither does the idea that the "tweaking facility" presently found on the desktop version will provide the solutions. By the way, if it is capable of doing so, then where are the solutions? We have had several combinations of settings posted during the past few days, but none of them works.
It is perhaps appropriate to pose the simple question, once more: what is the combination of settings that will universally cause CP 5 to produce Shortest and Quickest routes, or as near as makes no difference? I would be delighted to do a parachute jump for a charity nominated by the person who can produce it.
The tweaking facility only helps to alleviate the heavy weighting towards motorways but it is by no means a universal solution. The only real solution is to change the parameters driving the number of iterations of the algorithm so that it converges on a better route. The chances of that happening are pretty slim for a couple of reasons. One is that it would lead to unacceptably long time to determine the route. Also, ALK probably makes most of its revenue from transport businesses and will focus on the needs of that market rather than the consumer. I suspect the consumer market is a bit of a sideline to which they have adapted their routing algorithm.
So the simple answer is "there isn't one" so no need for the parachute.
Skippy wrote:
Hmm, I have an old Garmin GPS-V which has about 1% of the CPU power of my SmartPhone and it still manages to produce reasonable routes. Other vendors (TomTom, Mapopolis etc) manage to produce reasonable routes on the Smartphone.
Skippy wrote:
KenS wrote:
I doubt there are bugs in the algorithm itself so it is unlikely that ALK will fiddle with it.
It isn't faulty map data and it isn't something the user is doing, what do you think the problem is then?
Route optimising for the transport business is BIG money - worth many billions worldwide. Many companies invest millions in algorithms that produce optimal routes and small improvements can make substantial savings. If ALK's algorithm was faulty it would never sell in the commercial market.
I suspect the problem is that Copilot has its roots on more powerful platforms and was ported onto the PocketPC and Smartphone. The program may not be optimised for the CPU and operating system and has functionality like route optimising that takes up more memory. All this can slow down the program so the algorithm is tuned to perform less optimisation so it can produce a result in a reasonable time. That's why you can get different results on the PocketPC from the Desktop. Its also possible that the program has heuristics that deliberately favour the more major roads unless there is a substantial time or distance benefit in the local roads. If that's what most customers prefer then it's doing the right thing.
As always - just trying to help. _________________ --Ken
HP iPAQ h2210 ROM 1.10.07 ENG
Windows CE 4.20
Sandisk Ultra II SD 512Mb
Haicom 303MMF and BT-401 slipper
Copilot Live 6.0.0.68
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 8:04 am Post subject:
Thanks for the explanation of the way weighting works. That has clarified things a lot for me. But I am not convinced that changing the road weighting actually makes a difference because CoPilot will simply not consider certain road types unless it has no choice.
The calculation seems to go Motorway -> Major Road -> Minor Road -> Other Road and it uses the first route it calculates without further consideration.
KenS wrote:
The only real solution is to change the parameters driving the number of iterations of the algorithm so that it converges on a better route.
I think you have struck the nail on the head here. My little Garmin GPS-V has a setting to choose one of 4 calculation settings ranging from "Best Route" to "Fastest Calculation". There is definately a trade off between doing a quick route calculation and finding the best route.
I think they probably don't do too many iterations at the moment because the program already uses too much memory and it would crash more often if they tried to do more exhaustive route calculations than they do.
KenS wrote:
The chances of that happening are pretty slim for a couple of reasons. One is that it would lead to unacceptably long time to determine the route.
I disagree. CoPilot takes the same number of seconds to calculate a route for London to Dublin via the "Quickest" or "Shortest". In theory, there would be a lot more calculation involved in finding the Shortest since it considers many more road types, but the route calculations actually take about the same amount of time.
KenS wrote:
Also, ALK probably makes most of its revenue from transport businesses and will focus on the needs of that market rather than the consumer. I suspect the consumer market is a bit of a sideline to which they have adapted their routing algorithm.
Its also possible that the program has heuristics that deliberately favour the more major roads unless there is a substantial time or distance benefit in the local roads. If that's what most customers prefer then it's doing the right thing.
True, my Garmin GPS has taken me down some "interesting" country lanes at times, (including one where I had to ford a river!) and this is no fun if you are a truck driver or towing a caravan. I ride a motorbike and I like taking the country roads. :o
CoPilot also has an RV routing option to avoid minor roads like this. It seems that this option is permanently switched on. _________________ Gone fishing!
Joined: Aug 25, 2004 Posts: 634 Location: Lincolnshire, England
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 9:08 am Post subject:
KenS, I appreciate your explanation. I was not trying to be pedantic or offhand when I said that your explanation did not stand up. I agree that I should have been clear about what I meant.
The context in which it does not stand up is as a solution to the failure of the application to do what it says; i.e. provide shortest routes or indeed routes whose characteristics can be predicted from these "tweak" settings.
Therefore, although what you say about the effect of the percentage adjustments may be correct, it does not help with these issues of functionality.
Could I endorse Skippy's point that solutions that exclude minor road are only of use to some. Others either like or need to use country lanes. In any case, a shortest route necessarily includes all types of road when the arithmetic calls for it. The fact is, though, that CP 5 does not calculate shortest routes.
I disagree. CoPilot takes the same number of seconds to calculate a route for London to Dublin via the "Quickest" or "Shortest". In theory, there would be a lot more calculation involved in finding the Shortest since it considers many more road types, but the route calculations actually take about the same amount of time.
But that is not how the program works. Hard to explain but it basically considers all possible routes at the same time but has to estimate how long each one will be. So Shortest and Quickest take about the same time to calculate just as you have observed.
Skippy wrote:
CoPilot also has an RV routing option to avoid minor roads like this. It seems that this option is permanently switched on.
You might be onto something here.
I also had a look at a description of PCMiler which I believe to be the older brother to Copilot. The description says it has options of Practical, Shortest, Toll Discouraged, and National Network (all of which are listed in the usertrip.dat file). Interesting that they use the term "Practical" rather then "Quickest" - that might explain everything - well maybe not the shortest route problem. _________________ --Ken
HP iPAQ h2210 ROM 1.10.07 ENG
Windows CE 4.20
Sandisk Ultra II SD 512Mb
Haicom 303MMF and BT-401 slipper
Copilot Live 6.0.0.68
Joined: Aug 25, 2004 Posts: 634 Location: Lincolnshire, England
Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 9:44 am Post subject:
I've been mulling over KenS's point about gearing CP 5 to truck drivers' needs. There is also a large market for delivery van drivers. They, like me, certainly have to use country lanes. For them and me, time is money, and they will not appreciate being presented with routes that can be double the necessary distance or more. I am therefore not sure that the "big business" argument holds good.
This brings me back to the question of % avoid and favour towards road types, which is, as I have suggested, meaningless in practice. If CP 5 simply caculated the shortest, or quickest, route regardless of road type and also allowed complete exclusion of particular road types then everyone would be happy.
That is still the crux of the matter: Shortest must mean shortest, and Quickest must mean quickest. There is no way round it and CP 5 must change.
More to the point, CP 5's manufacturers must change. At present, they are showing themselves up as wholly irresponsible, not only by their non-intervention in this forum, but also in their discourtesy towards individual users - to whose communications they do not reply!!
Hi People,
Been following this thread with some interest,following the comments et al,
I decided ti dig out my very first GPS navigation system Ipaq Nav system 1.2 (CP 3 basically).
And ran the "Skippy Test"
Two out of three were successful,unfortunately the London to Dublin route was invalid as the software has no record of frerry routes.
So,at this point in time ALK did have a descent algorythm for determining between quickest & shortest.
Joined: Aug 16, 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 11:02 am Post subject:
Just wanted to check the topic here before responding....
Are we assuming that this is also the thread for keeping this issue alive? I just read Dave's last post on the tweaking thread, now locked and I am a little confused. Is the suggestion, Dave's offer is a very good one of course, that we send mails with individual routing issues? Whilst very welcome, as we at least have a champion now on the dark side, is this going to change the fundemantal flaw in CP5? Suely the issue has been well discussed and clarified. The basic routing algorithm in CP5 is rubbish, particularly for those users who need it as an on the fly routing program (aren't they allsuppossed to do that? I know TT3 does!)
Whilst the various teaks and interest in finding a variety of workarounds is useful to a point I also think the problem is local as well. I live in Bramley, nr Basingstoke and if I test journeys across country it does an excellant job. But then again there are no motorways within resonable distance so I guess it is forced to use the lanes. If I stretch the journey further it starts to pull in motorways even though it means a large detour. I know individual routes are of interest but until ALK "use" TT's routing algorithm it will never be fixed for all.
CP5 took me to south of Bristol today with no problems as I wanted to use the M4 anyway, even coped with a drive off route because of traffic and got me onsite in good order. I must confess that if I was having the experiences of others I would bite the bullet, dump it, and get TT3. Money permitting. I think critics should take careful note of the protestors as they are trying to get ALK to be honest and respond to an blidingly obvious flaw in their product. Personally I don't think they care, the US market is much bigger.... _________________ TomTom 720
Nokia Lumia 800 with Nokia Maps, iPhone 4S with Apple Maps (sigh)
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 12:41 pm Post subject:
topgazza wrote:
Is the suggestion, Dave's offer is a very good one of course, that we send mails with individual routing issues? Whilst very welcome, as we at least have a champion now on the dark side, is this going to change the fundemantal flaw in CP5?
I too wondered about the value of submitting routing examples or bug reports. The problems with CoPilot are all well documented in these forums.
The advantage (for us) of an open discussion is that forum members don't waste time going over the same ground finding test cases to reproduce the same bugs which have been well documented a number of times in the past.
Of course an open discussion is less attractive to a software developer like ALK who obviously don't want to enter into a public discussion about the bugs in their software.
I think that ALK should:
1. Admit that there are problems with CoPilot
2. Tell us what they are doing to fix the problem and give us some timeline of when we can expect a fix
3. Work with us to provide work-arounds for the problems
4. Allow a public beta (like Mapopolis does) so that we can work with them to help resolve the problems.
Alternatively, they can PM me and offer a full refund for CoPilot and I will go away and buy TomTom and never bother them again. _________________ Gone fishing!
Joined: Aug 25, 2004 Posts: 634 Location: Lincolnshire, England
Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 11:07 pm Post subject:
Thank goodness that it was someone else (i.e.Topgazza and Skippy) who put keyboard to screen (?) about the wisdom of sending Dave Burrows details of individual routes that are in error. As they rightly point out, this a question not of individual routes but of routing in general. They also highlight the fact that if we were to take Dave up on his offer, all we would achieve would be to help ALK keep the wraps on the issue.
In any case, according to Dave, there is no problem, as one will see from a review of this thread and that entitled CoPilot 5 ETA - Tweaking Road Speeds. On these threads, Dave has asserted that:
As he spent 100 hours on CP 5 before writing his review, he would have seen any faults (the implication being that, therefore, they cannot exist). Later, he said that he never said there was nothing wrong with CP 5).
The routing errors are no problem as tweaking will eliminate them. All one needed to do was turn to the Tweaking Road Speeds thread. He maintained this when questioned, and ultimately resorted to locking the thread to prevent further questioning as to the whereabouts and nature of the required settings.
One must not expect CP 5’s Shortest and Quickest Routes option to produce shortest or quickest routes, as “95%” of other applications in the genre fail to do so as well. Why he felt the need to say this when tweaking was supposed to eliminate the problem, I have no idea.
The criticisms voiced on this thread concerning CP 5 are born of unreasonable expectations.
Users should realise that it does not matter if CP 5 produces routes that are further than necessary, as long it gets us there in the end.
Some of the errors may be in the Maps, so users should contact Navteq (not ALK)
Forum team members may be forgiven for representing their assumptions as fact, as they have not experienced any poor routing or malfunctions.
Anyone who points out the errors in fact and reasoning that have been forthcoming from the forum team is guilty of “ bitching” and acting as if in a kindergarten.
I am all for magnanimity. However, Topgazza, I am afraid your description of Dave as our “Champion” vis-à-vis ALK may be a tad optimistic unless he has changed his approach - and his understanding of the product and its users' likely needs - overnight.
Something that I think you may not have noticed is that Dave Burrows is now on the staff of ALK, a fact which he announced on this forum only a few days after his offer to be the channel for problems with individual routes!!!
Let us hope that Dave finds what he wants at ALK. Let us also hope that he can surprise us all and bring about a sea change in their behaviour. I will be delighted to eat my words if it happens!
Joined: Aug 25, 2004 Posts: 634 Location: Lincolnshire, England
Posted: Wed May 04, 2005 7:21 am Post subject:
I'd like to commend Skippy's list of suggestions to ALK (see his latest thread). They will see their reputation reversed overnight if they do.
Just one point about Topgazza's most recent contributions, though. If you have found CP 5's cross-country routing excellent, then you have been fortunate. As have mentioned in several posts, I work in the countryside for most of the time and I can assure you that the routes are usually much further than necessary. CP 5 not only favours motorways when they are near; it favours any type of road that ranks more major than another.
Joined: Aug 16, 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Wed May 04, 2005 11:07 am Post subject:
Ditto in support of Skip's list.
I agree that it worked for me. I was wondering if the lack of major roads was the reason why my test trips were OK?
CP5 "almost" had no choice on the routes I chose. Single point to point trips not multiple on the fly trips....which TT3 does of course! One trip was from Bramley, Hants to Mortimer. Berks railway station. To be fair I think I put a waypoint in a road called Molly Millers Lane as I knew this was a good X country start. I'll try it without that and see what happens. I think I can can guess.
Thats the problem, I have got used to putting in waypoints as a way of planning a trip. Especially fro the initial stages. Like Bramley to Coventry, if I don't put the A34/M40 I end up travelling all the way to the M25 and back up the M40. Its become a sub concious workaround...all for £135. Bargain! _________________ TomTom 720
Nokia Lumia 800 with Nokia Maps, iPhone 4S with Apple Maps (sigh)
Joined: Aug 25, 2004 Posts: 634 Location: Lincolnshire, England
Posted: Wed May 04, 2005 7:17 pm Post subject:
Topgazza, yes, it is easy to forget how faulty CP 5 is, particularly when planning routes on the PC the night before the journey.
That applies to waypoints, too. Don't forget that putting in one waypoint only will often cause CP 5 to produce a route that may be three times the original route or worse. One is then faced with sitting in a layby panning and scrolling to find the best route and putting in more waypoints until, finally, CP 5 "gets the idea". It is no fun, I can tell you, when it is wasting valuable work time.
Perhaps this is what ALK mean when they say that CP 5 is the "best navigation experience" or words to that effect. It is time they withdrew such slogans, and issued a warning to future purchasers until such time as they have acted upon Skippy's list of suggestions and thereby produced the necessary solutions.
It is also time that VENDORS issued a warning to future purchasers.
Joined: Mar 11, 2004 Posts: 1199 Location: Park Gate
Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 12:19 pm Post subject:
Having used CP5 both in the UK and USA
With regards to the routing problems I think you need to take into account 2 main factors.
Firstly ALK is an American Company and such the software is written for the home market. The routing algorithm is biased to suit the USA market.
Secondly travelling anywhere in the USA is done by predominately using Freeways, or the main route highways were you can travel for a hundred or more miles before a turn off.
They think nothing of driving a 500 mile round trip just to watch a baseball game.
In the UK our Motorways equate to their Freeways and our A roads to their routes, but the routing algorithm is the same in the European version hence it is biased to them.
What is needed is a total rewrite of the routing algorithm for the European version which takes into account that we have predominately more miles of A, B and C class roads than Motorways and that we spend more time on A roads than Motorways.
I don't know if there is a difference in TomTom's routing between the UK/European and the USA version as I don't have a USA copy. _________________ Graham.
TT Go720, App:9.510(1234792.1) OS:842337
GPS: V1.20, Boot: 5.5279, Home: V2.9.5.3093
Map: Europe V910.4892
Map: Europe_Truck V870.3421, Kingston 8GB SD
Nokia 925 Windows 8
Joined: Aug 16, 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 2:11 pm Post subject:
XDA, thats my belief as well ref CP5 being written for US roads. I mentioned this before but it is a long thread
For me, that has to be the root (no pun intended!) of the problem. How TT has done is a lesson for ALK to learn. Different versions of the algorthm for the US and UK, not sure . Its a thought but other non US/UK countries have different road networks so I suspect its a a case of a basic requirement of just giving us the shortest route, regardless of road type. just avoid dirt tracks for sure but otherwise..........
In other words the shortest route software is duff, the fastest is not much better and it all adds up, for many, as being an untrustworthy piece of work. I gather from here and colleagues that TT3 has its foibles but at least you can be reasonably sure an A to B route will be a good one. A basic fundamental of any such product. _________________ TomTom 720
Nokia Lumia 800 with Nokia Maps, iPhone 4S with Apple Maps (sigh)
Joined: Mar 11, 2004 Posts: 1199 Location: Park Gate
Posted: Fri May 06, 2005 5:50 pm Post subject:
Using TT3 and CP5 together, if you pick a cross country trip were CP5 can't make use of Motorways then they pick much the same route.
Try Southampton to say Birmingham then TT will take the M3, A34, M40. CP5 will route M3, M25, M40. _________________ Graham.
TT Go720, App:9.510(1234792.1) OS:842337
GPS: V1.20, Boot: 5.5279, Home: V2.9.5.3093
Map: Europe V910.4892
Map: Europe_Truck V870.3421, Kingston 8GB SD
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As he spent 100 hours on CP 5 before writing his review, he would have seen any faults (the implication being that, therefore, they cannot exist). Later, he said that he never said there was nothing wrong with CP 5).
