My wish list for Mapsonic development - what would you want?

[jblackmore]

I have been using Mapsonic with a Zire 31 bundle for a few months now, and I have some simple suggestions which would make this product much better, and would be very easy to implement - I have emailed ViaMichelin with this list, but wondered what other people thought, and if they had any more suggestions for the list !


- Quick and simple changes which would make MapSonic Better

1. Could their be a new entry on the 'Edit' menu for 'Swap departure and arrival points', maybe call it 'return journey' as currently if I have navigated from home to a destination, and want to navigate back I have to manually unselect and then re-select the arrival and departure points, which is annoying.

2. When selecting a departure/arrival point and there is a long list in search window, mapsonic should conform to the palm convention that you can use graffiti to enter the first letter of your choice and the list will jump to that point - it would save a lot of unecessary scrolling on long lists (ie county!!) !!

- Quick and Simple changes to make POI functionality better

1. Seperate options for Voice instructions and POI audible alerts (currently the only option is to activate/deactivate all sound), I normally switch sound off, as I find the onscreen display is perfectly adequate for navigation, and I cannot hear the voice commands over my car stereo anyway, but I would still like to hear audible alerts for POIs.

2. POI alerts should flash the whole screen inverse colours (day->night->day or vice versa) as a visual alert at 30 seconds and 10 seconds, so when sound is off, POI alerts are still clearly displayed, again this could easily be optional for certain POIs.

3. POI name should appear at bottom of screen when POI alert occurs, most of the Speed Camera Databases now include the speed limit in the POI name, so showing this on screen would be very useful.


- Features which would require signficant development time but would be beneficial

1. Proper POI syncing between PDA and Desktop, so POIs added on PDA show on MapStore on PC and can be added/removed on PC or PDA and will synchronise at next hotsync

2. Clear documentation on memory requirements against map size, as it is clear the current documentation is wrong, I find with a 16Mb Zire 31 that I cannot run maps larger than around 80Mb without memory problems, despite having 10.5Mb free internal memory.

Anyone have any others, or think these suggestions are not useful ?

[elan2s]

Agree with all those and would add:

the ability to temporatily or permanently set avoids on roads. This would be particularly useful in addressing errors in the mapping
Also the ability to add via points to force a particular route
Adjustment of the volume on the POI Warnings (either permanent to make them louder or user set)

[DennyL]

I use Mapsonic v1.3.2 and have also recently been looking at Mapopolis, which gives me a bit of a basis for comparison.

My wish list is as follows:-

1: Enable navigation in Pedstrian and Shortest Route modes

2: Allow speeds to be entered that are appropriate to cycling and walking

3: I think, generally, the interface/GUI could do with a re-think to get it away from the Windows menuing paradigm and more appropriate to in-car use.

4: Generally, I would like to see larger features in the interfaceGUI, particularly typefaces, again making it more suitable IMO for in-car use.

5: A way of expressing a preference for or against major roads, other than by ferkling around with the road speeds.

6: More imaginative use of the hard buttons, again for convenience particularly when used in a car. I would like to see hard buttons to:-

a) Zoom (it already has this, but I would like the new zoom to 'stick' for longer.

b) Toggle in/out of navigation mode (Mapopolis has this)

c) Toggle between quickest route and shortest route, so that when I leave a motorway because of congestion, I can toggle to shortest route to stop it from trying to get me back onto the motorway.

d) A zoom-out function to give a quick overview of the chosen route, including start and end points. How often have you blindly let it navigate you when you realised too late, oh damn, it's taking you on a route you knew you wanted to avoid?

3) Toggle voice off for when the display is sufficient and I'm listening to the radio.

[seguima]

Agree with all the above, especially....

....my biggest bug is the fact that you can't get MapSonic to navigate when you are walking. It reverts to "driving" mode and won't let you walk up One Way Streets! This happens even if you are in Pedestrian mode when you initially calculate the route.

If they fixed that, it would be really good.

[jblackmore]

I can't get over the lack of walking routing - as it is clearly a silly bug they just haven't realised is still there !

You have to wonder if they do any proper testing to have missed something this blatant !!

[DennyL]

I emailed them about the 'quickest route only' navigation limitation in May 2004. Here is a part of their reply:-

<<In response to your question, we would like to inform you that the choice "shortest path" can only be used in Normal mode and that the Navigation mode is automatically set on "quickest path".

As a pedestrian, you must walk at a speed that is higher than 5 km/h so that the GPS receiver detects a movement. You can also modify the speed (e.g. set the lowest speed for highways) if you prefer to take streets and secondary roads in the navigation mode; it will help you avoid the main traffic (for example in the city center).>>

So they certainly know about it and even try to make it sound like a deliberate feature.

I have my mapsonic permanently in Km/hr mode because in mph mode there are no navigation advance warnings. I believe that has been fixed in v2.5. But it does seem to me that I can't set the speed for any class of road to lower than 35Km/hr. How this connects with pedestrian and cycle use is beyond me.

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