Garmin topo UK v2

GSV Three Minds in a Can said:

OK, I actually went mad and bought it.

Me too, and I've received it from wiggle but I haven't yet opened it
because I'm still awaiting my 60csx from gpsw.

Quoted message said:

Several new problems are apparent

Oh no ...

Quoted message said:

...

1) Many of the contours are not closed loops (?!) - large bits missing
(but what is there is much more accurate than the free maps). Look at
West side of Brown Clee hill for instance.

2) The 'Paths' do not display on my 60c!! They are =there= because if I
hover the pointer over them a 'PATH' box pops up, but they are not drawn
in any visible colour. Serious issue!! (Not that they are accurate
anyway of course). They show up fine on Mapsource, and on Garmin's web
viewer.

3) Mapsource is restricted to displaying the map in a very small window
(800*600 or something?). I can only assume the OS struck again. And you
can't print (at all). This is complete cr&p (and neither of these
restrictions is apparent until after you have opened, installed and
unlocked the package).

Is the PC software for viewing the maps meant to be a replacement or
similar to the likes of multimap / anquet / tracklogs etc .. ?

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from
the wonderful person Dundonald <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

GSV Three Minds in a Can said:

OK, I actually went mad and bought it.

Me too, and I've received it from wiggle but I haven't yet opened it
because I'm still awaiting my 60csx from gpsw.

Quoted message said:

Several new problems are apparent

Oh no ...

Quoted message said:

1) Many of the contours are not closed loops (?!) - large bits missing
(but what is there is much more accurate than the free maps). Look at
West side of Brown Clee hill for instance.

2) The 'Paths' do not display on my 60c!! They are =there= because if I
hover the pointer over them a 'PATH' box pops up, but they are not drawn
in any visible colour. Serious issue!! (Not that they are accurate
anyway of course). They show up fine on Mapsource, and on Garmin's web
viewer.

3) Mapsource is restricted to displaying the map in a very small window
(800*600 or something?). I can only assume the OS struck again. And you
can't print (at all). This is complete cr&p (and neither of these
restrictions is apparent until after you have opened, installed and
unlocked the package).

Is the PC software for viewing the maps meant to be a replacement or
similar to the likes of multimap / anquet / tracklogs etc .. ?

Well if it was it fails dismally, but no, in general I'd say that
Tracklogs etc. is a much better bet for preparing routes, and viewing
tracks afterwards, because the raster OS mapping has way, way, way (and
several more ways beyond that) more detailed data that you'll ever get
on Mapsource products (field boundaries, trails, ROWs, car parks, phone
boxes, whatever!).

Mapsource product is really for viewing on the handset, where the
limited detail is not an issue. The 'small window' and 'no printing' are
presumably the OS over-reacting as usual - it was never going to be a
threat to Tracklogs (etc.) even without that restriction, but it's still
annoying to be sat here with a huge display screen only 25% of which is
full of UK topo map - purely unnecessary keyhole surgery.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

The blurb I read on the Garmin site suggested that the "X" series is
needed for max resolution. Mine is a 60CS so GSV's info about paths
missing is disappointing.

Do you mean all paths missing or just some? I can't justify an upgrade
to 60CSX even although I have a big birthday tomorrow.

I have the Norwegian 1:50000 maps and they are also limited to a small
window for display so the limitation may be Garmin's but there is a
print facility (which I have never used) for these.

--
Hbunnet : (replace "nospam" with "athome" to reply)
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

GSV Three Minds in a Can said:

1) Many of the contours are not closed loops (?!) - large bits
missing

Quarries? Sand dunes? Close contours?

Quoted message said:

2) The 'Paths' do not display on my 60c!! They are =there= because if
I hover the pointer over them a 'PATH' box pops up, but they are not
drawn in any visible colour.

Have you tried changing the colour scheme?

Quoted message said:

Serious issue!! (Not that they are
accurate anyway of course). They show up fine on Mapsource, and on
Garmin's web viewer.

So presumably you can trace a route along paths in the software in advance?

Quoted message said:

3) Mapsource is restricted to displaying the map in a very small
window (800*600 or something?).

Bloody stupid! Especially now that I have a 20" widescreen monitor at
1680x1050! :-(

Paul

Dundonald said:

Is the PC software for viewing the maps meant to be a replacement or
similar to the likes of multimap / anquet / tracklogs etc .. ?

No. They are proper maps (i.e. computer versions of paper maps) whereas the
point of the Garming sofware is twofold - to select map areas to upload to
the GPS, and also to manage waypoints, routes etc. I usually do the latter
in OziExplorer on proper maps, but if the vector data in Topo UK is more
accurate, it may be better to use that, for example if following roads (or
paths if they are accurate). I wonder how accurate their summits are? And
how many summits are shown?

Paul

GSV Three Minds in a Can said:

Well if it was it fails dismally, but no, in general I'd say that
Tracklogs etc. is a much better bet for preparing routes, and viewing
tracks afterwards, because the raster OS mapping has way, way, way
(and several more ways beyond that) more detailed data that you'll
ever get on Mapsource products (field boundaries, trails, ROWs, car
parks, phone boxes, whatever!).

True, but being vector detail, it tends to be much more accurate than an OS
map. I'm thinking particularly of roads, where junctions and roundabouts
tend to be shown in great detail, with slip roads for example, and the
accuracy on the GPS is surprisingly good. In contrast, road thickness is
exaggerated on OS maps and won't be so accurate if you trace a route over
one. Not that you'd be tracing roads for the average hill walk, but still,
it would be interesting to find out how accurate some of these tracks are.

Paul

Hbunnet said:

The blurb I read on the Garmin site suggested that the "X" series is
needed for max resolution. Mine is a 60CS so GSV's info about paths
missing is disappointing.

Hang on a mo', what about the view options in the GPS? Has GSV got some
options turned off or down? Like visibility settings at different zooms, or
maybe the tracks are linked to some text data that may be turned off? May
be worth fiddling with them all to see if there's a setting that turns them
on. Or perhaps they're being hidden by a "national park" area colour or
something?

And what about the forests, do they look that bad on the GPS?

Paul

Hbunnet said:

The blurb I read on the Garmin site suggested that the "X" series is
needed for max resolution. Mine is a 60CS so GSV's info about paths
missing is disappointing.

Google for a report I made a few weeks back from the Garmin Website viewer.
In summary, I was seriously disappointed about the path reporting; both
items missing (ROW and surface features) and items recorded which are
over-emphasised by the software (minor private farm tracks looking more
important than surfaced public roads).

- Nigel

--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

Quoted message said:

Hbunnet wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The blurb I read on the Garmin site suggested that the "X" series is
needed for max resolution. Mine is a 60CS so GSV's info about paths
missing is disappointing.

Paul wrote

Quoted message said:

Hang on a mo', what about the view options in the GPS? Has GSV got some
options turned off or down? Like visibility settings at different
zooms, or
maybe the tracks are linked to some text data that may be turned off? May
be worth fiddling with them all to see if there's a setting that turns them
on. Or perhaps they're being hidden by a "national park" area colour or
something?

Always worth fiddling but we may be dealing with something new here.

I am in Norway and have the equivalent of their OS maps on my 60CS. The
detail shows in strange ways e.g. Isolated houses which show as a dot on
a paper map and in mapsource, show as a huge house icon on the GPS, a
similar size to the POI icons. The "declutter" function allows these to
be omitted when you zoom in.

The paths would be at the "extreme" of detail so may need the extra
resolution as mentioned below.

From www.wiggle.co.uk
""On Monochrome units resolution will be less than colour units.
Extended resolution available in the GPS 60 Cx & CSx. (Units this will
not be compatible with are GPS 100 Series & panel mount aviation
units).""

--
Hbunnet : (replace "nospam" with "athome" to reply)
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful
person Paul Saunders <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

Hbunnet said:

The blurb I read on the Garmin site suggested that the "X" series is
needed for max resolution. Mine is a 60CS so GSV's info about paths
missing is disappointing.

Hang on a mo', what about the view options in the GPS? Has GSV got some
options turned off or down? Like visibility settings at different zooms, or
maybe the tracks are linked to some text data that may be turned off?

I tried all the options that I could find. They are apparently of type
'line' which I don't even know how to code in my own custom maps.

Quoted message said:

May
be worth fiddling with them all to see if there's a setting that turns them
on. Or perhaps they're being hidden by a "national park" area colour or
something?

Nope, they appear to being hidden by the default background colour (sort
of pale orange on the 60c). I tried a few other colour schemes but
didn't find the right one yet. If anyone does, let me know.

Quoted message said:

And what about the forests, do they look that bad on the GPS?

Just like all the other garmin maps - bearable by day, horrible in the
default night-time scheme.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

Paul Saunders said:

Dundonald said:

Is the PC software for viewing the maps meant to be a replacement or
similar to the likes of multimap / anquet / tracklogs etc .. ?

No. They are proper maps (i.e. computer versions of paper maps) whereas the
point of the Garming sofware is twofold - to select map areas to upload to
the GPS, and also to manage waypoints, routes etc. I usually do the latter
in OziExplorer on proper maps,

I thought you used Anquet to sort your waypoints, routes etc? Whilst
we're on that subject, I started playing around with Anquet for the
first time very briefly last night. When you create a route in Anquet,
it creates a waypoint for every turn in direction on the route. I
can't remember what you call them, but you referred to them as
'breadcrumbs'. Can't anquet create routes with these 'breadcrumbs' so
that waypoints can be used for what they are intended, or at least how
it was explained to me what they are intended for, that is to mark key
milestones / points of interested (e.g. photo's) etc. ?

Quoted message said:

but if the vector data in Topo UK is more
accurate, it may be better to use that, for example if following roads (or
paths if they are accurate). I wonder how accurate their summits are? And
how many summits are shown?

I've got the GB topo DVD but I'm still waiting for my 60csx to arrive
(I was told this Sat or Mon) so once I get that I can start playing
around, may be help answer a few of your questions.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful
person Nigel Cliffe <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

Hbunnet said:

The blurb I read on the Garmin site suggested that the "X" series is
needed for max resolution. Mine is a 60CS so GSV's info about paths
missing is disappointing.

Google for a report I made a few weeks back from the Garmin Website viewer.
In summary, I was seriously disappointed about the path reporting; both
items missing (ROW and surface features) and items recorded which are
over-emphasised by the software (minor private farm tracks looking more
important than surfaced public roads).

Just to add some more comments (and I picked 'here' for no very good
reason) ..

These farm 'tracks' (which show as 'track' in Mapsource) are also
invisible on my 60C, running 4.00 release firmware. Again, if I hover
the pointer over them I get a popup .. this time 'Area' (of type
'area'😉. Apparently there are some .IMG file types which my 60C isn't
rendering!!

It's also interesting that the 'track' is an area type - although if you
zoom in on Mapsource you can see that tracks do have an area sort of
outline - c.f. lakes, rather than streams .. I guess Garmin ripped those
from satellite photos, or OS raster data, somehow, rather than OS vector
data. 'Path' definitely looks like it came from OS 'path' data though
(not ROWs!) since several of the ones marked have no visible existence
on the ground).

The 'holes in contours' I compared with 1:25k OS mapping data
(tracklogs) and the gaps are

a) where there are quarries, cliffs,

b) or where the 1:25k data also has missing contour sections (try
'getamap' for Dodshill Bank in Shropshire, and look North to NE from
'The Knapp' farm .. no reason I can see!).

c) even a small gap in a 1:25k contour can apparently result in a bigger
gap in the Garmin topo data - c.f. the 340m contour just NW from the
'Three Horseshoes' trig point - 'nothing much' visible on getamap view,
(although there are quarry markings - this was a brick/clay quarry, all
of 1-2m deep) but a hole in the UK topo 340m contour.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful
person Paul Saunders <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

Dundonald said:

Is the PC software for viewing the maps meant to be a replacement or
similar to the likes of multimap / anquet / tracklogs etc .. ?

No. They are proper maps (i.e. computer versions of paper maps) whereas the
point of the Garming sofware is twofold - to select map areas to upload to
the GPS, and also to manage waypoints, routes etc. I usually do the latter
in OziExplorer on proper maps,

Looking at the Mapsource screen (1/4 of a screen!) I keep wanting to hit
'E' which is the GPSMAPEDIT command to turn the raster background back
on!! Sadly this doesn't work. 8<.

Quoted message said:

but if the vector data in Topo UK is more
accurate, it may be better to use that, for example if following roads (or
paths if they are accurate).

Paths are accurate to the OS 'path' types (from 1:25k mapping), although
some are missing. Many more of the things that are tracks are missing ..
the whole of 'The Parks' tarmac (private) road through the Burwarton
Estate from 'Banbury Lane' through to 'Hillside' is missing, although a
bunch of the side tracks and the paths are shown. Truly weird. Nearly as
weird as 'why have they encoded tracks as an area type' on what is
supposed to be vector mapping??

Quoted message said:

I wonder how accurate their summits are? And
how many summits are shown?

I've scanned around a fair bit and I don't actually see any 'summits'
excepting the OS trig pillars which all seem to be present. The contours
are pretty accurate though, so you can work out where the summit roughly
is (but no name!). Since the OS know where their trig pillars are to
<1m, I'd hope that Garmin's representation is accurate to that level too
.... well OK, about 2-3m, since I don't think the GPS has more than 24
bit resolution for Lat/Lon.

If you give me a target summit (Lat/Lon in DECIMAL degrees) I'll go look
for you (or you can do it at Garmin's website).

I actually bought these for road use mainly (cheaper than City Select
Europe or whatever the package is now called). If I'd wanted them
entirely for walking I'd be spitting nails (I will be anyway, if I can't
get the 'non display' of tracks and paths fixed).

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

In article <[email hidden]>, GSV Three Minds in a Can
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

well OK, about 2-3m, since I don't think the GPS has more than 24 bit
resolution for Lat/Lon.

Garmin uses 4 bytes each for lat / long in their communication protocol
so I expect that is what they use internally.

Soley's 1998 observations on the protocol

http://playground.sun.com/pub/soley/garmin.txt

state that some models do not use the 6 least significant bits which
limits their resolution to under 1.2m. I do not know which units they
were and Garmin does not mention this in their official protocol
specification.

--

Dominic Sexton

GSV Three Minds in a Can said:

I actually bought these for road use mainly (cheaper than City Select
Europe or whatever the package is now called). If I'd wanted them
entirely for walking I'd be spitting nails (I will be anyway, if I
can't get the 'non display' of tracks and paths fixed).

I think I'll go with City Select; for the £20/£30 extra I get useful maps
when I go to France in the car, and not get lulled into expecting useful
mapping for walking in the UK.

If on a budget, I'd go with the cheaper Garmin "non routing" map product,
which loads fine into routing GPS units.

With the Contours free data set, I know where it came from, its claims to
accuracy and completeness. And that I can edit it if I'd like to improve it.
Whereas with the Garmin set, it appears to be an expensive lottery.

- Nigel

--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

Nigel Cliffe said:

GSV Three Minds in a Can said:

I actually bought these for road use mainly (cheaper than City Select
Europe or whatever the package is now called). If I'd wanted them
entirely for walking I'd be spitting nails (I will be anyway, if I
can't get the 'non display' of tracks and paths fixed).

I think I'll go with City Select; for the £20/£30 extra I get useful maps
when I go to France in the car, and not get lulled into expecting useful
mapping for walking in the UK.

If on a budget, I'd go with the cheaper Garmin "non routing" map product,
which loads fine into routing GPS units.

With the Contours free data set, I know where it came from, its claims to
accuracy and completeness. And that I can edit it if I'd like to improve it.
Whereas with the Garmin set, it appears to be an expensive lottery.

If there are problems with GB topo I'm sure Garmin will issue updates -
free to those who already have a copy?

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from
the wonderful person Dundonald <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

Nigel Cliffe said:

GSV Three Minds in a Can said:

I actually bought these for road use mainly (cheaper than City Select
Europe or whatever the package is now called). If I'd wanted them
entirely for walking I'd be spitting nails (I will be anyway, if I
can't get the 'non display' of tracks and paths fixed).

I think I'll go with City Select; for the £20/£30 extra I get useful maps
when I go to France in the car, and not get lulled into expecting useful
mapping for walking in the UK.

If on a budget, I'd go with the cheaper Garmin "non routing" map product,
which loads fine into routing GPS units.

With the Contours free data set, I know where it came from, its claims to
accuracy and completeness. And that I can edit it if I'd like to improve it.
Whereas with the Garmin set, it appears to be an expensive lottery.

If there are problems with GB topo I'm sure Garmin will issue updates -
free to those who already have a copy?

First I have to get them to talk to me .. I have the same complaint in
via 'tech support', 'cartography complaints' and an email to the guy who
helped me out 6 months ago when my 60c leaked and needed swapping. That
was >24 hours ago, nothing back yet!

I guess I should ask on one of the yahoo mapping groups too, since I've
never even seen 'line' and 'area' types in .img file before.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

Quoted message said:

If there are problems with GB topo I'm sure Garmin will issue updates -
free to those who already have a copy?

This has not been the case in the past : when City Select V7 was released people
who had bought CS 6 after a specific date had to pay to upgrade. They did get a
discount however.

--
Boo

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the
wonderful person Boo <reply_to_group_not_me@spam_me_no_spam.net> said

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

If there are problems with GB topo I'm sure Garmin will issue updates -
free to those who already have a copy?

This has not been the case in the past : when City Select V7 was
released people who had bought CS 6 after a specific date had to pay to
upgrade. They did get a discount however.

Yeah, but CS6 basically worked, UK Topo V2 basically doesn't at the
moment (for values of 'work' which include 'I want to see the paths on
the handset, even if they are basically pretty much useless'😉.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.