City navigator 5 or 6

[Frisky]

Pan European recently said
But, the version of the maps themselves (the cartography) that you have matters a great deal to the prospective purchaser. If you have CityNavigator Europe 5, which is well out of date, it will cost the buyer USD $150 to upgrade it to CityNavigator Europe Version 6, which is the current version. Upgrades to the map products are NOT free.

PanEuropean

What is the difference between 5 and 6/ pan said the 5 is out of date.
What is out of date theactual roads/maps or the info such as points of interest(hotels,shops ,garages etc)?
As a newcomer to GPS, please excuse the questions, but,Does the nav 6 get loaded onto the pc and then onto the data card or does it stay on the PC only?
I ask as I have nav 5 on my SPIII and wonder is it worth upgrading.
Last question can you load GPS coordinates into the SPIII and how do you do it,can;t seem to find an answer in my books.
Thanks,Dave (confused of Gateshead)

 

[Greg Masters]

Dave

The maps themselves become out of date as changes are made to road layouts or entirely new roads are built. In this respect, it's exactly the same whether you are dealing with a paper map or City Navigator.

For example, I don't think that the M6 Toll road is on v5, whereas I think that it is on v6. When the Mayor of London remodelled Trafalgar Square, the changes wher not on v5 but are on v6.

In some cases, it's the raod attributes, rather than the road, that changes. When a No Right Turn sign pops up in your local High Street, CN needs to know that to accurately routeplan your journey.

But as you suggest, the points of interest get updated too. I see that the North America CNv6 (released last week) has over 5 million PoI.

But I'm off to the USA on the family hols shortly. Because we're only going for a couple of weeks, I'll make do with the v5 that I have.

However, when I do the Baltic Tossers on Tour trip next year, I'll be sure to have the latest maps in my 2610.

For all that, as we discovered in Morocco 2 years ago, the latest maps don't help a bit when the authorities have built a dam and filled a reservoir the size of a small country without telling anyone!

Yer pays yer money ....

Greg

 

[MikeO]

Last question can you load GPS coordinates into the SPIII and how do you do it,can;t seem to find an answer in my books.
Thanks,Dave (confused of Gateshead)

Dave,

Do you mean Lat/Long co-ordinates? If so, press and hold the 'Enter' button on your SPIII - this will shortly switch the screen to 'Waypoint', at your current location. Using the rocker switch, highlight the Lat & Long numbers and change them to the ones you want to input. Rename the waypoint if necessary. Job done.

Mike

 

[PanEuropean]

Dave:

Greg covered it pretty well.

One additional thing you need to keep in mind - electronic cartography is not yet fully mature in all European countries.

I noticed very little difference in the coverage of Switzerland between version 5 and version 6, because Switzerland (along with Germany and Austria) are probably the best examples of countries that have fully mature electronic cartography that has been compiled in vector format by the federal government of the country. So, the changes from V5 to V6 were quite minor - just whatever changed within the road network within the last 18 months.

In other countries that don't yet have a comprehensive vector based road database, the changes were more dramatic. In Spain, Scandinavia, and Ireland, the number of roads shown doubled or tripled between V5 and V6. This was a massive improvement.

I'm not sure what the status of the road coverage in the UK is, because I have not been in the UK since 2002. I suspect that all the roads are mapped now, so the differences between cartography versions will probably consist mostly of addition of invisible road attributes (left or right turn restrictions, lane widths, traffic lights, speed limits, etc.), as well as the changes that Greg mentioned.

PanEuropean

 

[Capt Over-reaction]

Greg, I can't seem to find the M6 toll road on my Mapsource, City Navigator Version 6

 

[Greg Masters]

Greg, I can't seem to find the M6 toll road on my Mapsource, City Navigator Version 6

Oops, I thought that it was on there!

But that's why you might want Euro CN v7 when it comes out!



Greg

 

[roadrider]

There is another difference between 5 and 6 as very well described by Gregg and Pan to consider. In that ver 6 takes up more memory on the memory card than ver 5 for the same area coverage.
It appears to me that as well as the aditional info on ver 6, the whole way the software is written has changed. Even the voice commands have changed slightly too.

IMHO ver 6 is worth the upgrade, especially if you travel on the continent.
John

 

[PanEuropean]

Roadrider:

Your observations are correct, although I would phrase things a little differently. Version 6 takes more space than version 5 because there are more road attributes recorded for each street. Because there are more road attributes, the GPSR is able to give you more precise guidance, especially for lane manouvers prior to the actual turn.

By example, 4 years ago, all of Switzerland took up about 12 megs. Now it takes up 45 megs. The Swiss did not quadruple the number of roads in the last 4 years. Navteq did increase attribute data in CH by a factor of 10 in the last 4 years.

The software - in the sense of how the data is constructed - has not changed, there is just more (invisible) attribute detail present. You can expect this to continue from year to year in the future, even if the is not a single physical change to a road in the entire country. Hence my ongoing advice to consider future memory needs when you buy, not just today's memory needs.

Road attributes are recorded by Navteq as they drive the streets, and collect up to 60 attributes per road - speed limits, land widths, traffic light frequency, even whether the stripes on multi-lane roads are solid or dashed. This is part of the reason why Navteq data (CN, CS, MG Europe) sells for a premium price.

I just finished 2 weeks of driving around Western Canada, using the Canada Metroguide 4.0 cartography, which is produced by DTMI Spatial, a Canadian company. Although MG Canada 4.0 has far more complete road coverage than CN or CS North America - 100% of the Canadian roads vs. only 15% on CN or CS - it has far fewer attributes per road. In many cases, it does not even differentiate between a paved road and a gravel road. When autorouting, the turn warning always popped up 150m before the turn, regardless of whether I was on a dirt track or a motorway, instead of popping up at a speed/distance appropriate time. This is an example of what road attributes (or the lack of them) do.

PanEuropean

 

[roadrider]

Thanks Pan, I also noticed the tiles are much larger than ver 5,
I used to plan my routes on the continent using a corridor of tiles along the route to my main destination and then expand it to tour the area where I was based etc. This under ver 5 was ideal for me. But ver 6 has changed that due to the larger tiles, meaning by the time I have built the corridor there is no memory left to expand at my destination. I sold my SP3 back in Feb this year and planned to get the 2610, but finances etc. So I bought a new SP3 with ver 6 for the same money as I sold my old one with ver 4 & 5 . . And I noticed some differences straight away. The screen is not as bright, due to the anti-glare screen maybe, but yet in some ways is better to view. And as mentioned above and previous post the differences in the way the mapping works.

One thing I did notice very much was the recalc speed, when off route, (and as you described in one of your previous posts about looking in the immediate area to get you back on route etc) I can say the longest it took on a recent trip to the Black Forest in Germany was 22 seconds. Which is a huge improvement on the old method of recalculating the whole route. Which makes the SP3 extremely more usable. I remember many times being sat there on the bike waiting 5 mins +.

Regards
John

 

[PanEuropean]

Hi John:

The recalculation algorithm was change for the SP III at about version 2.40, I think - sometime around late summer last year.

It is a significant improvement, and by itself is sufficient reason for all SP III users to get the most recent (free) system software upgrade for their SP III.