iaing said:
...There was also a circle round the position indicator...
Iain:
The circle around the vehicle position symbol indicates the level of confidence that the GPSR has in the position being displayed. There is a whole lot more to this than simply the quality of the satellite reception.
The major factors affecting the display of a circle around the position symbol are as follows:
1) The quality of the position fix that the GPSR has from observing the satellite constellation. You can determine the 'raw' accuracy of the position fix by going to the GPS settings page, and looking at the accuracy value displayed there. It will indicate something such as '17 feet' or similar - indicating that the satellite reception quality is such that the GPSR is confident that
the position displayed as a latitude / longitude is accurate within 17 feet.
2) But, that is not all there is to it. Let's presume that the cartography for the map you are currently displaying has not been validated by Navteq - meaning, they have not driven that route themselves to confirm that the vector map depiction of the road / trail / ferry route is, in fact, dead accurate. In such a case, even though your GPSR might have a super-accurate lat / long position fix, the GPSR will display a circle around the vehicle position symbol
because there is some uncertainty about whether the cartography you are looking at accurately depicts the position of the road / trail / ferry route.
In other words, the uncertainty can be caused by one of two factors (or a combination of the two) - poor satellite reception, or, the possibility that the underlying cartography may not depict the road / trail / ferry route with absolute precision.
In your case (on the ferry), I suspect it was the latter - uncertainty that the dotted line depicting the ferry route was, in fact, the exact path that the Captain of the ferry navigates - that resulted in the display of the circle. If you use WorldMap cartography, you often see the circle, even when you have perfect satellite reception with differential correction, such that your lat-long position is known to be accurate within 1 centimeter. It's no comfort to you that your lat/long position is deadly accurate if the cartography you are viewing is not equally accurate - hence the display of the 'uncertainty circle'.
Michael