Need a little help testing a motorcycle function

[PanEuropean]

Hello Everyone:

This post is addressed to those who have SP 2610 or SP 2650 GPSR's with software 2.95 beta and who like to ride on twisty secondary roads, rather than the motorways.

The Garmin software engineers did a lot of work over the winter months in response to specific requests from touring motorcycle users to give us the ability to ask the GPS to keep us off motorways and off city streets, and keep us on the twisty secondary roads. I have not had any time to test this functionality since it was released in 2.95 public beta, in large part because my motorcycle is in Canada.

So, this is an appeal to you folks to help me out with the testing of this new software functionality. If we want Garmin to continue to be responsive to requests from the motorcycle community to provide software functions to enhance moto-riding, we need to put a little effort into trying out and testing what they do for us. They have made a number of changes to the SP software over the years specifically for moto riders - better discrimination of hairpin turns on alpine routes, adapting the software to the tighter turning radius of motos, giving us the 'avoid unpaved roads' function (for the tourers and sport-tourers), and now, giving us significant control over what road classes are used when the GPSR auto-routes us.

Here's the request: If you go to the ROUTE page on your SP 26xx running 2.95b or higher (by pressing and holding the MENU button), you will see a new icon labelled "ROUTING SETUP". If you press that button, you will be sent to the OPTIONS page, and you will notice a new tab there entitled "ROAD PREFERENCES". This tab is not visible if you access the options page in the normal way, that is to say by pressing the OPTIONS button.

Within that road preferences tab, you will see three sliding bars, labelled "major highways, minor highways, and city streets" or words to that effect.

What I would appreciate it if you would try, if your time and interest permit, is to slide the tabs for major highways and for city streets (the top and bottom sliders) to the very far right - the lowest possible preference setting - then slide the tab for minor highways to the far left, which is the highest possible preference setting.

Then choose a route between one place and another - say, a typical 100 mile "sunny Sunday" touring route - and see if the result you get is any more attractive, from a "twisties" point of view. than the result you would have got in the past. The reason I am asking for help from the group here is that everyone knows their own favourite ride in the country, what we are trying to do is see if this new software functionality will help us to pick better (more twisty) routes when we are in areas we are not familiar with. So, try generating some routes (only on the GPSR itself, not on the PC with MapSource) and see what you think of the results you get.

Please be aware that the GPSR can only discriminate between speed classes of roads, not between roads with different lane widths or roads with straight as opposed to twisty construction characteristics. So, it is possible that with the above settings, a controlled access motorway with a low speed limit would be chosen in preference to an awesome twisty country road with a higher speed limit. This is what we need to determine - is this algorithm (using speed classes to identify nice twisty country roads) a good algorithm or not? If it works, great, the engineers need to hear that. If it does not work, they need to hear where and why, so they can fine-tune it.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would post a summary of your results here on this thread, I will either collect all the info and send it to the software engineers, or refer them to this thread so they can look it over themselves.

We moto riders are enjoying unprecedented attention and co-operation from the Garmin software engineers now - this is something that some of us have been working very hard to accomplish for some years - so any help anyone can provide with testing this new capability will be greatly appreciated.

PanEuropean

 

[K2R]

You might want to check your directions on the sliders.

I have done some preliminay routes. In one case, no difference to my surprise. In another, 220 miles, I was totally surprised at the results. I've found it hard to predict what the device will do. I will try do submit something definitive later.

I do find it a blast to use. I rode yesterday in a rural area between major highways. I would pick a place to ride, and let it set a route. If I didn't like it I would set Shortest distance and re-calc. There are any number of ways to get what you are looking for.

One thing would seem to need changing. It won't ask me for my preference, faster time or shorter distance, when I do a recalc.

 

[PanEuropean]

Bill:

Thanks for catching the error in my posting about sliders. The far LEFT is the AVOID end, the far RIGHT is the PREFER end.

I am using a later software version (not a public release) so I am just going from memory on what 2.95 looked like.

If you want the SP 26xx to ask you your route calculation preference every time, press MENU, then OPTIONS, then on the ROUTING tab, where it says 'Ask me my preference', choose YES.

The answer to that question can be set to NO from the preference question that will pop up every time a route is calculated - you probably got tired of the thing asking you if you wanted fastest, shortest, direct or custom, and put a tick mark in the box. This switched the answer over to NO on the tab mentioned in the paragraph above.

FWIW, I would always choose 'shortest' in the past when doing touring with the SP III. Problem with that was that it often took me through cities, which is something I didn't want. This new feature (road preferences, referred to as "Custom Road Prefs" in the later release I have) is intended to allow us to stay out of city streets without necessarily choosing the 'fastest' route.

I really appreciate your help with this, and look forward to seeing your comments.

PanEuropean

 

[K2R]

recalc

I have, "ask me my preference" set. It will only ask on the first route calculation. After that I assume it uses the same setting because it doesn't ask again. That is consistent with choosing a saved route. If you activate a saved route, it will not ask your preference.

I don't think this is the way it should work. It should ask because of any changed settings that may have been set, namely the ones we are looking at now.

 

[PanEuropean]

Sharp observation, Bill, I agree with your point and I will pass that one on to the programmers.

Michael

 

[K2R]

Again, without showing any specific results just let me say that a change in starting position can have a major impact on the route. Example, starting a route from my house vs 4 or 5 miles west of here. That's not much in the scheme of route distance, but it can be dramatic in terms of the route computed. That is why I suggest it is hard to predict what the device will do. You basically have to try it, then if you don't like it, try changing something. I will say that changes in the sliders can and usually do make a difference and I like having them and would be happy to have a few more.

While here I will mention another note on routes that is somewhat related. If you get off-route, and the device has to recalculate, you can get two DIFFERENT results getting off-route at the same place. Why? Because a speed difference can influence the re-route decision. Based on your speed, your location will be different at the point in time the GPS re-calculates. The point once again being that it is hard to predict. Its just doing its job based on the info it has.
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Off subject but please suggest that the Find Waypoint icon be placed on the first Find screen so as not to have to scroll for it, perhaps swapping it with the Entertainment icon. That may be a tough call to some (not me).