On-Route - Route Planning software

[Rabbitson]

Hi Ebbo,

Yes, the guy doing the video is me, although I have often been likened voice wise to Jamie Oliver (a curse for me that he ever got famous!)

I'm the UK importer for On-Route, it's a product that was developed for the Dutch market by a specialist motorcycle gps shop using a combination of software that was already available for sale, and then expanding it to offer a more comprehensive package.

As the product is quite new, I'm in the process of setting up a framework for selling and reselling the product, hence the fact that ukGSers can have a discount (as it's one of my favourite clubs ) also I'm looking for resellers, anyone reading this can contact me if you're interested.

The product makes an excellent companion for trip planning for either GPS or non-GPS users and expands considerably the options for trip planning on TomTom and Garmin units.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have.

David

 

[ebbo]

Hi David, Question then, what criteria does it use to draw a scenic route?

 

[Rabbitson]

Hi there Ebbo,

The criteria is the following:

Roads near to rivers, lakes or forests, changes in elevation, town avoidance and known roads of special interest for driving, these are built into the map so that On-Route can use them to make trip plans.

Additionally, if you use the excursion manager you get a preview rating of the route and its alternatives according to certain criteria, for example amount of corners (high, low, medium), outside towns and cities, changes in elevation, etc.

Of course if you want to further preview the route after on-route has suggested it, this route can then be exported in kml format and viewed in Google Earth or similar.

Any more questions, feel free.

David

 

[ebbo]

Thanks for that David, is there a demo version of the software available or have I missed it?

 

[Rabbitson]

Hi Ebbo,

The extent of the demo is the video tutorial here:

<embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-383217959781356017&hl=en&fs=true" style="width:400px;height:326px" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed>

This is a 15 minute walk through of the main features.

If you want to use it, you need to buy it

David

 

[Steve]

If you want to use it, you need to buy it

David

Not comfortable forking out a hundred quid "on spec".

 

[Rabbitson]

I understand your reservation, but unfortunately there is no formal evaluation mechanism at this point so the best I can do is answer question and give examples.

Are there any particular questions you have or features that you are looking for?

David

 

[Popeye]

Just a thought - why not let Whatton, as section moderator, and Ebbo, as well known GPS geek, have the software on test for say 6 months on the proviso that they give an un-biased write up of how well it woks in the real world.

I'd be pretty interested in it but I wouldn't stump up £100 without trying it or having it independently reviewed first.

 

[Deleted account 220427002]

looked at the video and maybe I'm not getting it but it's an awful lot of money for just to plan routes... you'd need to be planning a lot of trips to justify the price... and will you need to buy new mapping again next year to keep route planning accurate?

not meant as a criticism but just how i would judge it as an average user

 

[AndyW]

Just a thought - why not let Whatton, as section moderator, and Ebbo, as well known GPS geek, have the software on test for say 6 months on the proviso that they give an un-biased write up of how well it woks in the real world.......

Good idea..........I'm going to drop ECM a PM, he's familiar with On-Route (the earlier Dutch version anyway) and a MapSource guru and might have something useful to contribute here

Meantime I found this review of On Route, 2007/2008 version though (link is a Google translation;-)
On Route Review

I have a copy of On Route, first impressions, really like it, easy to use, intuitive.........not spent much time on it yet so I have more questions than answers so far! I'd offer to write a review but I'm useless at that sort of thing and I need to find time to give the software a good 'going over'

 

[Rabbitson]

I'll ask Whatton if he's interested.

Thanks for posting the review up Andy. As you can see the product is pretty well established in Holland (BMW have even rebranded the product there and marketed it)

David

 

[Rabbitson]

A couple of people have subsequently asked me about the previous version of BMW On-Route that was for the Dutch market.

It's the 2007/2008 version but it's still shown on the Dutch BMW site, as the site doesn't allow direct linking, here's a screenshot:

Any questions, just ask.

David

 

[ECM]

Hi Andy:

Here is a (part of) the PM I send back to you over the Zumo forums with a small review
In short: Recommended!

I did some beta testing on the Dutch version (the first one) but I dropped it when the latest one came out. It was too much of a restrain on my computer speed, so it did not worked for me. You need a pretty fast video card (And I need a new computer )

My ideas with Onroute is that it is very good at giving route suggestions on unfamiliar country's and territories. But it is often best to re-edit the results in Mapsource, just looking at the types of road it is choosing, or just adjusting it a bit to your likings. You also need to recalculate any route in Mapsource before loading, just to make sure that there are no unwanted differences between the two mappings.
There is a good back/forward compatibility between these two.
After you get the hang of it, it is easy to work with.

Where Onroute goes bad is in the time estimates of the routes. They are way off (much too long). But once imported in Mapsource or in your GPS, that time estimate is much more accurate. I think the Zumo times are matching real riding times the best.

Over all it is a real handy tool in creating routes or giving suggestions. Especially the option to create circular routes from a given destination (like your Hotel!) and simply enter the preferred length of your day trip and approximate section (north - east - south - west) can be a very useful one!

Ton

 

[AndyW]

Thanks Ton