Eastern Europe Coverage

Guys

I am looking into GPS's for my trip this summer. I plan on travelling as far a Kiev, and mabe back through Poland, hungary, and maybe some other interesting locations along the way.

I have an iPAQ with TomTom, but as far as I can see the maps fo not cover Ukraine at all.: SOOOO which device does, and fit easily to the GS?

Hi Pie Man,

For my last trip through the Ukraine, I surprisingly found that my old Garmin GPSV with the rather old Mapsource Cityselect V6 was sufficient for major roads and even small towns, although I basically used it to support a map. I've found the best map so far to be the onr fron the German Reise Know-How series - these are very detailed, water and tear proof, but most importantly have both "English" and cyrillic names for all towns. More info at:

http://www.reise-know-how.de/start-frames.php

Touratech stock them and sell them at cover price.

eastern europe

I have tomtom maps for eastern europe and they seem to cover ukraine ok, I also have easter n europe software that I run on a windows mobile pda phone and that has coverage of major roads.

GOOGLE!!!

I found this

http://www.gpsukraine.com/

Looks interesting

Pie Man said:

Looks interesting

Click to expand...

I agree, but as I mentioned above, you need to take into consideration that the GPS software displays the "English" names. When you're on the road in the Ukraine, apart from in major cities, all of the place names are in cyrillic, therefore I'd still recommend a good map with alphabets!

Slightly off topic but those who don't have a satnav yet may be interested.

Tomtom and Garmin have a different definition of "Europe" as the standard preinstalled maps. My Rider just has a big blank east of Germany and Austria but Garmin has full street level mapping of Poland and more limited mapping of counties such as Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. Ie. everything to the Black Sea.

There is however a proviso with Garmin's maps. They use a system of "Base Maps" and "Detail Maps". The detail maps are what gives the street level mapping and the base map has similar coverage to a paper atlas. When you view Mapsource or your GPS at small scale you see the base map. As you zoom in it changes to the detail map. Some Eastern coutries have limited detail mapping, some have only the base map.

Routes are calculated using the detail maps, when available, otherwise they use the base map. The problem arises in countries where there is limited detail mapping.

As an example, Slovakia just had a base map in City Navigator 8 but has limited detail maps in City Navigator 9 and not all the base map roads are included in the detail maps. The result is that routes in Slovakia ignore many roads which exist as they are only on the base map. This "feature" can be observed in Mapsource by viewing an area of Slovakia at high resolution with zoom at 15 miles. Click zoom in to change to 10 mile zoom. Many roads disappear which is the opposite of what you would expect when zooming in. The 15 mile zoom shows basemap and 10 shows detail maps which will be used for routing. I took this up with Garmin who confirmed the above explanation is correct.

I produced a route in CN 8 between towns in Poland and Slovakia of 45 miles using base map. When I installed CN 9 this route was recalculated to 170 miles as the new detail map did not include the direct major road across a 24 hour border crossing.

I found a workaround which is to have CN8 and 9 installed in Mapsource and do all Eastern routes in CN8. When transferred to the satnav (running V9) it offers to recalculate the route. Telling it not to keeps the route intact although it will show as straight lines between points.

I don't know how Tomtom treats countries with limited mapping but I did find a problem with my Rider a couple of years ago when Europe was covered with separate maps, e.g. one for France, one for Spain, etc. with major roads of Europe on all maps. The Rider could only read one map at a time so street level routing across borders was impossible. This could be a problem if using a Rider with Western Europe and Eastern Europe maps.

Last year we went as far as Budapest. My mate was using TomTom on a PDA. I'd managed to "borrow" a copy of the eastern european maps for TomTom. We soon realised that there was a big difference in accuracy for the eastern european countries. Still better than nothing though, but several times we needed to consult the trusty road atlas.

I have a page on my site which illustrates the problems using a Garmin

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/clift/tricks.html

Pie Man said:

I found this

http://www.gpsukraine.com/

Looks interesting

Click to expand...

Hello Pie Man

http://www.gpsukraine.com/features.html
They do have Cyrillic interface and maps ( town and street numbers). In addition they provide a free of charge conversion tool as a bonus.

I personally used to drive with GPS Ukraine solution ( with their hardware navigator and with my iPAQ as well ) during my mission in Ukraine in August. The map is precise and up to date, coverage is the best on the market and continue to get even better rapidly. Their routing engine is, IMHO, better then TomTom's. They buy it from the major player doing it for Miomap as well. That means that in addition you will be able to buy some supplementary maps from TeleAtlas. This is the very capable solution and I would recommend it for everyone.

Pie Man said:

Guys

I am looking into GPS's for my trip this summer. I plan on travelling as far a Kiev, and mabe back through Poland, hungary, and maybe some other interesting locations along the way.

I have an iPAQ with TomTom, but as far as I can see the maps fo not cover Ukraine at all.: SOOOO which device does, and fit easily to the GS?

Click to expand...

Hello to all...

I just wanted to say that in Garmins City Navigator NT 2008 you have coverage for eastern Europs countrys with major cities and roads. If you need a detailed map for some countries you can buy them from a local dealers.
We, as an Garmin dealer in Novi Sad, Serbia have a detailed map for Serbia and Montenegro (SCG Route), Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Macedonia (Adria Route), Hungary (NaviGuide), Slovakia (Slovakia Roads), Roamania (RO A.D.), Greece (Auto drive Hellas)...
If anyone needs some of that detailed maps I would be glad to help. Page me on my PM and I will replay as soon as I can.
Any other questions about Garmin devices and/or maps you have - just ask.