Can I use MotoGoLoco & OSM & Mapsource together?

Can you do us a favour and zoom in on the Mapsource map, please. Then take another picture.

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That looks very much like the base map but at the scale in the picture it is hard to tell. No need for the whole of France, just a large enough area so that we can all see if you can display the small roads.

From a very quick look, the Google map version seems to have a start and end point, with five shaping or waypoints in between. The Mapsource version has the same points (which is a good thing) but, as you say, straight lines. Straight lines can occur for two reasons:

1. The settings within Mapsource, where somebody has asked it to display only direct lines. Ie. The settin is for 'direct' between points. Useful for sailing and flying perhaps but not so good on the road.

2. Where Mapsource has not got sufficient data. More often than not, this is because the detailed map is not installed. In short, it doesn't know that the roads are there, so it draws a straight line.

From memory, there should be a tab on the toolbar, telling you what map is installed. It also enables you to switch between installed maps. I can't see it in your screen shot. Tell us what it says, please.
 
I am definitely with leedude03 on this.

It's a long time since I used a PC and Mapsource but it was certainly very easy to alter and set the routing preferences, avoiding motorways, U-turns or whatever.

You can see in your screen shot that there is a drop down box for route avoidances, set to off. That suggests that there should somewhere be a method of setting what the avoidances are.
 
Aha. So a track is a post-event record of a (not previously planned?) route that you've done, and a route is a planned pre-event route that you've created?

Exactly right. You can set the GPS device to record where you've ridden and then display it as a track. Different devices have more (or less) ability to store the tracks within their memory.

You can transfer a track from the device into Mapsource or near enough to any third party software that is capable of accepting them. Similarly, you can send tracks to your GPS device, as you have discovered already. It is possible to edit tracks, just as it is possible to convert tracks into routes and routes into tracks.

A route can be created by you, where you dictate which roads you would like to ride down on the journey. Or it can be created automatically by the software on a computer or within the GPS device itself. Some people - me for instance - like to create their own routes each time; others are quite happy to let the software and device do it for them. Garmin recognises that the latter group of people might need additional help so they have given bods an increasingly large (some might think bewilderingly large) number of preference choices, way beyond just avoiding goat tracks and / or just taking the most direct route, which may not always be the fastest.
 
Can you do us a favour and zoom in on the Mapsource map, please. Then take another picture.

That looks very much like the base map but at the scale in the picture it is hard to tell. No need for the whole of France, just a large enough area so that we can all see if you can display the small roads.

From a very quick look, the Google map version seems to have a start and end point, with five shaping or waypoints in between. The Mapsource version has the same points (which is a good thing) but, as you say, straight lines. Straight lines can occur for two reasons:

1. The settings within Mapsource, where somebody has asked it to display only direct lines. Ie. The settin is for 'direct' between points. Useful for sailing and flying perhaps but not so good on the road.

2. Where Mapsource has not got sufficient data. More often than not, this is because the detailed map is not installed. In short, it doesn't know that the roads are there, so it draws a straight line.

From memory, there should be a tab on the toolbar, telling you what map is installed. It also enables you to switch between installed maps. I can't see it in your screen shot. Tell us what it says, please.

I am definitely with leedude03 on this.

It's a long time since I used a PC and Mapsource but it was certainly very easy to alter and set the routing preferences, avoiding motorways, U-turns or whatever.

You can see in your screen shot that there is a drop down box for route avoidances, set to off. That suggests that there should somewhere be a method of setting what the avoidances are.

See attached pic.

Installed map appears to be Trip And Waypoint Manager V3 - that's what it says at upper left of screen (circled in red in the attached pic). I got a CD of Trip & Waypoint Manager (which could a "Lite" version of Mapsource?) from a guy on a forum in IRL, but I also downloaded The Grey's copy from his thread on UKGSer. I guess it looks like I could have been using that T&WM, rather than The Grey's version (which I imagine was the full version?). I'll try to suss that out tomorrow.

The preference tools you mention do seem to be there (circled in green in the attached pic) - they're in the ROUTING tab of the preferences window, whereas I'd been on the DISPLAY tab. The ROUTE STYLE selection is on this tab too - I have "Use Auto-Routing" selected, rather than "Use Direct Routes", but the MS route is still displaying the route as straight waypoint-to-waypoint lines. So I guess my issues are likely down to the maps I'm working with?
 

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Just updated Mapsource. Now it looks like this. I can insert waypoints and drag the route around, but if I don't, it still has the route in straight lines. Batteries dying now - mine & laptop. Back on the case tomorrow.
 

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Have you actually got any map besides the base map installed in mapsource on your pc?, if not you will be missing a lot of map data. If you end up with a route that is all straight lines like the one you have posted you need to hit the recalculate route function as in my image, this will then give you a route based on the preferences that are set in mapsource, that will work the route out from you waypoints/via points along that route. and then you should end up with something like the second of my images after recalculation.
The more waypoints/viapoints you put in your route before you transfer it from the motogoloco site will lessen the chances you have of the route being way off your origional that you created on their web site, but if you do not have a map apart from the base map in mapsource it may route either into empty space or just along the major routes contained in the base map, in other words it will miss roads that would be there on a full maping product.
 

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PhaedrusMC, the problem you are encountering is that you do not appear to have the detailed maps installed on your computer. Or, if they are installed, you are not using them. The way to look at this is:

You have installed Mapsouce, no doubt about it. Mapsource is software that, besides allowing you to create routes and do all sorts of other funky things, also allows free and easy communication between your PC and a Garmin device. Mapsource is available in two different versions:

1. With just a very basic map, which shows just the major trunk roads and largest towns

2. With fully detailed maps, bringing with it all the little tiny roads and all the small villages. If you like, look at it that the detailed maps are an upgrade to the basic map

Mapsource version one is available free from Garmin. The detailed Garmin maps you have to pay for, not unreasonably. There are though sites where you can download pirated copies of Garmin's detailed maps for free, too.

For whatever reasons, you appear to have no detailed Garmin maps running on your PC. There are three possible reasons for this:

1. That they are simply not installed. If this is the case, you'll need to install them.

2. That they are installed but you simply haven't accessed them. If this is the case, get on and access them.

3. That they are installed on your PC but they are locked. To unlock them you will need a multi-digit code, available (probably for a fee) from Garmin. Or, if the person you got the copy of Mapsource from has the code, from him.


I suggest that you post no more in this thread until:

(A) You and your PC have had a good sleep

(B) You have unlocked detailed Garmin maps installed on your computer and running properly within Mapsource


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As one last alternative. Garmin Mapsource is capable of running third party routeable (meaning you can create routes on them yourself) maps. If you do not want to buy Garmin's detailed maps or you cannot unlock them for whatever reasons or you do not fancy a pirated version, download the free unlocked maps you want from say, Open Street Maps to your computer and use them all the time from within the Mapsouce application on your PC.

The only slight disadvantages of this are:

1. Unlike Garmin, where you can get the whole of Europe in one big file, Open Street Maps limits the amount of maps you can download at any one time. This is not a big problem as very few of us actually need to access and use very detailed maps that stretch from the very north of Finland to the very southernmost tip of Spain very often. You will certainly be able to download all the Open Street Maps for the western seaboard of France (and an awful lot more) in one hit.

2. There might be slight discrepancies between the route you create in Open Street Map on your computer and the same route that gets displayed on your 550 GPS device, which is running (so you tell us) detailed Garmin maps. You can work around this possible problem in two ways:

(i) Put lots of shaping / waypoints into the route you create on your computer, to literally force the route down certain roads, no matter what

(ii) Load Open Street Maps onto your 550, too.
 
One last suggestion, that might appear like a heresy.

You tell us that you have the detailed maps loaded onto you Garmin device, in as much as the routes display in all their twiddly detail.

If you load BaseCamp onto your PC, it should draw the detailed maps across from your device each time you connect it. Job done.
 


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