Route Calculating City Navigator

[Hannes]

Good day, I have experienced some weird route calculations with my Nuvi 3760 with CN NT 2013.4 and Zumo with CN NT 2014.40.
When driving from Lichtenburg to Faan Meintjies Nature Reserve near Klerksdorp it calculated the route from Lichtenburg to Ventersdorp on the N14, then a right turn on the R30 and then left on a dirt road to the D2787 up to Faan Meintjies.
With South African street maps the GPS calculate the route correctly from Lichtenburg to Hartbeesfontein, to Klerksdorp and then to Faan Meintjies Nature Reserve.


I have also experience some weird calculations driving to Pretoria. Firstly it does not want to calculate the route from Lichtenburg to Pretoria via Koster, Derby Magaliesburg and then up to Pretoria. It tried to take me to the N14 or via Rustenburg (N4) to Pretoria.

Even routed me in Pretoria with a detour to a place that is directly next to the highway (N1).

If I use Southern African street maps the routing is done correctly, what can I do to resolve this problems?

[F.Viljoen]

Hi Hannes,
You yourself can't do anything about it, as it is calculating errors on the mapsets.
You can report detail information about the error(s) to Garmin, but me myself don't bother anymore, cause stuff I have reported more than 2 years ago, are still unchanged.
What I will recommend, is to post detailed information about the routing errors, geotags the lot together with screenshots from the device, as well as snaps from that routes created in Basecamp/Mapsource and it's behaviour here on the forum. Maybe, just maybe, Garmin will start to respond to such errors after reading it here.

I will gather some of my own errors and post it.

[Jan Horn]

Hi Hannes Nice to hear from you again. The CN 2014.4 map set behaved very weirdly. It seem that they re-classified a lot of the roads which caused some weird navigation calculations. For example routing from Welkom to Aldam via Theunissen and Winburg and then along an unpaved road a total distance of 148km instead of the 65 km via Verginia. The latest updates calculate correctly again.

[Hannes]

Hi Oom Jan it was a long time since I last posted something on the forum.

My frustration and I think most of the other users is that we had a pretty good map set with the Southern African Series and a lot of worked went into it from forum members an Shorty. And now we must start from scratch again.

@ Frans I will create screen shots and post them maybe just maybe some one will start paying attention.

[Silver Fox]

I have also had some "funnies" with the CN maps.
From CN 2013-4, routing North from Nelspruit to White River, it suddenly started making a short detour through the Sasol Garage near White River.
I reported it and had no acknowledgement or confirmation and the fault was eventually fixed in the CN 2014-4 maps.
Possibly the Sasol Garage owner has a friend at Garmin.

[Jan Horn]

When you report a problem and they respond it is usually from someone in Europe (England). Mostly it is noticeable that the response came form a precompiled standard reply. The local boys here very little input from their side and in some instances are just as frustrated as we are.
I regularly drive form Welkom past Sasol and Denysville to our Holiday retreat on the Vaal Dam and CN want to take through Denysville to Vaal Marina. I know it is only 16km by boat but it is 34km by road.

[Phillip Coetser]

Hi Guys, Phillip again. Well,well, well, after reading the points on the above topic, I wonder if this is maybe enough motivation for Swannie not to buy a Nuvi 3597 . A day ago, I had a look at the TomTom go, and the mapset on this unit compared to South Africa 2015 CN Maps, is far more superior, planning a route for instance from Edenvale to Durban, on the TomTom, will lead me to the N3 directly,whereas the Nuvi 3597 and Nuvi 3760 takes me on all the "back roads", towards Heidelberg . I'm not suggesting that anybody should buy a Nuvi, or a TomTom, but until Garmin upgrades CN maps drastically, people in the market for a Gps'r should think twice before making a choice.

[Jan Horn]

By buying Tom Tom you get the original map set that Tom Tom supplied Garmap with the raw data and Garmap used their software to convert it to work on the Garmin units. I known that Tom Tom worked on improving the Map set since the contract with Garmin was terminated. To what extend it now compares with CN as far as Junction view and all the other feature are concerned I do not know.

Here are three screenshots of portion of the toad to Aldam to illustrate the changes in classification that caused the weird navigation calculations.

[Phillip Coetser]

Hi Jan, I think with the takeover from Garmin to TomTom, a lot has changed, (http://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/drive/car/p ... 00-europe/), but once again, I'm not promoting any brand of Gps'r. Unfortunately, I'm in the same boat as you guys. My wish list would be any of the later models of Nuvi's with a TomTom mapset I rest my case, but until Garmin Europe realizes that there is also educated people living outside of Europe, using their Garmin units, we'll have to wait until they, Garmin, decides when to treat South Africa the same way as the rest of the world with regards to maps. We as owners of Nuvi's, don't know what a map update from Garmin entails, so we download the updates if and when required, run the maps on our Nuvi's, and as Frans said earlier, only to find out that some changes were made, but with more routing problems.

[fugglefeet]

Hi folks,

From the looks of things, Garmin sold the end users in South Africa up the creek in a canoe without a paddle. With the total dissolution of Garmap and Garmin doing a whole takeover, the obvious thing to do was to get rid of any form of mapsets that have been supplied by the opposition (TomTom). Garmin now has their mapsets (CN South Africa) on their devices and they are now able to get a foothold in an already Garmin biased market, albeit running the risk of alienating the existing base with inaccuracies in the mapsets and being disinclined to accepting user input to corrections for the mapsets. This is not good business practice and can cause a wholesale swing in the market to another manufacturer. TomTom on the other hand (and from my personal experience), irrespective of the age of the mapset on the GPSr, will provide free corrections (which is community driven) to mapsets available for download from TomTom through their software. I was even tempted at one time to put Frans' hard work on the forum with the RHD up there and give him the credit, with the intent to get TomTom followers to join the forum too and in that way diversifying our spectrum of devices discussed. My experience with an old TomTom One V3 and what I have achieved has made me relook my next new purchase. I may find myself being easily swayed away from Garmin and seriously rethinking my device purchase based more on map accuracy than device performance.

Darryl