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City Navigator Not For The Outdoorsman (?)


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From an outdoorsman’s standpoint, I must say I have been disappointed with the recent mapping offerings from Garmin. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Garmin 76C, and 76Cx units and their capabilities. This is not meant to start a bashing thread. But, it seems to me that the mapping programs, City Select/City Navigator are focusing all of their efforts strictly on “driving” features and POI’s and has neglected geographic features completely.

 

This software is probably great for StreetPilots and other vehicle units, but are lacking for “outdoor” units. Yes, I have topo and it is fine once I am out of the vehicle. I guess that I got spoiled with my first autorouting program, MetroGuide 4. It seems that MG4 combined the features of “driving” and topo. I have City Select 6 and 7, and now City Navigator 8. I like the ability to find a “geographic” POI and then autoroute directly to it.

 

Not to mention the accuracy of the geographic features, which are significantly more general now than in MG4.

 

Any chance of lobbying Garmin to make changes, or a new product tailored for the outdoorsman?

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Umm I cant really figure out a way to not make my reply sound smart a!! but its pretty much just like you said. City navigator is made for navigating on "city" roads. The only thing Garmin has that may fit the bill for you is the TOPO maps. What more are you looking for the software to do? Like what kind of features/maps would you want? Theres a way to actually make your own maps and upload them to the unit.

 

From an outdoorsman’s standpoint, I must say I have been disappointed with the recent mapping offerings from Garmin. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Garmin 76C, and 76Cx units and their capabilities. This is not meant to start a bashing thread. But, it seems to me that the mapping programs, City Select/City Navigator are focusing all of their efforts strictly on “driving” features and POI’s and has neglected geographic features completely.

 

This software is probably great for StreetPilots and other vehicle units, but are lacking for “outdoor” units. Yes, I have topo and it is fine once I am out of the vehicle. I guess that I got spoiled with my first autorouting program, MetroGuide 4. It seems that MG4 combined the features of “driving” and topo. I have City Select 6 and 7, and now City Navigator 8. I like the ability to find a “geographic” POI and then autoroute directly to it.

 

Not to mention the accuracy of the geographic features, which are significantly more general now than in MG4.

 

Any chance of lobbying Garmin to make changes, or a new product tailored for the outdoorsman?

Edited by Fhantazm
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Hey, at least you responded. And, no, I didn't take it as a Smart a** comment. But to answer your question, I would like more of the features that were available in MG4. MG4 had significantly more geographic/topo information than any of the City Select/Navigators. I did a quick look at your area and the differences are not so great, so that's good. But here are a couple of maps for an area that I like to fish in NC. Sorry if the images are large. The detail does not increase if you zoom in on the CN8. I can't even find Striking Island or Shellbed Island on CN8!

Here is Smith Island (Bald Head Island) NC from Google Earth:

BaldHead2copy.jpg

 

Here is the same area from MetroGuide4:

BaldHead2MG4.jpg

 

And here it is from City Navigator 8:

BaldHead1CN8.jpg

Edited by PhntmArcher
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It is beginning to look like I might have to explore making my own. I was hoping that it would not come to that, but it seems that the commerical products are going to street navigation like HikerGPS said. I thought (hoped) there might be enough of us out here to influence Garmin, but if the demand is not there it is unlikely to happen.

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why not just buy the topo maps that offer better offroad detail? city navigator V8 may not have the same level of detail off road as your old metroguide, but i bet that the road data is much more uptodate and positioned more accurate.

 

This is really a stupid thing to complain about, if anything I would complain that garmins topo maps road data sucks :laughing:

See it seems kinda silly.

Edited by hogrod
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I have an older copy of MetroGuide 5, loaded it up and did a comparison. Theres not much in favor of Metroguide vs CN 8 in my area. This is probably due to MG5 being the release they switched from Tiger to NavTech maps, which focus more on roads than land. But it was worth a look.

 

why not just buy the topo maps that offer better offroad detail? city navigator V8 may not have the same level of detail off road as your old metroguide, but i bet that the road data is much more uptodate and positioned more accurate.

 

This is really a stupid thing to complain about, if anything I would complain that garmins topo maps road data sucks :laughing:

See it seems kinda silly.

Edited by Fhantazm
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Thanks Hogrod, for the terrific suggestion. You must be a genius. I must be delusional to expect my maps to be accurate. Love the suggestion buy the Topo maps and then complain about them. Sheer brilliance!!

 

If you had read (or comprehended) my original post, I already do have Topo, MetroGuide 4, City Select 6 &7 and City Navigator 8. My concern was when major geographic features are completely omitted from the map. What exactly do you expect from your GPSr? Please enlighten stupid, silly me.

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:laughing: This is very funny to me. :anibad:

 

Thanks Hogrod, for the terrific suggestion. You must be a genius. I must be delusional to expect my maps to be accurate. Love the suggestion buy the Topo maps and then complain about them. Sheer brilliance!!

 

If you had read (or comprehended) my original post, I already do have Topo, MetroGuide 4, City Select 6 &7 and City Navigator 8. My concern was when major geographic features are completely omitted from the map. What exactly do you expect from your GPSr? Please enlighten stupid, silly me.

Edited by Fhantazm
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WOW some people take things way to seriously! I was just trying to point out the major flaw with your issue with city navigator, you are asking for better off road data in on road software. Garmin probably doesn't include this info to promote the sale of their topo.

Since you have city select 7 and could use gamin's MapSource Map Viewer on their website you could already see that City NavigatorV8 really isn't that great of an upgrade. I opted to stick with my topo, metroguide 6, and city select 7, especially since I started looking into making my own maps.

Why complain when you could just do something about it?

 

1. You can submit errors and missing info to Navteq, the source that garmin uses for their map data. this includes, roads, POI, and more.

http://www.navteq.com/updates/mapfeedback.html

 

2. I had already found out that I could get free auto routing out of my metroguide 6 just by uploading to the gps receiver with something other than mapsource(img2gps). http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mdipol/img2gps/

 

3. Garmin makes metroguide V8 now so you could have got the same data without the stupid unlock codes of city navigator V8, and also cheaper.

http://www.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/MetroGuideNT.jsp

 

4. I made transparent topo maps that overlay my autorouting maps, So now I can autoroute and have topo at the same time. This is one of the sites I used to help me in the process of learning how to do this. it's really not all that hard

http://home.cinci.rr.com/creek/garmin.htm

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Thanks Hogrod, now that really was some insightful information. The “major flaw” you were pointing out had already been addressed by the subtitle (I Guess That's Why It's Called "City" Navigator).

 

I looked at MetroGuide 8 at the Garmin Website, and it looks like the geographic features are the same (or close to) City Navigator 8. So, I think the idea of making transparent topo maps to overlay might be the best solution for me. Thanks for taking time to provide the links.

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