What ever happened to D.O.P readings?

[+Tahoe Skier5000]

My dad has a Garmin GPS III+, and on the satellite page, it has the regular E.P.E reading, but also a D.O.P or Dilusion of Precision reading too. I guess it measures the satellite geometry quality.

 

I always thought this was a pretty cool feature, and for some reason, none of the new Garmin units have it anymore... Why did Garmin stop including it??

 

Using Opera 7.1

[+parkrrrr]

quote:

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Originally posted by volks_ev71:

it has the regular E.P.E reading

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This reading is anything but regular. Only Garmin knows how they calculate it, and it appears to bear no relationship to reality. But they seem to have gotten away with it.

 

quote:

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I always thought this was a pretty cool feature, and for some reason, none of the new Garmin units have it anymore... Why did Garmin stop including it??

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Maybe they started believing their own propaganda? It's still available on the NMEA output, so they have to know it. I guess they just don't want to confuse the poor users. Since people keep buying Garmins, maybe they're on to something. Maybe the users really do prefer meaningless feel-good numbers over accurate measures of the quality of the fix.

 

[Kerry.]

And while they're at it, they (includes many makers apart from garmin) should also give the poor users some flexibility in defining masking angles.

 

But then that might reduce the number of satellites in fix and of course everybody knows that the more satellites the better the fix , well that's propaganda for ya.

 

Cheers, Kerry.

 

I never get lost everybody keeps telling me where to go

[+apersson850]

The only influence you have on the mask angle with an eTrex Vista is by selecting Normal mode or Battery save mode. In battery save mode the mask angle is raised somewhat, in order to avoid wasting power consuming CPU cycles trying to lock on to satellites which are difficult to find anyway.

 

Anders