+jollybgood Posted September 20, 2003 Share Posted September 20, 2003 I did an interesting experiment today. I have my GPSV hooked up to my Pocket PC with Mapopoplis. I had Mapopolis route me to each cache I went otu to hunt for this morning. At the SAME time I had the GPSV do the same route. Keep in mind I live in a congested area and there's a maze of interstates and ramp systems dividing up the caches I was searching for. Here's what I learned...., The GPSV took up to 10 time longer to calculate each route. But it usually picked the BEST route. Mapopolis was swift as far as determining routes (even when I set it on "exhaustive" route. But it usually chose a more complicated/less direct route than the GPSV. It had me backtracking several times as though it didn't recognize that there were off ramps that would have gotten me there quicker. Tweaking the settings didn't seem to make a difference. I love he big screen, color maps, with Mapopolis. I like the voice prompted routing. But the GPSV seems to do a better job of getting me from pont A to B. From what I could tell Mapopolis had a tendency not to use secondary roads and side streets regardless of the setting whereas the GPSV consistenlty used such roads if it meant a shorter route. What this really boils down to is that on a few caches Mapopolis tacked on an extra mile or two to my route. Not a huge drawback I suppose. Has anyone else tried this? Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com "Never declare war on a man who buys his ink by the gallon." Quote Link to comment
+crashmore Posted September 20, 2003 Share Posted September 20, 2003 Haven't tried this yet. Were you using the latest version of Mapopolis? You should email your results to the Mapopolis folks to see what they have to say http://www.cachegear.com Technical News And Reviews Relating To Geocaching "Law pain i reviar mistar aen" Quote Link to comment
+alexm Posted September 20, 2003 Share Posted September 20, 2003 quote:It had me backtracking several times as though it didn't recognize that there were off ramps that would have gotten me there quicker. I've never done a side-by-side compare, but I've seen the same differences that you are. Version 3 Mapopolis suggests a different route from my home to work than version 4 does. Version 4 also thinks I work a block or so further up the road and suggests I pass up a convenient U-turn to go up to the next major intersection and turn around. quote:What this really boils down to is that on a few caches Mapopolis tacked on an extra mile or two to my route. Not a huge drawback I suppose. I really don't think much of minor setbacks like the ones I've mentioned above. 90% of the time that I'm "trusting" Mapopolis (or any other driving directions), I'm in a place where I have no clue know how to get from A to B anyway. An extra couple of blocks of decent directions is better than driving in circles for an hour looking for a road that isn't there. alex Quote Link to comment
+jollybgood Posted September 21, 2003 Author Share Posted September 21, 2003 Okay I have to revise my thoughts on Mapopolis vs. the GPSV. I noticed something very kewl about Mapopolis this morning. If there are a series of turns in rapid succession coming up it tells you. For example "Turn Right at Next. Then turn Left at 125 feet" (Or at least something similar to that) This is very, very nice. One problem with the GPSV is that it often *burps* when you make a turn and takes several seconds (5 to 10) before the program catches up and it announces the next turn. This has results in missed turns and having to back track. Another thing I like about Mapopolois is that it seems to re-adjust your route on the fly if you miss a turn and almost instantly reports thenew info. With the GPSV if you miss a turn it automatically goes into "recalulating route" mode which can take up to a minute or more sometimes. So the list of PROS on the Mapopolis side grew substantially today. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com "Never declare war on a man who buys his ink by the gallon." Quote Link to comment
+Searching_ut Posted September 21, 2003 Share Posted September 21, 2003 Interesting on the routing differences. I've found mapopolis does a better job at routing than metroguide 4 does most of the time, but I don't have the navtech version of metroguide, so I can't compare them. I've found that when comparing the routes from mapopolis, and microsoft streets 2003, they pretty much match most of the time, even when it comes to what I'd call routing errors. I find it interesting in that they seem to pretty much use the same database and software techniques for routing. It would be interesting to see how the iQue routing compares with mapopolis as the primary NavTech database for it should be about the same age wise as what mapopolis is using for it's version 4 maps. Quote Link to comment
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