Navigation engine (destinator) experiences and feedback

loki008 · August 5th, 2009, 12:02 PM

After seeing this comment made about the Nav engine in CF3 i am curious to see what everyones thoughts and comments about the current engine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reagan

CF3 will use the same engine... at least initially, so don't get your hopes up on that. We will be improving the user interface significantly however. (ie, how an address is entered and routes and turns are displayed)

Have you been happy with the quality of the maps and routing provided?

Do you have any specific comments or experiances with the current included navigation engine?

trinybwoy · August 5th, 2009, 12:26 PM

i totally hate the navigation engine.
it is by far the most unreliable gps system i have used.
(i know this is will be addressed in the new update) but the way one inputs address is horrendous!.

2. and the most annoying part, the software doesnt get any info from the gps.
i have xport, i get a 3d fix, all other gps software is able to see and get information from the gps, but not centrafuse.
i have to resort to using my blackberry or g1, which works 100% .

3. quality (visual/aesthetic enjoyment) of the maps are piss poor, what year are we in?????

perhaps i am just venting, but i am not at all pleased with the performance with the gps part of centrafuse.
that aside, i enjoy centrafuse alot. very car friendly, lol
i will consider upgrading to 3.0

moelsaied88 · August 5th, 2009, 12:40 PM

wait, were stuck with destinator AGAIN??!!? wasn't pretty much the whole point of 3.0 to change the nav engine? and considering the time between updates and lack of info we ever really get, we probably wont see a new nav engine at all. but hey maybe our grandkids can enjoy the pleasure of a carpc.

Ryan711 · August 5th, 2009, 12:46 PM

I agree, I use destinator and iguidance. Destinator is always lagging behind where I actually am, whereas iguidance is pretty much on the spot. The only reason I use destinator is because it can lower the volume when speaking directions.

loki008 · August 5th, 2009, 01:58 PM

I pretty much echo what has been said here so far too, i just didnt want to influence the thread by saying it off the bat

On the one hand i can understand the decision from a business perspective, try to get the new product out on a reasonable timeframe and sell the upgrades. However as a customer i can say i will not be upgrading if this is the case. The current navigation engine is horrible. On the few occassions that i have attemped to use it the routing has been so poor that i have had to switch to either the GPS in my cell phone or my Garmin dash board unit.

The last time i attempted to use it what should have been ~ a 45 minute trip was routed in such a way where it was going to be close to an hour and a half. I then fired up garmin on my cell phone and was there in about 50 minutes.

I am quite dissapointed with this decision as this is the one area that Centrafuse really drops the ball on.

Reagan · August 5th, 2009, 02:34 PM

Hey, we hear you all loud and clear on this topic. And as a fellow end-user, I agree. In a perfect world, we would be all over upgrading the Nav engine to something better, newer, etc.

But when reality sets in, these Nav companies either don't have a Win32 (XP, Vista) SDK, aren't eager to jump into this market yet, OR a combination of the above.

So to address this issue, we've shifted our strategy to a MUCH more open framework using what are called "open interfaces" (development term) that essentially means that when these SDK's become available, and/or we (or any developer or company's development teams) are in a position to implement them, then the work will be much easier, and these open interfaces facilitate that effort in a much more seamless manner, meaning we don't have make any changes to our "core" to support them.

In 3.0 we've done the same for Bluetooth, Audio Mixer, and Speech (both SR and TTS).

Not the short-term answer some of you want, but we think this strategy is best in the long term for the customer and the industry as a whole.

trinybwoy · August 5th, 2009, 03:49 PM

@reagan : would u be at liberty to disclose if CF3.0 will be any faster in terms of adding files from the library to play?

currently i have 26,000 songs in my library, if i navigate to the folder location and press the PLAY button on the left side it taks 12mins to add the songs into a playlist .
In winamp if i try to add those same amount of songs, it takes 45seconds.

moelsaied88 · August 5th, 2009, 05:32 PM

k, well is the whole summer timeline still in affect or is that out the window as well? (sorry dont mean to be rude, im just very very anxious for 3.0, also is there still openings in the beta? i have 3 diffrent setups for the carpc ranging from full atx to a eeepc and another core 2 duo laptop. thanks in advance)

csf · August 5th, 2009, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by moelsaied88

wait, were stuck with destinator AGAIN??!!? wasn't pretty much the whole point of 3.0 to change the nav engine? and considering the time between updates and lack of info we ever really get, we probably wont see a new nav engine at all. but hey maybe our grandkids can enjoy the pleasure of a carpc.

haha...I kind of feel the same. Two biggest annoyances with 2.0 was Destinator and the phone echo (last I heard IVT was fixing this). I guess we just have to stay patient.

Xclusion · August 6th, 2009, 07:43 AM

So, actually CF3.0 will be more of a 'programmers' update then a visual update?
I keep reading that things will change, and CF will run on more machines, and be more compatible.. that's nice, but.. Somewhere I thought I read that FM listens to the voice of the customers to give them what they think is needed for a carPC..

I understand from you side that finding a Nav system is difficult, but; there are 3 (?) alternatives hanging around on the forums (Igo for instance..) couldn't that work??

I'm not trying to bash FM, I love the CF product. It's almost plug an play running within an hour (tried road-runner before buying CF..trying to install that got me thinking: do I really want a carpc?.. just saying..)

Basicly I'm getting the idea not much has changed (for the customer to see) in version 3.0.. except for a new skin (?)

Which bring me to another question, will all the CF2 plugins still work in 3.0?