(I'm still crossing my fingers and hoping all this is just a bad dream and I'll wake up to a post telling me what I did wrong and I'll find the things I've been missing in Destinator)
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Originally Posted by dotinga00
Why? What is your destination? An island?  |
lol, no, Sallisaw, Ok to Salina, KS. A rather tame trip actually. It's just over 4 hours long, but only touches 3 highways. It does go from Oklahoma to Kansas though, so one state line to cross. Quite boring and not a NAV stress test (or so I thought). I make this trip pretty often and I know it well. I was hoping to watch the NAV on this well known trip to start getting to know the interface but that didn't turn out to be possible yet.
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Originally Posted by dotinga00
I never worked with PC navigation in my car. What nav did you work with?
If i compare destinator with, f.e. TomTom, i'd say that i'm rather impressed. If i travel with a TomTom from my country to another, i have to manually reload a complete map. My VDO Dayton needs a CD change. Not convenient when the cdrom unit is in the back of my car, which can be reached by completly removing all my luggage...
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No, not a TomTom or any other self-contained unit thing. PC software is what I've been using since I was able. Microsoft Streets & Trips, Delorme Street Atlas, and a few that were open source freebies. None of which presented the challenges I've met so far with Destinator. Althogh I'll admit that I've never traveled with a GPS across countries before. I can see how clicking a change map button is better than changing CDs... but the software I've used just shows the whole world without needing you to bother with loading a thing. It loads what it needs when it needs it without you needing to know it even happened.
Like I said, maybe in the world they come from this is how things are done, but splitting the maps into pieces and having to manually load maps back and forth just to plan a trip is quite akin to having to code my own ones and zeros on a computer these days. Those tasks shouldn't be in the user's control, much less a requirement of use.
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Originally Posted by dotinga00
I agree that it would be much easier that the planner mode wouldn't be necessary. Maybe a future update......
Marcel
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That and never having to touch map files. If the software loads and unloads maps according to where you are at, then so be it, but the user should never be bothered with such things. I should be able to open the program, set a destination anywhere in the dataset that I purchased, and go. Without so much as a thought about how the data is stored or accessed.
This is how every program I've used so far works. They present a nation map, if not a world map. I click a FROM point and a TO point and tada, it's routed. If changes need to be made to the automatic route, then each program starts to differ on that point, but the basic operation is simple and instant. All the online systems echo this methodology. Mapquest, google maps, yahoo maps, etc...
One other big thing that I've noticed is the lack of any STATE options. In trying to route between Kansas and Oklahoma, there are quite a few cities with the same names. I only see one city listed though, and I have no way to be sure which city that is. Cities such as Cleveland and Salina exist in both Kansas and Oklahoma, yet when I try to set a destination to a city name, I only get one Salina listed and I don't know which one it is going to take me to. Maybe there is an island in the pacific named Salina and that's where my route tonight was trying to take me. Without a state listed by the city name I have no way to know.
If I knew the zip code then that might be more clear, but if I knew the zip code then chances are I don't need a GPS to find it. I've already got a pretty intimate knowledge of the city if I remember it's zip code. That's not the case with everyone I'm sure, but if zip code is the only reliable way to navigate, then there should be a zip code lookup feature built in as well.
I'm sorry if some of this is just the uneducated American in me, but it is where I live so what can I do? If I write a program to be sold in the UK, I'd be expected to flip my dates around (among other things) or be laughed at and rejected. If Destinator is to be used in the US, then some basic US ways of navigating should be included. (like states along with every city... not to beat this point too hard... but city, state is a linked pair and every place a city went a state is sure to go... err... that was mary and her lamb, sorry...)
I sometimes forget though, that this isn't a US based company, is it? I guess a lot of this may just stem from how things are done over there vs here.
IMHO the way an in-car NAV system should work is this: Upon initial startup it should be tracking with the current location and all auxilary info showing. Speed, direction, altitude, etc... (we have this now) If one wants to plan a trip, then I don't see a problem with switching to a planning mode, but this mode should center around two questions. Start and End. I should be able to type in a city, state for each and the software figures out what maps are needed when and doesn't bother me with any more questions unless the city isn't found or if there are two cities with the same name found and a clarification is needed. Maybe start and end can be clicked on a map, but that's far less important than being able to type in a city, state. If I can find a city, state on the map to click on it then I'm one step further from needing the GPS aren't I? As soon as the route is calculated, then I should be presented with two key pieces of information. How far and how long. Maybe show the turns by default and let me turn them off, but that's secondary to showing me how long of a trip I just planned. And having this info as part of a scrolling list of other things isn't good, it needs it's own screen real estate and it needs to stay there and be updated as I travel. All the rest of the details are secondary to that core functionality and may add value to the process, but don't mean anything if a route can't even be created in the first place reliably.
Not having a city, state search even available anywhere in Destinator that I could find is almost laughable.
I don't see how they could possible catch up in any reasonable amount of time. If I had to bet, I'd bet that even years from now Destinator will be basically the same. Sure, a lot of features will be added as time goes by, but changing such a core thought proces like how to aproach creating a route and having the user mess with maps to load seems like a fairly complex and burdonsome process. I'd love to be wrong and see them revamp it all next spring, but that seems like it's WAY off in dream land.
Some little things that might make Destinator at least make some sense...
1. City, STATE lookup (this is a core feature in ANY U.S. nav program)
2. Anywhere a city is listed, list it's state along side it
3. Maybe allow a user to STAY in the major US roads map. If that's all the major roads, then why not just stay on that map then? Nearly 90 percent of my NAV is between cities, not within cities, so the major road map would probably fit the bill 90 percent of the time for me. I'd rather a situation where I plan a trip in two phases, one highway between cities, and one for street level stuff once I arrive in the city, then the current strange way. Provided it was easy to create, save, and switch between these two plans.
This is in fact how I used to have to navigate with the pocket version of Microsoft Streets because they had a hard limit on how big a map could be. Even a 2 hour trip between cities was too big because of all the meta data that Microsoft includes (every fire hydrant and birdhouse it seemed). They had a street level mode that included all that, and then a highway level mode that only included the highway routing.
I would export a map of my destination city at street level as one file, and then export a highway level map with my route between cities as another file.
Microsoft Streets was smart like Destinator too, with loading maps only when needed, but their way didn't make me ever have to load a map. Their software searched all available data files for things I typed in to route to and then loaded the ones it needed as I passed through that part of the route, or scrolled around to look at the route.
Microsoft Streets had the benefit/curse of being able to (sometimes needing to) route with a PC before leaving the house. I'm glad to be rid of that part, but I'd take that crutch any day compared to how Destinator is acting today.
I haven't talked much about Delorme's Street Atlas in my examples because it functions nearly identically. It adds a couple VERY smart features like VIA points that allow you to send your route through a point but not stop and no limits on how much data can be exported in one map (to a handheld like an iPaq or Axim) The basic principles for routing were the same though. Text boxes to type in a city, state start and end point and tada, route.
I almost wonder if the Destinator people have ever used programs like what I'm describing... or any of the online map websites...?
Linear Mode
