Kudos to JKLinc! And a bit of feedback.

[rudirautenbach]

Well, I am happy and proud to post this thread. This has been my 7th holiday in the Phils, and the first time that I actually tested the map (contributors version) in realtime driving.

Lets start with me and driving in the Phils
My previous driving experience in Pinas was limited to provincial driving, and I have always avoided driving in the city as the highways are just so confusing (I am South African and we drive on the left-hand side of the road) and I would have never found my way around. This time, I rented a car, plugged in the Nuvi, and I NEVER got lost. Absolutely fantastic! This map knew where all the major spots in Manila/Makati were, and whatever I plugged in as a destination, it found the correct spot right away. U-turn slots were 98% accurate, and directions were generally good, although it took me a while to get used to the voice guidance, as it differs slightly from the mapset that we use in South Africa.

Now for some positive critisim:
1. The Nuvi only has two settings for choosing the preferred routing, which is "shorter" or "faster". I used the "faster" setting mostly, and it has the tendency to try and get one back onto EDSA no matter what. There are most definitely other ways to get around the greater Manila using other major roads/streets except EDSA, and maybe the programmers can try to work on a solution whereby it would choose routes other than just EDSA.
2. The directions for preparing to take an offramp often would just say "turn right" instead of "prepare to keep left". I would have ended up in some wall in the middle of EDSA more often than not had I listened...
3. The ETA for destinations in the Phils need some tuning, I am not sure if it can be done. The average speed in Manila is around 30 km/h so ETA's are inaccurate. Can one set the Nuvi's average speed calculation somewhere?

I am getting more "Kano's" like me to join the contributors group, and hope that we can all contribute more to develop this product further, it has some really great potential.

Cheers, Rudi
________
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[pokz]

Well, I am happy and proud to post this thread. This has been my 7th holiday in the Phils, and the first time that I actually tested the map (contributors version) in realtime driving.

Lets start with me and driving in the Phils
My previous driving experience in Pinas was limited to provincial driving, and I have always avoided driving in the city as the highways are just so confusing (I am South African and we drive on the left-hand side of the road) and I would have never found my way around. This time, I rented a car, plugged in the Nuvi, and I NEVER got lost. Absolutely fantastic! This map knew where all the major spots in Manila/Makati were, and whatever I plugged in as a destination, it found the correct spot right away. U-turn slots were 98% accurate, and directions were generally good, although it took me a while to get used to the voice guidance, as it differs slightly from the mapset that we use in South Africa.

Thanks Rudi for the feedback. These are the things that make all of us contributors feel proud of what we do. To answer some of your positive criticisms, which we certainly welcome most...

1. The Nuvi only has two settings for choosing the preferred routing, which is "shorter" or "faster". I used the "faster" setting mostly, and it has the tendency to try and get one back onto EDSA no matter what. There are most definitely other ways to get around the greater Manila using other major roads/streets except EDSA, and maybe the programmers can try to work on a solution whereby it would choose routes other than just EDSA.

There is a detour function in the Nuvi and it will route you to streets other than EDSA.

2. The directions for preparing to take an offramp often would just say "turn right" instead of "prepare to keep left". I would have ended up in some wall in the middle of EDSA more often than not had I listened...

We do acknowledge that the prompts are not yet perfect, and Jan is working hard to correct them. We expect to see some improvements in the next version.

3. The ETA for destinations in the Phils need some tuning, I am not sure if it can be done. The average speed in Manila is around 30 km/h so ETA's are inaccurate. Can one set the Nuvi's average speed calculation somewhere?

I think this has nothing to do with the map but with how Garmin programmed the Nuvi to calculate the ETA. And I don't think it can be modified (I may be wrong though).

I am getting more "Kano's" like me to join the contributors group, and hope that we can all contribute more to develop this product further, it has some really great potential.

Thank you for the encouragement. We do hope to see them here in the near future.

[AsiaDriver]

Hi,

nice post, regarding ETA on Garmin, it`s not the nuvis mistake, its from the map. Garmin is calculating ETA from the given speeds what are stored in the map data. So if we want to have more accurate timing, we should adjust the speedindex of the streets to lower ones.

Other navi`s are really calculating the ETA from real driving time/distrance, what is a lot nicer because they are adjusting themselfe during driving.

However, I think it can be fixed, but then we loose the possibility of dislaying the speed limits (if garmin ever will support this, like others already have).

Greetings

[Suntzu]

Hi,

nice post, regarding ETA on Garmin, it`s not the nuvis mistake, its from the map. Garmin is calculating ETA from the given speeds what are stored in the map data. So if we want to have more accurate timing, we should adjust the speedindex of the streets to lower ones.

Couldn't agree more.

[pokz]

Hi,

nice post, regarding ETA on Garmin, it`s not the nuvis mistake, its from the map. Garmin is calculating ETA from the given speeds what are stored in the map data. So if we want to have more accurate timing, we should adjust the speedindex of the streets to lower ones.

Other navi`s are really calculating the ETA from real driving time/distrance, what is a lot nicer because they are adjusting themselfe during driving.

However, I think it can be fixed, but then we loose the possibility of dislaying the speed limits (if garmin ever will support this, like others already have).

Greetings

Thank you for the info. Told you I may be wrong here. I was under the impression that Garmin was doing it like others do, speed/distance. That figures why the ETA on Nuvi is inaccurate most of the time. But I believe even if we have to lower the speed limit, we will still not reach a point that it will be as accurate as others given that we are still basing the ETA on a fixed number and it does not reflect the actual driving conditions. And to get the best from what we have, we should be reviewing every street category, especially in Manila, and adjust the speed limit based on experience. This will make us divide EDSA into different portions with different speed limits. Given the complexity of the task at hand, I think it's not worth it. Well, living in the PI should already give us a sense that any ETA is b.s.....hahaha

[AsiaDriver]

yes, I agree with you, and another problem occurs, if we change the speed variables of the road classes, we also confuse the autorouting, since the navi of course uses this information to calculate fastest route. It's a delemma, the nüvi works so nice in ETA calclulation in US or Europe, but here I'm afraid it's useless.

[John Ryan]

yes, I agree with you, and another problem occurs, if we change the speed variables of the road classes, we also confuse the autorouting, since the navi of course uses this information to calculate fastest route. It's a delemma, the nüvi works so nice in ETA calclulation in US or Europe, but here I'm afraid it's useless.

couldn't agree more. what i do is to add 20 mins for any ETA under 20kms during daylight. so if i had to give an ETA to someone it's fairly accurate. really depends on how long your trip is. but i have managed to 'adjust' and become fairly accurate on my ETAs. say on a long 200km trip, i'd just have to adjust my ETA + 60mins. no real formula. but it helps to be familiar with usual driving times, amount of traffic, time of day/trip, etc.