Indian Motorcycles GPS - Map Format

[Vegastar]

Hi Everyone,

Hopefully I post this in the right section, I have done a few searches on the Forum without any luck.

I ride an Indian Chief Dark Horse 2022 which basically comes with a 4 inch round TFT display that integrates a GPS unit, maps, navigation and POI's or at least is supposed to because I live in Bahrain and Indian (owned by Polaris) does not release maps for Bahrain (or Saudi Arabia for that matter), their concept of the Middle East is limited to Israel and United Arab Emirates.

Long story short, the GPS interface looks an awful lot like a Google Maps interface (see picture)

You cannot view this attachment.

and the map update that is proposed by Indian/Polaris on their website for the Middle East (again, limited to Israel and UAE) is an 8+ GB .mapdata file, an extension for which I find very little information on the web.

I'd like to understand what this ".mapdata" is, how it's actually generated and what I could do to obtain one for the countries I'm actually interested in (Bahrain & Saudi Arabia). The fact that the GPS unit seems to run a version of Google Maps should definitely make that easier but my knowledge is failing me.

I can post the ".mapdata" file somewhere in case it's of use to anyone, it seems like a proprietary extension to Indian/Polaris however I have a hard time believing that the content of the package is anything proprietary.

Thanks for any help you can bring,

Vegastar

[waderatke]

Hi Everyone,

Hopefully I post this in the right section, I have done a few searches on the Forum without any luck.

I ride an Indian Chief Dark Horse 2022 which basically comes with a 4 inch round TFT display that integrates a GPS unit, maps, navigation and POI's or at least is supposed to because I live in Bahrain and Indian (owned by Polaris) does not release maps for Bahrain (or Saudi Arabia for that matter), their concept of the Middle East is limited to Israel and United Arab Emirates.

Long story short, the GPS interface looks an awful lot like a Google Maps interface (see picture)

You cannot view this attachment.

and the map update that is proposed by Indian/Polaris on their website for the Middle East (again, limited to Israel and UAE) is an 8+ GB .mapdata file, an extension for which I find very little information on the web.

I'd like to understand what this ".mapdata" is, how it's actually generated and what I could do to obtain one for the countries I'm actually interested in (Bahrain & Saudi Arabia). The fact that the GPS unit seems to run a version of Google Maps should definitely make that easier but my knowledge is failing me.

I can post the ".mapdata" file somewhere in case it's of use to anyone, it seems like a proprietary extension to Indian/Polaris however I have a hard time believing that the content of the package is anything proprietary.

Thanks for any help you can bring,

Vegastar

While I am unable to access forum areas directly, I can offer some insights on the.mapdata file and possible solutions:

Understanding the MapData File:

Likely Proprietary: The.mapdata file extension is likely exclusive to Indian/Polaris and may contain a proprietary format for map data.
Map Data Components: It is likely to include street network information, sites of interest (POIs), and other geographical data relevant to the supported regions (Israel and the UAE in this example).
Limited External Information: Because of the private nature of the.mapdata structure, it may be difficult to find specific information online.