I'm a newbie with this, so bear with me if this has been discussed somewhere else (I did look).
This is referring to the concept of making things routable. Let's start with the general question: How does my Garmin Nuvi software differentiate between auto, bike, and pedestrian? As I've gotten a chance to use it a bit, fooling around, I notice that a lot of perfectly good walking routes (through parks, sidewalks that connect cul du sacs, stairways in hilly areas of Spokane and Portland) aren't known. Not that I expected that level of detail of course. One description I saw said that "pedestrian" mode allows travel down the "wrong" way of a one-way street. I'm not sure what would be the software's idea of a bike route.
In testing, I notice that the uploaded free maps don't have routable trails, but that Garmin sells maps with routable trails. In other words, the software can handle it someway, but we (the community at large) either don't know how, or it is prohibitively difficult to code in your maps.
If the software is simply taking the easy way out, and allowing walkers to go the wrong way on a one way as it's complete solution, I think I have a way to make trails routable to walkers but not to vehicles - make them one-way, outwards from a center point or trail junction. The trail would never be routable by car (you could never gain access, against the "direction of traffic"), but would allow pedestrians.
It's just a thought. It would seem to be a lot of work (I've seen the NW trails maps), but doable just the same.
John
The problem is that the routable version of cgpsmapper $2,800 which is just insane.
From what I know about routing is there are a lot of "settings" for different types of roads and routes.
Quote from: -Oz- on January 24, 2009, 05:47:14 PM
The problem is that the routable version of cgpsmapper $2,800 which is just insane.
From what I know about routing is there are a lot of "settings" for different types of roads and routes.
Well I guess that makes sense then. Anyone want to pony up $3K so I can fool around a bit? Anyone?
Just kidding. But can we take the discussion in a more general direction - do we have a good idea of how Garmin manages its routing? I was fooling around last night, checking the preferred path between two points about two blocks north of a freeway, separated by three miles, and the Garmin sent a car down the freeway, and sent a walker in a straight line. So far, so easy to understand. Then I went to bike mode, and didn't get much different than walking mode. But I forgot to change out of bike mode, and I was trying some other stuff and getting crazy answers - and it was obvious that bike mode was ignoring freeways.
You hint that each road has different settings, but it's clear (after testing) that they don't have bikeable Interstate highways (like I-90 between Coeur d'Alene and Cataldo in Idaho) coded as bikeable. So I'm left thinking that Pedestrian Mode means "constant 3 mph speed on any route, (possibly avoiding freeways)" and Bike Mode means "constant 12 mph (or 10) speed, avoiding freeways".
Considering that would succeed for 99% of the situation, it's not a bad solution. But from my experience, you would never want to take the Bike or Pedestrian route that the unit suggests. It may as well not be selectable.
John
In most (if not all) areas there are signs at the entrance ramps to Interstate Highways indicating is it is illegal to bike on them, so Garmin is correct in not using them in bike mode.
Yeah the price really is nuts... and people wonder why software piracy is so rampant. When something is so specialized the makers try to squeeze every dime out of their limited user base. Makes people turn to warez and cracks, with all of the viruses and problems they have.