Flashing Street Name in Ortopo11 on Oregon 650T

[terrymorse]

I just downloaded the Oregon topo map Ortopo11 to my Garmin Oregon 650T. In the area around my home, at one scale one (and only one) of the street names flashes on and off. Zoom in further, and the name stops flashing. Zoom out further, and the name disappears.

At a guess, I'd say it is a problem with the scale at which the street name is set to begin displaying being right on the cusp of the map display scale. If this were true, though, I'd expect the names for all similar-sized streets to flash at that scale, unless the display threshold for street names is set individually for each street.

Can anyone suggest alternative explanations? Is there any way for the user to correct this, or is it something the map developer would have to fix?

Thank you,
Terry

[Boyd]

I've seen something like this with other maps on other garmin devices. I think it's related to the GPS firmware and has nothing to do with how the map was made. The device decides which street names to display on the screen and where to place them. No idea what the exact criteria are, but it's related to road density (in a city with lots of closely spaced streets, there's less room to display the name for example). If the map is set to track-up mode, then the map rotates as you move and this is generally when I've seen the flashing name effect.

Mapmakers can define at what zoom level an object will appear, however the GPS firmware has a mind of its own and can over-ride this setting. But a mapmaker can't define at what scale a road NAME is shown. It's all or nothing, either the road is shown or it isn't. The GPS will have a setting for the zoom level at which street names are shown. In my experience, this may or may not really work. With City Navigator, the setting appears to be ignored on my Montana 600.

FWIW, you can actually set a zoom level separately for every object on the map (each litte segment of a road for example). I have been doing this myself recently for special purposes, however I'd be surprised if anyone else here does that. It's much easier to define zoom levels globally. Many people don't define them at all and just use the default. Again, this wouldn't affect name display, it affects the whole object.

Bottom line is that I don't think the mapmaker can do anything about this. Do you have any other Garmin devices? Try installing the same map on a different model GPS and I think you'll find that it behaves differently.