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Joined: 03/05/2003 14:45:49 Posts: 3999 Location: leyland lancs ENGLAND
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:24 pm Post subject:
this is where the budget comes in you can have a fast processor in a sub 200 quid pna there have to be comprimies somewhere and the biggest will be the hardware for what it is it does a very good job and calculates as fast as tt5 on my xda2i and xda exec _________________ currently using aponia truck navigation on windows phone. Good bye IOS don't let the door hit you on the way out .
Oh the joys of being a courier.
device Lumia 950 xl
Honestly guys, has any of you used TomTom for a while? I have had one (TomTom GO 500) for few months and yes its routing was "consistent" but you should see the routes it came up with. Definitely not the shortest or fastest from my home to work and on few other occasions when it picked an absolutely bizarre route for the journey when I knew there were much faster or shorter routes. I then bought the i3 and (probably down to chance) as its route was more "realistic" from my home to work, TomTom ended up on eBay and I've never looked back since. At least the so called "inconsistency" of the i3 gives you the impression of the i3 trying to calculate something and getting it slightly wrong at times but spot on at others rather than the rigid algorithms used by TomTom that would "consistently" give you the wrong route every single time if it decides to do so. Try one and compare the routings and see what I mean.
Had the same problem with fastest and shortest routes also, but without knowing them routes anywway i would have just thought the i3 was just brilliant. The real joy in this product is when it gets you where you want to go and it does take you down what seems a dirt track and you can't believe your going anywhere near where you want to know.Then bingo before you know it your at your destination.
For me the fatstest or shortest routes on a route i already know make no difference, it's the ones i don't know that matter.
It should still be competent at it's core function - which is navigation.
It is competent....it gets you there!
True - it will get you there.
However, the route selection has two options (as you know) shortest and fastest. Using fastest, has actually shown scenarios, where the i3 ITSELF calculates a shortest route that also happens to be the fastest. Yet when asked to provide the fastest route, using the same criteria, under simulation (ie GPS off), it provides a slower route (using it's own measure) than the one it calculated for the shortest route.
Now whatever way you spin and cut that, that ain't competent.
Motty wrote:
Lester_Burnham wrote:
That's a non-sequitur. It's processor may not be as quick or as powerful as the more expensive units - that's a distinct possibility. But that doesn't mean that the routing algorithms should be a world apart. They may not have as many configurable / tweakable inputs, but the core principles should be very similar.
And if the i3's processor is slower, it should just mean it takes a little longer to provide routes and recalculate, than more upmarket units.
but the routing algorithms WILL have to be quite different if it uses a budget processor and you want it to calculate a long route in less than 15 minutes! Remember it also has to recalculate the route when you take a different turn to what it suggests. This recalculation has to be quick or you will be 5 turns further along the route, possibly somewhere different to where it wants to take you so has to recalculate the route again. The unit is full of compromises. Calculation time is more important than getting the absolute fastest route. More people would complain if it was slow to calculate a route.
The i3's processor certainly doesn't appear to be THAT down on speed, especially given that it will be naturally faster than previous generations of sat navs.
And what makes you think that a quicker route must automatically be significantly more demanding to either compute or provide an algorithm for? The only salient different between the two, being the metrics used to compute the route.
It should still be competent at it's core function - which is navigation.
It is competent....it gets you there!
True - it will get you there.
However, the route selection has two options (as you know) shortest and fastest. Using fastest, has actually shown scenarios, where the i3 ITSELF calculates a shortest route that also happens to be the fastest. Yet when asked to provide the fastest route, using the same criteria, under simulation (ie GPS off), it provides a slower route (using it's own measure) than the one it calculated for the shortest route.
Now whatever way you spin and cut that, that ain't competent.
Motty wrote:
Lester_Burnham wrote:
That's a non-sequitur. It's processor may not be as quick or as powerful as the more expensive units - that's a distinct possibility. But that doesn't mean that the routing algorithms should be a world apart. They may not have as many configurable / tweakable inputs, but the core principles should be very similar.
And if the i3's processor is slower, it should just mean it takes a little longer to provide routes and recalculate, than more upmarket units.
but the routing algorithms WILL have to be quite different if it uses a budget processor and you want it to calculate a long route in less than 15 minutes! Remember it also has to recalculate the route when you take a different turn to what it suggests. This recalculation has to be quick or you will be 5 turns further along the route, possibly somewhere different to where it wants to take you so has to recalculate the route again. The unit is full of compromises. Calculation time is more important than getting the absolute fastest route. More people would complain if it was slow to calculate a route.
The i3's processor certainly doesn't appear to be THAT down on speed, especially given that it will be naturally faster than previous generations of sat navs.
And what makes you think that a quicker route must automatically be significantly more demanding to either compute or provide an algorithm for? The only salient different between the two, being the metrics used to compute the route.
Lester, I suggest that you sell your i3 on eBay. Nothing is clearly going to be good enough for you. The i3 is the lowest of the low when it comes to navigation systems. The processing speed is slow compared to other systems. However, you only paid £100 for it.
The i3 does it's job admirably in that it gets you from A to B. Think of it like a car. A £2K Mondeo will get you from A to B perfectly well as would at £100K Porsche. It is just that the Porsche will be faster and have more features. You pay your money and you take your choice. You decided to pay not a lot, but you got a fully working product that gets you to your destination.
I will get some information for everyone on how a typical navigation algorithm works. It will not be the Garmin one, but will be one used in many Navigation Systems that we (as a company) support. This should give you an insight into how complicated it is. The ones we (as a company) have written, have been developed over the last 10 years. It is not an exact science and many improvements are made.
Lester, I suggest that you sell your i3 on eBay. Nothing is clearly going to be good enough for you.
Absolute rubbish.
Is it wrong to simply expect a sat nav unit to do it's CORE function competently?
I'm not complaining about a lack of features or options. Complaining about a budget unit not doing everything a more expensive unit, I can understand being perceived as pointless or unreasonable, but complaining about not being consistent, or competent at it's very basic, very core function, is not unreasonable - no matter how much you may get defensive and try to suggest so.
Milkfloat wrote:
The i3 is the lowest of the low when it comes to navigation systems. The processing speed is slow compared to other systems.
Is it slow compared to a generation back - say a Streetpilot III?
Milkfloat wrote:
However, you only paid £100 for it.
More assumptive rubbish - I paid £199 for mine, last October.
Milkfloat wrote:
The i3 does it's job admirably in that it gets you from A to B.
It doesn't do it "admirably".
It may do it, but members of my family already start to moan if I use it to navigate to somewhere - simply because they think it will take us some wierd obscure route - despite my protestations that it will always get us there.
Milkfloat wrote:
Think of it like a car. A £2K Mondeo will get you from A to B perfectly well as would at £100K Porsche. It is just that the Porsche will be faster and have more features. You pay your money and you take your choice. You decided to pay not a lot, but you got a fully working product that gets you to your destination.
I got a product that will get me to my destination.
However, it would appear, not everybody agrees about the fully working thing.
If by selecting fastest for route, the i3 itself can't actually get the fastest route - especially compared with the shortest route which it calculates as being faster than the supposedly fastest route it should have calculated, then something is perhaps not so rosy.
But given how people like you can reply and be overly defensive, perhaps people should not dare to comment or discuss this, because perhaps it doesn't portray the i3 positively - given it's budget origins, or not.
Milkfloat wrote:
I will get some information for everyone on how a typical navigation algorithm works. It will not be the Garmin one, but will be one used in many Navigation Systems that we (as a company) support. This should give you an insight into how complicated it is. The ones we (as a company) have written, have been developed over the last 10 years. It is not an exact science and many improvements are made.
Fine - but as I said, I'm not overly simplifying the task of navigation algorithms. I'm merely pointing out that shortest uses one main metric as criteria - distance, and fastest another - time. Outside of that, there's not one, nor the other that should be notably more demanding as the other - they are just different measures, to achieve a similar overall result.
Joined: Feb 28, 2006 Posts: 11 Location: Cheltenham, UK
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:46 pm Post subject:
Lester_Burnham wrote:
And what makes you think that a quicker route must automatically be significantly more demanding to either compute or provide an algorithm for? The only salient different between the two, being the metrics used to compute the route.
Calculating the shortest route is very easy. Draw a line (not literally) between the start and end, and then minimise the distance you stray away from it. Not many routes will need to be evaluated.
Calculating the fastest route adds another dimension, speed limits of roads. But calculating a route that is quicker than 98% of other routes is obviously going be a lot easier than calculating a route that is quicker than 100% of other routes (ie the very quickest route).
Getting back to Noddy's original question. Are there many main roads between the start and destination? I don't know the area and don't know if the route you are talking about is through the countryside with not many routes to choose from, or through a built up area with lots of routes to choose. The reason I ask is that I wondered if the long route is actually maybe the 2nd or 3rd quickest route, even if it does take 5mins longer than the actual quickest?
Can't understand why anyone would complain about using the sat nav to go somewhere if they don't know where there going in the first place.
Also most people have an idea of where they are going why don't they just use the sat nav for last bit of journey as opposed to using it from the start?
[/quote]
Can't understand why anyone would complain about using the sat nav to go somewhere if they don't know where there going in the first place.
If you are referring to my comments about my family's perception of the i3, it's because they feel it will take them some wierd journey like you'd expect if giving Rowley Birkin a map and asking him to give you directions, that will take longer than it should.
BigR wrote:
Also most people have an idea of where they are going why don't they just use the sat nav for last bit of journey as opposed to using it from the start?
Why, though?
If you don't know the route, why not use it for the journey - sure you may know - or have a good idea about - the main journey - say the motorways used, but have no local knowledge at the other end. Why then start having to fiddle with your sat nav unit and get it to start navigating then?
Having it on from the start, gives you a good idea about the length of journey, given the ETA. It would just be nice to be always able to rely on it to give some consistent route, and not worry it's going to come up with some really obscure route - which numerous people have commented to it doing.
But dare breath such a thing and you get rabid assertions about never being satisfied with the thing, and selling it on ebay. Why do people have to be so defensive about their purchase choices, and in doing so, have to try and quash reasonable discussions about the i3 - even if they aren't necessarily presenting the i3 in the most positive light.
Joined: Aug 31, 2005 Posts: 15142 Location: Bradford, West Yorkshire
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 3:16 pm Post subject:
i still stand by my statement thatthe i3 DOES give consistent routing. it's just that the parameters we give it will be varied - i.e. are we in exactly the same spot as before? do we have exactly the same signal strength from exactly the same satellites?
as for shortest route sometimes being the fastest well that depends on how fast you drive. in my experience the fastest route will get you to either a motorway or a main road if no motorways are near the route. on a motorway you can go a lot faster than on a smaller road depending on traffic. however, i believe that, again from experience, the i3 underststands 'fastest' to mean "as much travelling on motorways as possible followed by as much on a-roads as possible"
until someone can show us the algorithm that garmin use then we're not going to fully understand it anyway rendering this discussion pretty useless.
Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Posts: 79 Location: Sheffield, UK
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:55 pm Post subject:
Noddy
To you have the start road and destination road. I could compare the results with a C320, to see if the problem is unit specific.
I have not encountered this problem on any routes so far. Fastest for me always results in faster time, sometimes at the cost of longer distance, sometimes as much as 50% longer.
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 7:46 pm Post subject:
Lester_Burnham wrote:
It would just be nice to be always able to rely on it to give some consistent route, and not worry it's going to come up with some really obscure route
Can you give us some specific examples of these obscure routes please.
And don't foret that this is a fully featured sat nav system which sells for £100. If you are unhappy with it then sell it and buy yourself a £500 unit which will probably have just as many quirks. _________________ Gone fishing!
Joined: Feb 28, 2006 Posts: 11 Location: Cheltenham, UK
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:04 pm Post subject:
Skippy wrote:
Can you give us some specific examples of these obscure routes please.
I can give an example that happened to me while I was testing out the unit. If you look at this map:
Link to Multimap map
I was travelling along the B4632 from the left into Winchcombe when it directed me off at Cockbury Court, through the very narrow country lane through Langley, and then back onto the B4632 at Winchcombe. The B4632 is national speed limit to where you reach the hospital and then 30mph. Obviously here it is theoretically marginally quicker to travel down the back lanes. But I can totally understand Lester's point because it takes you off what feels like a major A road to go down a lane wide enough for one car, only to join back on the big road again.
Personally I don't mind this from a cheap sat nav because I tend to go these routes anyway to see the scenery in areas I don't know.
Has anyone tried comparing the shortest/fastest routes with those given by the RAC's 'advanced' route planner, this also gives the option of shortest/fastest?
On a test from mine to my parents house approx 6 miles away, the i3 gave identical fastest/shortest routes to those calculated bythe RAC's site, this test was in simulated mode, incidentally both routes calculated by both the i3 & RAC were in very diverse from each other.
Not exactly a conclusive test, and possibly meaningless, I was just playing..
Scoobs _________________ Tom Tom Go 510 (new model)
Joined: Nov 24, 2003 Posts: 1441 Location: Swansea
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:33 pm Post subject:
The algorithm used is always a compromise between speed of calculation and absolute accuracy (in fact one program I used to use gave you the option of selecting exhaustive calculation or a much faster approximate one). I normally use TomTom5 myself, but have just bought my wife an i3 at Halfords and am incredibly impressed with it. The routes chosen are invariably as good as the TomTom ones - in fact some mapping errors around Swansea on TT5 are not there on the i3. It is simple to use, calculates pretty quickly (and recalculates quickly if you go off route) and although it lacks some of the bells and whistles of more expensive products, it has an impressive list of useful POIs.
Regarding an earlier post on this thread, I very much doubt if it learns your average speed on different kinds of road. No other software, to my knowledge, does this. But it's a hypothesis which can easily be tested. Repeat the calculation of a given route over a period of some weeks, and see if the journey time or route vary over that time.
I think the i3 is very good at what it claims to do, and at the recent prices it is hard to beat
Robin _________________ TomTom One v3 Europe, Navcore 7.903, Western Europe 835.2420
TomTom Go 720 Europe, Navcore 8.351, Western Europe 855.2884
Satmap Active 10
Plus a lot of other PDA GPS kit, seldom used
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