Hi,
I have a little question I�m sure someone will be able to answer; the question is related to Nokia Maps. When I am outside of the main cities here in Australia, there seems to be no detail when zooming in to see the roads. The only point when you see something is when zoomed right out so you can view the state or country. Is this normal for Nokia Maps and why people install other programs such as Tom Tom and the likes?
Thanks.
Maybe you've forgotten what a lot of outsiders don't grasp until they visit, that Australia is BIG. If they put everything into the maps, you'd need a 16GB flash card. I don't know for a fact, but I suspect most of the GPS solutions work better in more crowded places like Europe.
Have you tried the latest mobile version of Google Maps, which is now GPS-aware? It doesn't give turn-by-turn navigation, but it might be interesting to see if you get more detail from their satellite photos.
neilhoskins wrote:Maybe you've forgotten what a lot of outsiders don't grasp until they visit, that Australia is BIG. If they put everything into the maps, you'd need a 16GB flash card. I don't know for a fact, but I suspect most of the GPS solutions work better in more crowded places like Europe.Have you tried the latest mobile version of Google Maps, which is now GPS-aware? It doesn't give turn-by-turn navigation, but it might be interesting to see if you get more detail from their satellite photos.
For Australia, no, you'd only need a megabyte or two for everything not on the east coast. The rest of the country is all red dirt, a few dusty unpaved roads, and more red dirt. 😊 Maybe Perth and Adelaide combined would use a couple of kilobytes out of that one or two megabytes, the rest would be filled with directions to odd but serenely shaped red rocks made of the aforementioned red dirt.
I kid, I kid, seriously!
The reason that the roads are missing is mainly because nobody drove down them to map them out - or they couldn't find accurate enough local survey maps to ~ahem~ borrow the raw data from. Probably a few other reasons too - Australia is one place that would be seriously expensive to map out completely for too little a return of investment.
dchky wrote:(snip) Australia is one place that would be seriously expensive to map out completely for too little a return of investment.
That's exactly it. Now maybe if they were to let us win at cricket occasionally...
Well I don't find it is a problem. I drove from Sydney to Canberra via Batemans Bay, and found the Nokia navigation was trying to take me up those pine forest truck access dirt roads owned by the forestry commission! I got about a dozen "turn right here".. recalculating as I was heading towards batemans and had my destination as Canberra. Those roads are not really roads a normal car can drive on (some are almost 4WD only!)
Have you downloaded all the maps for Australia?
edit: p.s. Route66 was trying to divert me to up near Sutherland(!) to get to Canberra, it has NO roads apart from major highways out of the cities, so I don't give that bit of software any recommendations. I have planned the same route just to see the differences in TomTom, and TomTom has similar detail to the Nokia maps, and I have done the same for Garmin, and it also has similar detail. Garmin, Nokia and TomTom all planned the route on a road that is fairly poor and dirt (but not a forest road this time, just one not recommended to try still) for some distance to avoid going all the way south to Batemans to get from Nowra to Canberra.
Regards