city navigator vs open source maps

[+hidenseek581]

I want to use my Garmin 62s for both caching and hiking. Please bear with me, I am new at this. I have just downloaded the Open Source Maps for my area onto the SD card, and find them to be very crowded. I also do not like that I am forced to choose how I want to navigate to the cache. Sometimes I don't want to navigate, but just want to see where the cache is located!

 

Other than cost and ownership of the map, what are the major differences between the OSM maps and the city navigator from Garmin?

 

Also, if I purchase the 24k topo , do I need city nav.? Will the 24k topo have trails in the area? I do have an old, unused 100k DVD from my husband's old Dakota 20, we just never loaded the maps.

 

Thanks in advance.

[seldom_sn]

I want to use my Garmin 62s for both caching and hiking. Please bear with me, I am new at this. I have just downloaded the Open Source Maps for my area onto the SD card, and find them to be very crowded. I also do not like that I am forced to choose how I want to navigate to the cache. Sometimes I don't want to navigate, but just want to see where the cache is located!

 

Other than cost and ownership of the map, what are the major differences between the OSM maps and the city navigator from Garmin?

 

Also, if I purchase the 24k topo , do I need city nav.? Will the 24k topo have trails in the area? I do have an old, unused 100k DVD from my husband's old Dakota 20, we just never loaded the maps.

 

Thanks in advance.

NO trails on City Nav. Some trails on 24k Topo. Probably more trails on OpenStreetMap. 24k Topo is said to be routable. Don't know what you mean by crowded. Try reducing detail level and turning de-clutter on. Also when traveling to a cache. Try setting your navigation to "Off Road". That will take you in a straight line.

[+coachstahly]

24 K is routable. It will beep before you need to turn. There are some transparent trail overlays on gpsfiledepot.com that might/will fill in areas that have been submitted and then posted. I don't see too many trails on my 24K topo map that were already on there. Some of the major ones, but not as many as I thought.

[seldom_sn]

24 K is routable. It will beep before you need to turn. There are some transparent trail overlays on gpsfiledepot.com that might/will fill in areas that have been submitted and then posted. I don't see too many trails on my 24K topo map that were already on there. Some of the major ones, but not as many as I thought.

Good to know coach. OpenStreetMaps are also routable. Don't know if they'll beep on the trail though, but they'll tell you how far you have to walk if you set a destination. Depending on the OP's location (assuming the OP's in the US), My Trails and Northwest Trails Northwest Trails are probably the best two choices. Being Transparent Overlay maps these don't look to good in BaseCamp but they are designed to overlay on top of a topo that is loaded separately.

[team tisri]

24 K is routable. It will beep before you need to turn. There are some transparent trail overlays on gpsfiledepot.com that might/will fill in areas that have been submitted and then posted. I don't see too many trails on my 24K topo map that were already on there. Some of the major ones, but not as many as I thought.

Good to know coach. OpenStreetMaps are also routable. Don't know if they'll beep on the trail though, but they'll tell you how far you have to walk if you set a destination. Depending on the OP's location (assuming the OP's in the US), My Trails and Northwest Trails Northwest Trails are probably the best two choices. Being Transparent Overlay maps these don't look to good in BaseCamp but they are designed to overlay on top of a topo that is loaded separately.

 

OSM maps are routable but a lot of the time the routing comes up with, shall we say, interesting ways to get from A to B.

 

On my 60CSx the Garmin maps were good for giving me a good route, limited because they didn't know about a lot of the trails and shortcuts I use. So a little local knowledge was still needed to get the best out of them. Because they lacked trail information they sometimes threw other unexpected quirks at me, like the time I wanted to get to a cache on the north bank of the river but because the GPS couldn't navigate me there it got me as close as it could and then drew a straight line from that point to the cache. Unfortunately the closest point it could find was on the south of the river....

 

The OSM maps know all sorts of trails although I've found some of them are marked as being suitable for cycling when they are anything but - five foot high narrow barriers in front of a path barely a foot wide with overhanging brambles and nettles on both sides. The routing can be a bit hit-and-miss - sometimes it comes up with a great route and sometimes it comes up with an eight-mile loop to get to somewhere a mile away.

 

A generic issue with having lots of paths and cut-throughs is that routing algorithms tend to consider them to be equal to roads, so sometimes a proposed route will do things like take off a corner by taking a path. If you have to turn across the traffic to get onto the path, then turn across the traffic again to get back on the road, all to save 100 yards or so, it rapidly becomes a false economy. Sometimes a little local knowledge is needed to figure when the route is a benefit (e.g. if there are turning restrictions where you might assume you'd want to go) or a liability as described above.

 

I haven't tried using OSM maps for driving so can't say how they cope.

 

That said the OSM maps are free, so if you try them and don't like them it's not as if you've wasted any money. They are also in wiki form so if you find something that's wrong you can correct it yourself rather than telling a supplier who generally doesn't care.

[seldom_sn]

The OSM maps know all sorts of trails although I've found some of them are marked as being suitable for cycling when they are anything but - five foot high narrow barriers in front of a path barely a foot wide with overhanging brambles and nettles on both sides. The routing can be a bit hit-and-miss - sometimes it comes up with a great route and sometimes it comes up with an eight-mile loop to get to somewhere a mile away.

 

A generic issue with having lots of paths and cut-throughs is that routing algorithms tend to consider them to be equal to roads, so sometimes a proposed route will do things like take off a corner by taking a path.

 

The problem with OSM data in the US is that it's a mix of Census Bureau uploads edited by volunteers. And it's trying to be all encompassing, so there are WAY too many categories to put things in, and people are updating the tagging system all the time. The advantage is that it's got routable trails, and anybody can upload to it. Just hope they get the trails right.