Thread: Garmin MapSource US Roads & Recreation ver 2.01

I wonder if the trick of combining POIs would work. Was told in an AU map thread by Bushwalker8 about pooling the POIs of different maps, Topo and CN or CN and CN. This is confirmed by syzygy telling of returning Chinese tourists using two maps in a Garmin bought on holiday, one in Chinese enabled the other English disabled. Because the Western unit has no Chinese keyboard, they input in EN but are then able to negotiate to POIs on the Chinese map. Maybe might work if this map is loaded but disabled, with a modern topo as the 'visible' enabled map?

Originally Posted by Bushwalker8

Thanks Neil, you're right just checked & I mistakenly obtained the 2627 FID from a 2013.10 Sensis img thinking it was the Navteq and they were the same so the intention had been to differentiate them.

Carty & yourself may be well be right with dual CN's eventually clashing, I know it's not recommended but have never had a problem with the Topo/CN combo but that said it's not something I would leave long term anyway if nothing else purely for the sake of multiple layers slowing the unit down.

The primary interest is not navigation it is - for short periods - the ability to "stack" the maps to pool all the POI's together for far deeper and more effective searches which I find very useful at times. The POI's have always been quite different between Topo & CN, but now also between the differing CN's. To me the benefits of this far outweigh the risk of a minor blip at the time, maybe not everyones cup of tea but I'm sure there are others who would also find this a useful technique. It's one of those little things in life you don't really appreciate until you try it.

Originally Posted by syzygy

Yes, loading multiple maps of the same area will have their POIs combined, even when some maps are unchecked in the Tools setting. This trick is used by some people in China.

What happened is: they bought or brought back a foreign (outside of China) Garmin GPS device which can display maps in Simplified Chinese, but has no way to input Chinese for searching. Without searching capability, the device is close to useless. To enable searching, they actually install two CN China maps, one in Simplified Chinese and one in English. The latter is unchecked all the time. Now, to search a POI they simply enter its English name in PinYin and the POI found will be displayed on the Simplified Chinese map, ready for navigation.

There seems to be no problems reported so far with two such CN China maps installed.

The 800lb. gorilla in the room is the map segment limit. Roads and Recreation has over 3000 map segments. New larger segments would need to be created from the existing segments to resolve that problem. A POI file, properly set up, would completely avoid that problem and allow the data to be used on any Garmin GPS.

yep, very aware of that and in fact i warned about that in a note when i added the 3 separate images at the same time i renewed the MS version link in the initial post. There's in fact 3,249 map segments [tiles] in the US lower 48 image which isn't a problem for late model outdoor units using only this map but as you say extracting the PIOs or even combining several smaller tiles into one, would overcome the problem of this: when you add a topo on top of those 3249 tiles plus the basemap it'd be real easy to bust the 4,000 limit. And there's the rub of course, this isn't an NT map it's in OF so maybe someone could do that .....

Crazy thing is that a tile limit doesn't apply to Automotive units, the very unit type where a 4000 limit or even 2015 limit is not usually a problem. Why Garmin chose to make a tile limit for outdoor devices and not for car devices is freaking' beyond me! So with most topos only now being available in image form, taking account of the tiles already from basemap and topo the MS version would have to be used to make a small regional 'shortcut' map keeping under the unit's total tile limit to potentially take advantage of the 'richer' combined POIs. So if it's 'all too hard' to do it any other way [extract POIs or combine map tiles], we need a guinea pig in the states to try it out ... you got an outdoor device Strephon??? [hint hint, nudge nudge].

What might now seem to be a really stupid way to have made this map simply wasn't true at the time in 1999. Devices and media cards had only tiny memory sizes so fitting the entire US lower 48 Roads & Rec. anywhere was a pipe dream back then. 128MB was considered huge and you weren't going to bust the 2025 tiles limit easily even with that 'huge' space all filled up anyway, assuming you could afford the king's ransom to pay for the proprietary Garmin media card.

I did a Google search for "extract poi from garmin map image", and found a link where a user on GPSPassion recommended using [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] on a map, saving that map in Polish format, then using [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] on the output to extract the POIs from the map. When or if I have the time I might try it, but I have 150+ ships to add to my Historic Vessels of the United States and Canada POI file on POI Factory, courtesy of the Internet Archive having copies of the now-defunct fdyddye.com. That takes precedence.

Source:

Code:

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Exactly, because this isn't an NT map it's in OF [Old, or Original Format aka non-NT] as i pointed out so it's possible to extract the POIs:

but as you say extracting the PIOs or even combining several smaller tiles into one, would overcome the problem of this: when you add a topo on top of those 3249 tiles plus the basemap it'd be real easy to bust the 4,000 limit. And there's the rub of course, this isn't an NT map it's in OF so maybe someone could do that .....

Admittedly could have worded it less confusingly.
'maybe someone could do that .....' = 'Sounds like a job for someone Stateside to do. Hint, hint'. You'll have many more fans when you finish it Mate!

Originally Posted by Strephon Alkhalikoi

The 800lb. gorilla in the room is the map segment limit. Roads and Recreation has over 3000 map segments. New larger segments would need to be created from the existing segments to resolve that problem.

Here the map combined into 185 tiles by GPSMapedit, ready to install on pc.
us_rr.7z - 7-Zip archive, unpacked size 430.437.662 bytes
download:
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Credits to a nice friend of mine who made it

Thanks Caty, downloading it now. I think you and your 'nice friend' have just breathed new life into this old map, even if for just the POIs while unchecked with a modern topo enabled.

Here's the fully compiled image from the '185 tile' MS Version:
This post requires you to click the "LIKE this post" button and hit F5 to read this content.

@caty: Downloading now. My ancient Windows Mobile smartphone with Garmin Mobile XT thanks your friend, as it has a tiny portion of Roads and Recreation as the main map.

@Neil: Why a topo map? Wouldn't 2015.30 work just as well?

Doesn't have to be a topo of course just would be my preference, it could be a CN you combine it with or both. Provided only one's enabled naturally. I reckon a CN would be better for you using in in GMXT for sure.