Thread: Venus Series City Navigator China NT CHS 2011.11

Requirements: Any Garmin device and software supporting NT maps and Chinese language

The official Garmin China maps have artificial offsets (coordinate deviations) added for national security reasons. Using these maps on normal GPS devices or software will not display your actual location on the map. Instead, you will be a few hundred meters away from your actual location. Only GPS devices and software approved to be sold in the China market have additional built-in firmware or program to use these maps without offset problems. Even so, the saved waypoints, routes, tracks are still deviated. Neither can topo maps be used with them.

Venus is a series of maps derived from the official Garmin China maps but with offsets corrected. Nothing but the coordinates are changed, so all road, POI info, as well as routing, searching apabilities remain intact. Saved waypoints, routes, tracks will have no offset problems. Compatible with topo maps too. These maps can be used on any regular Garmin GPS devices and software as other maps. However, some maps are in Chinese language only and require Chinese support on your device to display and search in Chinese.

Disclaimers:
1. No guarantee or warranty is given. Use at your own risk.
2. The correction is not perfect yet. A few places may have a gap between roads.

For this 2011.11 map:
a. Map is locked.
b. Map ID is 2111.
c. All road and POI names are in simplified Chinese.

Download Site:
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
Once opened, search the word WINWAR. The download links are right above the word.


Mirror:
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

Originally Posted by catymag

thankyou



the official map is here
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

It is not a joke. He is the author of Venus.

And to make it more clear. Venus Series have some troubles that are tough to overcome. E.g., if the trip is too long, or with some isolated roads, or crosses some map block boarders (if you know both Mars and Venus, you could understand this), the resultant drive plan would NOT be the most reasonable. In some cases it might lead you to drive several dozens or more Kms.

Please make sure that you have previewed your trip plan before you take a actual drive with Venus Series. General Speaking , trip within a certain city or shorter than 30 km, it is expected to be okay.

Good luck. Chinese readers could find this post in sosaw.com

Thanks, How Can I get the Chinese support firmware?

compare this to the official version, the map size is different almost by half.
official map - 1.29GB
venus map - 753MB

why so much difference?

Originally Posted by ander7724

compare this to the official version, the map size is different almost by half.
official map - 1.29GB
venus map - 753MB

why so much difference?

Two subfiles QSIINDEX.QSI (for Quick Spelling Input) and ISM.IDX (maybe for Intersection lookup) are removed from the official map, hence the smaller size. These two subfiles only work on official retail products sold in China. So it makes no sense to keep them in the Venus map which will be installed on non-Garmin-China devices by most people.

If you really need these two subfiles, you can use gmaptool to extract them from the official map then join them to the Venus map.

Originally Posted by ander7724

Thanks for the explanation, so is there's any benefit/advantage if i'm using a garmin GPS unit if those 2 files was included?
Anyway did the '006B082300.bin' confirm corrected the offset for the official NT CHINA 2011.11 map?

As said before, only the firmware in Garmin China products can recognize these two subfiles. So even if your device is an official, say Garmin US, product you won't be able to take advantage of the features provided by these two subfiles, unless you can find a way to flash your device to Chinese firmware.

It is a myth or misunderstanding that the file '006B082300.bin' can correct the shift/offset in an official Garmin China map. In reality, the map itself is never modified, let alone corrected. The coordinates of the map are not corrected neither when they are displayed on screen or recorded in SD card.

What contained in the bin file is actually a piece of code to add shift/offset to the coordinates received from the GPS chipset before they are sent to the navigation software. The same algorithm used to shift the China map is used to shift the GPS coordinates. When the navigation software displays the shifted GPS location on the shifted map, it looks as if there was no shift to the user because the amount of shift is the same. An illusion after all. However, the recorded waypoints, routes and tracks will all have shifted coordinates which cannot be exchanged with Google Earth and other regular GPS products/software.

Similar to the two subfiles above, only the firmware/software in some Garmin China and Garmin Taiwan products can recognize this bin file and activate the shift adding (not the mythical correcting) feature. That's why most non-Garmin-China/Taiwan devices have to use shift corrected maps like Venus maps.

Originally Posted by betahash

ander7724:

the most remarkable advantage from Venus is the resultant performance. With official release the QSI (Quick Search Index) and ISM (precious & better cross-boarder/blocks plan) are expected, but GS QSI is only available in limited portion of Garmin Series hardware.

I think, without confirm with syzygy, ISM is no way to work with Venus, nor could it be Venus-ed.

mentioned bin file from hardware firmware, must exist with official map, and must be removed with Venus map.

Originally Posted by syzygy

As said before, only the firmware in Garmin China products can recognize these two subfiles. So even if your device is an official, say Garmin US, product you won't be able to take advantage of the features provided by these two subfiles, unless you can find a way to flash your device to Chinese firmware.

It is a myth or misunderstanding that the file '006B082300.bin' can correct the shift/offset in an official Garmin China map. In reality, the map itself is never modified, let alone corrected. The coordinates of the map are not corrected neither when they are displayed on screen or recorded in SD card.

What contained in the bin file is actually a piece of code to add shift/offset to the coordinates received from the GPS chipset before they are sent to the navigation software. The same algorithm used to shift the China map is used to shift the GPS coordinates. When the navigation software displays the shifted GPS location on the shifted map, it looks as if there was no shift to the user because the amount of shift is the same. An illusion after all. However, the recorded waypoints, routes and tracks will all have shifted coordinates which cannot be exchanged with Google Earth and other regular GPS products/software.

Similar to the two subfiles above, only the firmware/software in some Garmin China and Garmin Taiwan products can recognize this bin file and activate the shift adding (not the mythical correcting) feature. That's why most non-Garmin-China/Taiwan devices have to use shift corrected maps like Venus maps.

Thanks you guys for the explanations... Now i understand.