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Oct 18, 2003, 12:08 PM
Post #9 of 11
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Re: [N2Futur] Thanks, everyone. This is my take from reading posts:
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N2Futur writes:
....according to this website: http://www.gpsnow.com/gmahbm.htm , the Garmin GPS comes with a standard Americas map, which includes US, Canada, Mexico and South America.
This is somewhat akin to announcing that the Denver, CO telephone book has phone listings for Mexico because you've found the calling guide contains the international country code for Mexico, and area codes for a dozen or so popular destination cities.
The current standard or base map for mapping GPSRs including the offerings by Garmin (a manufacturer with over a dozen offerings, rather than a single or specific unit), Magellan, and Lowrance offer map details which are discernible on scales on the order of 1 cm = 5 km. This yields a map with a level of detail which looks sort of like this (note that the referenced image is actually generated by Garmin PC software rather than one of their GPSRs).
The referenced website makes no attempt to conceal this. It states in part:
The standard map coverage includes:
Oceans, rivers, and lakes (greater than 30 sq. miles)
Principal cities and many smaller cities and towns
Major interstates and principal highways
Political boundaries (state and international borders)
The "high resolution" maps used in automotive navigation systems, as well as handheld and portable GPSRs which have the capability of accepting detail map uploads or cartridges, yield details discernible on scale of 1 cm = 80 m or even better. Unfortunately, Navigation Technologies (NAVTECH) a privately-held company which provides the bulk of high-resolution digital map information used by consumer-channel GPSR-equipped devices, nor to my knowledge any of their competitors have offered high-resolution data for Mexico. An earlier message in the thread which announced findings on Google using the search terms "GPS MAPS MEXICO" was nothing more than web pages which contained any, some, or all of the listed terms anywhere on the pages, rather than actual high-resolution maps of Mexico.
If the operating electronics of the Chrysler Pacifica's navigation system are similar to the current generation (Chrysler) Mopar Alpine Electronics units (the UIs are different), comparisons to handheld and portable GPSRs are flawed. Although the Mopar units have less receiver channels (8 v the common 12 for current generation handhelds) they use both a gyroscope and a link to the vehicle's speed sensor to provide dead reckoning capabilities when satellite signals are lost, in contrast to handheld and portable units which use a more primitive last direction and calculated speed extrapolation for a few seconds after signals are lost. The net result would be a more accurate and reliable navigation device (because they're no longer depending simply on satellite data its not correct to call them GPSRs). A downside would be that being a dedicated-purpose system I significantly doubt that you'll be able to "slide" scanned images of maps beneath the location plots like you can with selected handheld GPSRs using a third-party program like GPSy or Fugawi.
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