Why doesn't Garmin give us the ability to Navigate a Track?

Pertaining to BaseCamp - Montana

It seems that many of us here prefer to create a Track, or predefined, specific Route and want to use our GPS unit to help us follow that specific route by the best method the GPS unit can. In the past, for me at least, using my Garmin 60csx, I would create a Route in Mapsource, then use WinGDB3 to create a Track (or multiple tracks) filtered to 500 points. Then upload both to my 60csx and use the Route if it is in agreement with my Track.

Now that I recently obtained a Montana with Voice Prompted Navigation while Routing, it would sure be nice to use that feature to the best of it's abilities. But....as many of us has found out, Routing can be a trial and error affair, and with a 50 'Shaping Point' or '50 Via Point' limit (whichever it is!) navigating a Route is tedious, or at least the learning curve is steep. (At least for figuring out how to Navigate a predefined Route and having the Montana Navigate you ALWAYS on that Route.

So Garmin......Why not just Navigate a Track? Meaning give us Voice Prompts to 'turn left/right in xx yards on xx road' when there is a mapped intersection on a Routable Mapset that the GPS unit is using? Tracks are already assigned a 'direction of travel' it seems, and if we miss a point, the GPS unit can just pick back up Navigation when we hit the next point. Now we have a 10,000 Shaping Point limit instead of 50.

Maybe I am missing something here in the difficulty in achieving this, as I am certainly not a programmer, but it seems this would be easier to accomplish than creating a route, and re-creating a route between Points as the GPS unit is in motion.

I know that as far as I am concerned, this would be a huge plus for the way I use my GPS unit.

Don't know Montana but all the hand helds will navagate Tracks. One reason Garmin may not have put it in Montana is that there is very little interest in navagating tracks.

I promote Dual Sport rides and no one ever navagates my Tracks, they just follow them. One main reason is navagating gives you useless instructions. When a trail makes a 90 degree turn you get a prompt yet there is not intersection. A few people who do navagate do not show navagation instructions, they just display two data items ETA & Mi to Destination just so they know how far to end.

Displaying a track, and providing turn-by-turn navigation of a track, are two different things.

The Montana, along with the other handhelds, does the former.

My preferred method -- not my invention by any means -- is to create a Route in Basecamp, but to then convert the Route to a Track. I load both on the Montana. When navigating the Route, I also display the Track, and can see when the two happen to deviate. This provides the Navigation but without losing the ability to see and follow the Track.

On long trips, my Montana likes to make some very strange Routing suggestions, usually when near the end of a Route. At these times, being able to see the preloaded Track is very beneficial.

Is there really very little interest in voice/display prompted Navigation of Tracks?
Many of the Tracks I create are first created as Routes and then converted to Tracks. In other words, the Track is technically Routable with the map set. I just want to eliminate the re-routing woes.

Steve

I believe what you are doing is much better (safer) than having just Routes, but very few people do it. Especially for TAT or CDR etc.

In my little world of Dual Sport out west on BLM and USFS roads, we just follow Tracks. If they are Tracks from Active Logs, this is very easy. Even when I hand draw Tracks for a place I have never been, it seldom is a problem. But I am talking very little highway sections, it is mostly off highway (requireing lots of dabs) which routable maps don't have much of.

Your Montana does Navigate Tracks. Just select the track, press View Map, press GO. You're now navigating a track. You will NOT get turn-by-turn voice prompts. But, you can place Waypoints along the Track and transfer the track and the waypoints to the Montana. The Waypoints will be announced as you approach and leave if you set a proximity alert.

To do what you wish to do would require a lot of very costly program memory. That is why you don't see that capability in ANY current day GPS and why there are limits to how much data is placed in active memory (where the program code runs).

Use the Track to Route method described above. It is very handy and gives you the best of both Tracks and Routes.

Oh, and if you have no-mapped-road segments in your track, you will want to use the mixed-travel routing method in BaseCamp to adjust your route so it has both Along-road and Direct Activity routing.

What would be really simple is for Garmin to allow a route created in BC to just be navigated the way it's created the way the old chartplotters do. No recalculating, no tiny via point limit. If they could do that with processors from 3 generations ago, then WHY can't they do it with a much more modern and faster processor?

Wow, the Montana has been able to do that for almost a year. Where you been?

No, it still can't do more then 50 via points. But you knew that.

Sorry missed the last part since the first part through me - 'cause I know you knew that...

I must tell you though, I have never run up against the 50 viapoint limit in creating a route - maybe if you were running a delivery route in Manhattan or Sidney.

Well, this thread wasn't specific to the Montana just to refresh your memory. A lot of Garmin's units will recalculate a route and there's nothing you can do to prevent it.

LOL, I've got dozens of routes built over the years that have more then 50, and they're all right here in AR. Had a buddy that sent me a route last week that has 87 in a 167 mile route. He has an ancient ass 376 that can use that route flawlessly. Even my old 478 would have no trouble since it had a 300 via point limit. My Zumo 550 will do 200 via points. But hey, my latest and greatest Montana, not so much.

Put that route into BaseCamp and I bet you can get at least half of those viapoints out.

Oh I know I can, but that's not the point, I shouldn't have to go in and basically RECREATE a damn route that someone else has already created. You think slapping band-aids all over shit is acceptable? I sure don't

And that still doesn't answer the simple question why my old ass 478 could handle 300 via points but my newest gen Montana can only handle a pathetic 50.

So, you were expecting the Montana to do everything that the GPSMAP chartplotters did? At the same cost? They probably could have done that but you might not have paid the price. Unfortunately, for you and others, the feedback Garmin got was that the majority of Montana customers didn't give a hoot about unlimited via point routes. They wanted Geocaching and Photo Waypoints and un-recalculated imported routes and...

I don't know what Garmin's Mfg Costs are with regards to a device like the Montana but if you look at the retail price of the Montana two years ago and compare it to the new Monterra (same price) it's pretty obvious that Garmin's component cost have come way down taking the Android hardware approach for a highend GPS that will most likely sell fewer numbers than the Montana. Then again, maybe they will sell like hotcakes at a sunday breakfast...we'll see.

As for feature/function, I'll put my vote in for >50 but <unlimited via points for routes on the Monterra.

P.S, I voted for them on the Montana too...

Dang, not like I'm asking it to make monkeys fly out of my butt. You really think having the Montana do something a much older processor could do would really increase the cost?

I discovered the 50 point limit with the first route I made, and it was less than 100 miles in length. I probably need to alter my route building procedures. What do you guys think about making a route, convert it to a track, and then convert the track back to a route filtered to 50 points? I haven't tried that yet but it is on my to do list.
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No. Not at all. And, if the Montana only did what the old chartplotters did there would be such an insufficient market that Garmin wouldn't have made it.

I think you missed the point....nobody but a handful of bikers give a rats ass about having a 50 via point limit. Soooo, the memory space that "could" have been used for that code was allocated to something else that the market wanted more.

Doesn't work well at all when I tried it.

If nothing but a handful of bikers gave a rats ass, then why did all those MARINE units do a lot more then 50 points?

This is getting really funny...

Forget the old chartplotters. Those days of $6000 GPS devices for consumers are over - that's the equivalent price in today dollars.

By the way "most" of the chartplotter users don't want all of the other "stuff" that we happen to desire. Soooo, todays chartplotters don't do what the Montana does. They are optimized for Marine use. Today you can navigate a Track with waypoints/POI's included and get alerts. A 50 point Routing takes up more memory for an equivalent distance than a Track with 10,000 points does in navigation.

Don't shoot the messenger (he shoots back...from a very loooong way away. )