Garmin Metroguide Canada v5 Maps

Metroguide Canada v5

UPDATE Nov21/08: Warning, my initial impressions were a bit negative so I wanted to put this right at the top for those who may not read far enough down the discussion. My decision is that this latest update to Metroguide Canada is a welcome upgrade. There are many updates in the road maps. There is the addition of building footprints that exist in no other product I've seen. And there are massive numbers of additional POIs. It's definitely a keeper.
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I finally received my Metroguide Canada v5 maps today. They were a long time coming. Just as an update, last year and very early this year I had confirmation from two departments inside Garmin that there would never be another update to Metroguide Canada.

Then, a few weeks ago, someone stumbled across a mail-in rebate coupon on Garmin's website for any existing Metroguide Canada v4 users purchasing an upgrade to v5 between October 1 and December 31. After a Google search there were two Canadian retaillers who appeared to be carrying the new version. I ordered mine online from Prairie Geomatics.

A few days later I got an email from them saying that Garmin had shipped them a bunch of v4 product instead of v5. It turns out that Garmin has assigned them the same product code (SKU) and was having difficulty distinguishing between v4 and v5 for shipping purposes. Prairie Geomatics said they would ship as soon as they got it and would not charge my credit card until they shipped. Good enough for me.

I got a notice in my email this morning that they had shipped. Turns out they shipped by Express Post because the doorbell rang less than half an hour after I read the email and it was Canada Post with my Metroguide Canada v5.

Great service Prairie Geomatics!!

So, that's the good news.

What's not so good is the product. Metroguide Canada has been my standard for map detail in Canada. It has wonderful coverage of the geographic features. The detail for water features (lakes, rivers, streams, ocean coastlines) is very nearly topographic quality. Same goes for coverage of green spaces (national, provincial and municipal parks, etc.). And street detail in small cities and towns has always been top notch. Even as old as it is, there are still towns where it has street grids and street names where the latest version of City Navigator North America has only begun to show the street grid but still doesn't have street names.

I was expecting great things from such a long delayed update. So I fumbled my way through the bubble pack, managing not to slice myself on the stoopid stuff and loaded the DVD into my PC. Installation was quick. Fired it up and........

Oh Phoooooey!!! Mapsource 6.14.1 is on the DVD and installed itself. For those who haven't updated their Mapsource recently and may not be aware, 6.14.1 is badly broken. It's really pretty .. much nicer display than earlier versions. But it can't download maps to Mobile PC and there are some free Garmin-compatible topographic maps that it refuses to use ... won't even load until you delete them. These are maps that have been working fine in many previous versions of Mapsource, so it's not like there was any problem with the maps.

Well, I'll have to re-install 6.13.7. But I can't wait to look at the new data in v5, so get over it for now.

More Phooooey!! It doesn't look like this is an update to the map data at all. I have a couple of places in my city (Regina, SK) that I check to see if the map data in a new map product has caught up with reality. The very first place I looked I see what looks like the old street layout. Switch to v4 .. Yup, it's the same as in v4. Switch to City Navigator 2009 .. looks like the right layout. Switch to City Navigator v8 .. looks right. Switch to City Navigator v6 .. looks right, too. So, even though at least the last four versions of City Navigator had it updated properly, Metroguide Canada v5 still shows the old layout.

What's with that??

But there's lots more to check out. Perhaps this is an anomoly and there are lots of updates elsewhere, and maybe updated POIs. I'll do some more digging today and report back. I just wanted to get my first impressions down. Let's hope my next report is more positive.

...ken...

It looks like there is a lot more data of some kind in v5. When I select the entire country in Mapsource I get 221 maps for a total of 723.5MB.

When I select the entire country for v4 I get 221 maps but only 324.6MB. That's a huge amount of additional data in v5

Some of it is obvious. Looking around Regina I see loads more POIs (I also see them positioned in the wrong places ). A quick review of a few streets nearby with lots of commercial development - much of it recent - shows a very large percentage of them are included in v5. Far more than v4. Even more than City Navigator 2009.

But when checking their locations, it's obvious that there are many many errors in their placement. At least the few in the same area in v4 are placed fairly close to their actual location.

I see something really interesting in v5 when viewing it in Mapsource that I have never seen in any other map product, not even City Navigator 2009. I see building footprints displayed. For example, in a couple of nearby locations where there are malls, the outline of the mall building is displayed. Same thing with a nearby Superstore and Walmart, as well as some strip malls and such. Over in an industrial area not far from me, the footprints of many of the buildings are also outlined.

This is a neat feature, at least in Mapsource. I'll have to download the maps to my handheld to see if that data gets transfered and displayed.

The disturbing thing about this is that the building footprints of all those I've looked at are in the right locations, visually, on the map. But the associated POI icons, for those that have them, are quite a bit off in many cases. Strange.

More to come later...

...ken...

Here are two files that show the difference in number of POIs in a nearby commercial area. The one on the left is from v4; the one on the right is from v5.

It's not just that there are more POIs. They are much more up to date. Unfortunately they are also not very well located.

There is a large cluster of POI icons in the v5 image. However, over half of the businesses represented by those icons are actually located on the east (right-hand) side of that divided roadway.

...ken...

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Here's a screenshot of an area of Regina with a lot of commercial development. The building outlines you see include a large mall, several strip malls, individual businesses, some apartment buildings and even a large retirement home.

I don't know what else these building outlines display in. That is, I don't know if they will show up when displayed in earlier versions of Mapsource (I'll find out when I reinstall 6.13.7) or in Mobile PC or on my handhelds. I'll test that next. I don't know if there is a technology change in these maps that might not allow the building outlines to display in older things. We'll see....

...ken...

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Very interesting, Ken. Thanks for sharing!

On the bottom of your Garmin Metroguide Canada v5 screenshot I see "DMTI". So it is pure DMTI data, no Navteq at all? The geocoding of the POIs aside, I'm looking forward to reading your feedback on how Garmin Metroguide Canada v5 compares to Navteq products in road map coverage in smaller Canadian towns; areas in which DMTI has been better in the past, but in which Navteq has made improvements in recent years.

I don't see any evidence of Navteq data. As you'll see below, that might not be such a good thing.

That's an easy one. Warning: I'm still exploring familiar things in and around Regina.

There are a two bedroom communities about 15 minutes east of the city on the TransCanada Highway. In MGC v4 there is very little street data. Not much of a street grid for one and none at all for the other. In City Navigator v6 there is even less data. MGC v4 and CNNA v6 have the same minimal street grid but MG v4 has the street names.

In City Navigator v8 (I skipped v7 so I can't talk about it) the street grid expanded to reflect the major structure of the two communities, which have pretty much grown together now. It still has no street names but it has the basic grid. CNNA2009 hasn't changed; same grid, no street names.

MGC v5 still has the same puny bit of street grid as v4. The only changes are some POIs added. It doesn't even add the grid expansions that City Navigator has added.

As I look around Regina and area at locations I use to measure progress in the mapping data, I am finding few improvements in the actual map data from MGC v4 to MGC v5. One of the areas I check was corrected in CNNA v6. That same location has changed in MGC v5 but it's wrong. The part of the road that has changed, in reality, is shown correctly in CNNA as far back as v6. But in MGC v5 it's still showing exactly the same as v4 (hasn't been that way for years) and there is the addition of a road that doesn't exist.

There are a huge number of additional POIs in Regina and area. It makes CNNA 2009 look sparse by comparison. But so many of the ones I've looked at are mislocated, in some cases by a few blocks or even a few kilometres. If they can get the building footprints located so well, how can they miss so badly on the individual POIs? I guess I'll have to check actual addresses to see if the problem is with bad geocoding of the POIs or if the address ranges are so badly off.

...ken...

This one's for Terry, and for everyone else it illustrates how many more POIs there are in Metroguide Canada v5 than in City Navigator North American 2009. There is just a huge increase over MGCv4 and even a significant increase over CNNA2009.

All those little blue squares (yeah, the tiny ones you see scattered around) in each of the images are POIs.

...ken...

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More on those building footprints in Metroguide Canada v5... They do NOT display in Mobile PC or Mobile XT.

I reinstalled Mapsource 6.13.7 so I could transfer stuff to Mobile PC again. The good news is that the footprints display in the older version of Mapsource. They also display in nroute.

But NOT in Mobile PC or Mobile XT. What's with that???

I compiled and transfered MGCv5 to my iQue 3600 to see how it looks there. It works fine.The building footprints display properly. This beasty is five years old.

Finally, I checked on my eTrex Legend HCx and the building footprints display just fine on them.

Now I need to find someone with a Nuvi to test this on. The Mobile PC and Mobile XT software are designed to, essentially, put a Nuvi on your laptop or your PDA. Both are the latest available versions of the software (which is to say, very new). If this software is closely related to the Nuvi, it's possible that this feature won't display on them, either.

...ken...

After looking around at other parts of Regina, and other parts of western Canada that I'm familiar with, I can see massive additions to Metroguide Canada v5.

My initial impressions were a bit negative so I want to clarify my current feelings about it, two days after. My decision is that this latest update to Metroguide Canada is a welcome upgrade. There are many updates in the road maps. There is the addition of building footprints that exist in no other product I've ever seen. And there are massive numbers of additional POIs. It's definitely a keeper.

Just to temper the expectations of those fellow Canucks who think they'll rush right out and buy a copy, this product is no different than any other set of digital maps from any other map vendor. That is to say that it's out of date as soon as it hits the store shelves. The POI data is generally at least two years old. The road data will be that old or older. This is true of all digital map products from all vendors because of the time it takes to assemble the data into the vendors' proprietary formats, then test and package it for sale. So, it's a worthy upgrade to MGC v4, but it's not magic.

...ken...

In (virtually) motoring around western Canada in Metroguide Canada v5 to some of my favorite haunts I can see a lot of additions to the geographic features - the water features and green spaces.

For instance, in a lot of the newer upscale subdivisions in Regina the developers have centered the development around a manmade water feature (they usually refer to it as a "lake", but it's rarely much more than a pond). All of those "lakes" have appeared in MGCv5.

Another example: There is a lake in Alberta on the Red Deer river, west of Innisfail, called Glennifer Lake. It has been there for many years. It finally appears in MGC v5. .... But -- part of the frustration of this product -- they added the lake, but they don't show the road across the dam, which has been there as long as the lake ... well, longer actually. So if you are navigating near the lake and want to get from the north side to the south side, you will be routed way east of where you really need to go to get across.

The upside is that not only is the entire lake still missing from City Navigator North America 2009, CNNA2009 doesn't even show most of the Red Deer river, which has been there even longer!

The more I look around in MGCv5 the more additions I see to the geographic features (rivers, lakes, streams, parks, railroad tracks, etc.). In this single feature alone, Metroguide Canada is so far ahead of the Navteq data used in other maps (Garmin City Navigator, iNav iGuidance, Microsoft Streets&Trips) that there is simply no basis for comparison.

...ken...

From a review of the Nuvi 7x5 series on another site:

"The 7x5 series has transparent 3-D building view (where available)"

And: "Also unique to the 7x5 series is support for detailed 3-D landmark models, where available."

http://www.gpsmagazine.com/2008/11/g...ew.php?page=10

Scroll to the bottom of the page. Perhaps this is where the building footprints in v5 are used?

Thanks Ken. That might be what it is. You can't browse the map in 3D mode in either Mobile PC or Mobile XT so I guess I'll have to go for a drive with them to see. None of the building footprints I see are nearby.

...ken...

The white squares (building footprints) don't show up on my Nuvi 200c but there are now a lot more usable POIs, many even in the right place!!

Terry

I did a quick check of POIs by transferring some of MGCv5 to Mobile PC on my main computer. The POIs are only visible if I disable CNNA NT 2009.

However, if I choose from POIs, even with MGCv5 disabled, I get a whole lot more to choose from.Look at this for food. First is with the Food choices on a computer where v5 has not been added to GMPC. Second is where v5 has been added but is disabled.

Terry

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Interesting. I may have to check these maps out. Are they still not locked to a single GPS? (Not that I use them on more than one GPS, its more the principle of the thing than anything else...)

If the free topo maps you mentioned early on are mine, you should know that the newest versions (2.0 and later) do work with Mapsource 6.14. You can make 1.5 work too, its just a pain.

With the buildings, do you happen to know what entity type they are rendered with? I have some building footprints on my maps, and I'm curious if they are rendered with the same entity. (see N51 05.891 W114 08.618 for an example on my maps).