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Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 voice: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right"
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 does not pronounce street names, even though some users wish for such functionality. The current 2008 version of Streets & Trips tells users to turn right or left in a number of feet or meters, but the street name is not yet a part of the voice direction prompt. Will this feature make it into Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009?
I use Streets and Trips almost every day for GPS navigation, as do thousands of other users across USA and Canada. A (very) strange thing happened about three weeks ago. I heard my Streets & Trips 2008 say the following words: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". I couldn't believe my ears , so I had to press the space bar on my keyboard to repeat the voice instruction. My Streets and Trips 2008 still insisted: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". However, after I made my turn onto the street, I never heard a street name pronounced ever again. Yet, I've wanted to return one day to the same exact location to try to reproduce the voice direction prompt which miraculously included a street name.
This morning, three weeks after the above "incident", I'm again at the very same location. I'm very glad to announce that yes, the "issue" is reproducible. I still hear: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". Note that it is not the exact "reading" of the text that appears in the Driving Guidance pane.
If anyone around the Toronto area wishes to experiment with this, the exact location is the parking lot of Sears, Rexdale Blvd & Islington Ave, as shown on the above screenshot. My exact latitude and longitude coordinates are 43.71270 North and 79.55868 West, but I suspect it may not be too critical at which part of the parking lot you are, because today I'm not exactly at the same spot where I was three weeks ago.
I'm not sure what causes the street name to be a part of the voice prompt, and I can only speculate that the feature has already been built into Streets & Trips, but perhaps because the programmers were not yet happy with the performance of this new feature, they decided not to enable it for the 2008 version. It's only a speculation, and most speculations are not correct. Yet, I suspect there is a good chance street names may be a part of voice direction prompts in Streets & Trips 2009. But that's still many months from now. It's still only February, and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009 will likely appear in stores in the fall of 2008.
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 does not pronounce street names, even though some users wish for such functionality. The current 2008 version of Streets & Trips tells users to turn right or left in a number of feet or meters, but the street name is not yet a part of the voice direction prompt. Will this feature make it into Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009?
I use Streets and Trips almost every day for GPS navigation, as do thousands of other users across USA and Canada. A (very) strange thing happened about three weeks ago. I heard my Streets & Trips 2008 say the following words: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". I couldn't believe my ears , so I had to press the space bar on my keyboard to repeat the voice instruction. My Streets and Trips 2008 still insisted: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". However, after I made my turn onto the street, I never heard a street name pronounced ever again. Yet, I've wanted to return one day to the same exact location to try to reproduce the voice direction prompt which miraculously included a street name.
This morning, three weeks after the above "incident", I'm again at the very same location. I'm very glad to announce that yes, the "issue" is reproducible. I still hear: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". Note that it is not the exact "reading" of the text that appears in the Driving Guidance pane.
If anyone around the Toronto area wishes to experiment with this, the exact location is the parking lot of Sears, Rexdale Blvd & Islington Ave, as shown on the above screenshot. My exact latitude and longitude coordinates are 43.71270 North and 79.55868 West, but I suspect it may not be too critical at which part of the parking lot you are, because today I'm not exactly at the same spot where I was three weeks ago.
I'm not sure what causes the street name to be a part of the voice prompt, and I can only speculate that the feature has already been built into Streets & Trips, but perhaps because the programmers were not yet happy with the performance of this new feature, they decided not to enable it for the 2008 version. It's only a speculation, and most speculations are not correct. Yet, I suspect there is a good chance street names may be a part of voice direction prompts in Streets & Trips 2009. But that's still many months from now. It's still only February, and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009 will likely appear in stores in the fall of 2008.
I wonder if one of the developers hails from Toronto and decided to leave in an Easter Egg when the feature got postponed.
Easter Egg, LOL, perhaps . I just want to add one more observation: After I posted the above posting (on my mobile PC), I still drove around the parking lot to test it a bit more. It worked as described no matter where I was on the large parking lot. As long as my Streets & Trips 2008 wanted me to get onto Rexdale Blvd, the program would pronounce the street name. However, when I was on the parking lot closer to Islington Avenue, the program would route me to Islington Ave without saying "Islington Avenue".
Strange things are happening in Toronto, indeed. If someone from around here would be so kind and go to that area to test it on another computer, it would be greatly appreciated.
Strange things are happening in Toronto, indeed. If someone from around here would be so kind and go to that area to test it on another computer, it would be greatly appreciated.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is an hidden value in the registry that can be modified to do this. Just like it is with turnbeep. I took a look, but it's hard to say which it could be if possible.
To make sure it wasn't an issue specific to my computer, I'm now again "on scene" testing it with another Streets & Trips installation. Before it was S&T 08 running on Windows Vista, and this time around it is S&T 08 running on a Windows XP computer. It still reads the street name just fine , as long as I'm driving around this mysterious parking lot .
I'm sure people will be wondering why they see you driving around the same place 50 times a day
DJEvergreen, you gave me an idea . Instead of driving on the parking lot, we can simulate it. That way anyone can hear Streets & Trips 2008 pronouncing a street name even at home on their desktop computer. Franson GPS Gate is a very popular, multipurpose utility software. Among other things, it can very easily simulate GPS signal. We can tell it to simulate driving across the parking lot, as shown on the above screenshot.
Set "GPS Simulator" as your input of Franson GPS Gate.
Enter coordinates between which you wish to "drive". Make sure you don't omit the minus sign (-) in front of longitude (or you end up in the wrong part of the world).
Longitude: -79.55942 Latitude: 43.7128
Longitude: -79.55555 Latitude: 43.71261
After Franson GPS Gate has been configured, you may start Streets & Trips. You may turn on the above options in GPS Task pane. Set some destination in Route Planner (for example Toronto, Ontario, Canada). And then press F3-key to let Streets & Trips calculate a route from your simulated location to your destination.
Each time you press F3-key you should hear Streets & Trips telling you to turn "... on Rexdale Boulevard right". Enjoy!