[mkgmap-dev] Long Distance Routing

Wed Jul 15 21:34:16 BST 2009

Hi Paul,

> I don't know when this happened as I haven't tried long distance routing
> for a while but I noticed today that this is vastly improved. I (amongst
> others) have commented previously about the sometimes strange routes
> chosen when trying to route long distances and Mark suggested at the
> time that we may simply be asking too much of the devices. These routes
> would work but would be far from optimal i.e from Manchester to Cornwall
> would go through the middle of Manchester, on to the M6, off the M6 ,
> through Birmingham, on to the M5, off the M5 through Bristol, onto the
> M5 again and then finally on to the destination.
> 
> Today, however, when trying a similar route the given route was M60, M6,
> M5 with no deviations which to me is exactly the way I would travel.
> Additionally my 605 can now calculate routes to places further away than
> it previously could.
> 
> As this is such an improvement and I missed it at the time I thought I'd
> drop a quick line to say thanks to whoever found the magic key.

Thanks for the report, it's great that the routing is working well over
long distances.

I can't think of any obvious changes apart from the addition of the
--remove-short-arcs stuff which would improve the routing if the maps
contain short arcs.

Oh yes, and there was also a fix to avoid problems with long arcs!

So perhaps, that's what has made the difference.

If only we could get a grip on the .MDR file format, it would make
search work as well as the routing.

Cheers,

Mark