[mkgmap-dev] Basecamp, mkgmap and bicycle routing

Wed Aug 7 09:26:07 BST 2013

On 7 August 2013 09:39, Minko <ligfietser at online.nl> wrote:
>> If I understood your approach correctly, the only way to achieve this
>> in
>> practice is to have a separate routable map for each activity, and the
>> non-car maps "cheat" by working around Garmin's routing quirks and
>> playing around with the line types, road classes, speed classes, road
>> surface, etc. The GPS is always left in car mode and the right map has
>> to be turned on (and the others off) when changing activities. Is this
>> correct?
>
> Unfortunately yes, for each activity you now need a separate map or stick with the old units / firmware / Mapsource.
> Maybe hiking and cycling can be combined, but in my part of the world (NL's)
> cycling and car driving can't. I'm afraid Garmin is aware of this or even care about it.

OK. I don't think it is a complete disaster to have different maps;
it's just that this is my first Garmin device and I was a bit
surprised about the, let's say, underwhelming routing implementation
since those devices seem to be so popular. Do I really need totally
different gmapsupp.img files or is it possible to have a
generic/shared visible layer but different routing layers on top of
it? Can routing information be totally invisible (with/without custom
.TYP)? (I have searched the list, but I only found old posts, and I'm
not sure if they're totally relevant for new Basecamp/new devices.)

I read something about a new NT format which is not reverse-engineered
yet. Do you know if new Garmin devices/software respect the access
limitations when using this new format (probably impossible to say if
nobody understands the format yet)? I was wondering, and this is
purely conjecture from my part, if Garmin deliberately made the maps
in the "old-style" format less useful in order to reduce competition
from free maps such as the ones generated from OSM data.