A Better Breed of GPS Software?

willo asks: "I recently built an on board computer for my Grand Cherokee. The initial uses for it include music, gps navigation, on board diagnostics and a baby cam so I can see how my kid is in that rear facing seat. After lots of research and testing, I'm really disappointed with the mapping software out there for Linux. Gpsdrive provides the basic functionality I need, but the street names are built into the image and are difficult to read at a glance while driving. Not to mention that it has to download the maps it needs ahead of time. Xastir can handle almost any map out there, but it reads through every map for each redraw! It also seems to lack the ability to zoom intelligently based on location. Note that it's not really designed to be a navigation aid, but rather a ham radio APRS tool. (I am a ham). Delorme Street Atlas USA does what I really want, but it's been a pain to make run properly under wine. Is anyone else out there working on a decent navigation application?"

"To be really usable navigation software should do the following:

• handle maps efficiently and draw them quickly
• have intelligently organized map sets for countries/states. (You can't download a friggin map in the middle of Montana!)
• include serial gps/gpsd support. (just about everyone has this)

I've found a few references to mapping projects that seem to just be vaporware.

Map Sources do exist for this! Bruce Perens made TIGER/line data availible. NAVTECH is the map source for pretty much all the vehicle navigation systems out there, and high resolution maps are availible from the Geographical Information Survey."

Comments

Bring pressure to bear on the vendors

[wowbagger]

I concur that the mapping and trip planning software for any OS:(OS != Windows) is pretty poor. Yes, there are mapping programs out there that will show you where you are, but there are few trip planning programs that will help you select your route, identify items of interest along your route, and help you schedule your time. Of the Windows programs that I've used I have to give the nod to the various Delorme packages. However, Delorme is pretty much Windows only (yes, they do have MacOS versions of some of their programs, but the Mac versions lag the Windows version significantly).

As I see it, the problem is that creating a trip planning program is hard - not only do you need the map data (which is available), you need the route computing algorithm, you need the map drawing algorithm, you need the database of attractions, rest stops, gas stations, restaurants, and hotels. You need to pull all of that together. A proper trip planning program would be a project of greater magnitude than a good word processor.

While I would definitely agree that the best solution would be a Free Software solution, with a Free Software database, if you look closely at my ID you will notice that I'm Wowbagger, not RMS - I will accept a closed solution.

Unless someone is (actually, severel someones are) interested in creating a project on Sourceforce for this, I think the best solution is to bring pressure to bear on the vendors. Imagine if Delorme's suggestion box were /.'ed with requests for a Linux version (or even a Wine version) of their software - they might actually consider it. (In point of truth, setting here on my desk is a mailing from Delorme for their newest Street Atlas program - I am going to reply nicely to it and inform them that until such time as they can tell me truthfully that I can run their program under Linux they can remove me from their mailing list).

I have to wonder if the "give away the razor, sell the blades" model would work for a Delorme - make the actual mapping program Free Software, and make the old versions of their maps freely available (a la the AlladinSoft Ghostscript model), but sell access to the latest maps. This way, we could create a good mapping program under Linux, and have access to a database to feed it, but Delorme could still make money off their value-added - the up to date databases.

What I'd like to have is a scriping interface - so that I could write my planning script to say "Don't bother looking for hotels along the way - only look within 50 miles of a nighttime stop. Look for GOOD attractions within 100 miles of the route, mediocre attractions within 25 miles, and whatever within 5 miles. I want to leave at 17:30 Friday, I want to stop around 21:00 +/- 1 hour, start my days at 07:00, and stop for lunch around 12:00+/- 1 hour. Try to schedule stuff around those times." In other words, let my script generate trial routes, query the database relative to that route, and make changes.

Also, give me the ability to plug in my own databases (something Delorme is lacking in) - I want to get the database of 2 meter and 70 cm repeaters from the ARRL and plug that in too.

Absolutely Correct!

[toupsie]

Thank you! I was about to post a comment along the same lines. The more distractions a driver has in the car, the more dangerous a driver they are.

As my high school football coach/drivers ed teacher used to say, "Keep your God damn eyes on the road before I smack you in the head!".

If it ain't vector, it ain't worth it.

[Andy Dodd]

And from your description, your software is just like gpsdrive, which schleps maps from other sources like MapBlast, Terraserver, etc.

Raster maps don't allow zooming unless you download multiple resolutions, and once you've done this, the maps take a LOT more space than a vector map.

Note: The TIGER datasets are not a good example of a vector map size-wise, as they're in an ASCII format for ease of processing - A lot of the numeric fields could have their ASCII representations replaced with binary to save a LOT of space. Also, rather than having each "road segment" include the name of the road, the segments can be chained together to make a road definition that is a series of latitude/longitude points in a chain. Somewhere I've got a Perl script that does this and outputs it in a format used by a neato Garmin Mapsource map generator program. (Long since disappeared from the 'net... :( )

There's apparently a Gnomad project that aims to support vector maps under Linux, but it's vaporware at the moment. Not even an alpha or CVS release.

The data is there, it's just a matter of writing the software...