GPS maps of Russia: OSM vs. Garmin City Navigator
 

Hi guys
Am in the process of getting my sh!t together ref planning my summer Trans-Russia trip. I've downloaded the Open Street Map Russia (and Mongolia) map from the official site and it works on my PC in Mapsource and on my device (60csx).

I have also viewed Walter's waypoint list (many thanks for sharing this!) in Mapsource with OSM as the basemap. There seems, following only a very cursory inspection, only one yellow line leading from western Russia eastwards to Lake Baikal and beyond to Vladivostok (my route, due to time constraints will be the most direct road St Petersburg to V-stok, possibly also missing out Moscow, so I don't have a problem with only having a "plan A"). Walter's waypoints for fuel/food/accom are mostly on this line (road). My question is: How much detail is missing from the OSM map compare to real life?

Tying in with this, I have also a acquired a copy of City Nav Russia that I loaded onto a different microSD card and seems to work fine on my device, but won't load on my PC in MS. Has anyone used CN-Russia for navigating, particularly, in eastern Russia? How does it compare to OSM-Russia?

FWIW, I also have one on Tony's paper atlases (thanks again for organising this) and a 1:2.000.000 overview map arriving in the next day or 2 from Amazon.

Thanks for any input.
cheers
Chris

Chris
"I have also a acquired a copy of City Nav Russia that I loaded onto a different microSD card"
How did you do that Chris? can you shed some light? from what you say, it wasn't a pre-loaded one.

Either way- if you want to see it in MS, you need to copy the IMG from your SD to your PC then convert it for integration within MS.

Hi Bertrand
Got it from a mate who has a mate in a Garmin dealership. Renamed it "gmapsupp", put it in a folder called "garmin" and loaded it onto the microSd card via a card reader. Inserted the card into the device. So I presume it started out life as a "pre-loaded" one. It seems to be in cyrillic only which I can't understand anyway, so was only a long shot.

I'm most interested in people's opinions of OSM, rather than pfaffing around with converting files with City Nav.
cheers
C

I have used a couple of products both made by the Russian Garmin Distributor. (by the way to read their maps which are predominantly in cyrillic, you need to have your garmin updated by the Distributor (they flash your Garmin unit with a new modified operating system) ... it can then read their cyrillic maps. But you lose the ability to read non standard latin characters that are widely used in Europe ... and reading maps in Germany or France or Spain or Scandinavia becomes a complete pain in the nuts ... characters such as these "æ ë ü ć ß Ø ň ő" etc become unreadable as their place is taken by cyrillic characters.

I have had the conversion done so that my GPS unit reads cyrillic, and now is wierd in western europe ... specifically so that I can read the products from the Russian Garmin franchise ... which are Topo 6, and I believe City Nav Russia is the other one. I use them occasionally to cross reference stuff. Topo 6 has a lot of detail, and I believe CN Russia is just a cheaper version of Topo 6, without as much detail of tracks, trails and of course topographic detail. My issue with them is in many areas (particularly out of the way areas) they are wildly inaccurate. They seem to have been complied by scans (probably of hard to get military maps) ... because the problems with the maps are consistent with the scanning of maps. The position of roads is not quite correct. Out sometimes by 500 -1000 metres (failure to accurately get the latitude and longitude reference points on the maps verified and cross referenced or scanned maps not of sufficient scale and accuracy) and there is sometimes faily out of date info .. towns or roads that no longer exist.

I have both the very detailed "Topo 6" maps on SD and OSM maps in the hard memory of the Garmin and have the ability to flick between the two (for cross referencing) but I have found I am using the OSM maps 98% of the time - mainly due to accuracy frustrations with the locally made maps. Topo6 will often have more detail ... however... (and sometimes a lot less).

City Navigator Russia

Whoa there ... just checked and the other set of maps I was thinking about other than Topo 6, was "Roads of Russia" (RoR). Those are the two sets made by the Russian Garmin Franchise / Distributor.

City Navigator Russia might actually be a Garmin product ... and I have only limited experience of those maps mate, sorry. Apart from the fact that Sherri Jo was given the Garmin maps of Russia last year (2010) by Garmin Australia as part of their sponsorship. We arrived in Vladivostok and her RUssia maps were showing only a single street in town, with no name ... the road in ... and it was completely inaccurate - completely useless. So I just loaded her up with the OSM maps. Garmin (or rather Navteq) has mapped the urban areas of Moscow and St Petersburg well. If its the Garmin maps I am thinking of, they will have normal Garmin level detail of those 2 cities, and pretty much zero detail at all in Siberia - and what detail they have is hopelessly inaccurate and un-useable ... as if someone has scanned a 1:10,000,000 world atlas or drawn the main highway with a crayon.

Dont know if that is what you have mate. Maybe best best is to zoom in on cities like Valdivostok or Magadan and compare the detail. OSM in places like Magadan is awesome - right down to building numbers (you can view the detail on the web .... at the OSM website - just keep zooming in on magadan till you see the individual buildings marked, along with their street numbers) and compare with the CN Russia in your GPS. I do find with OSM maps, you have to set your Garmin unit to read Highest detail, to get the most out of them.

A check of Garmins website and reading the detail of the CN RUssia product says only this about the level of detail ...

"Contains metropolitan area coverage of Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as the intertown road network in western Russia."

Which would indicate it is the maps I am thinking about (that Sherri Jo had) ... Good in Moscow and St Pete ... poor to very poor in western Russia, and uttely hopeless in Siberia. If that is the case, at best mate, I would stick it on an SD card and file it somewhere in the bottom of your luggage, to be used only if everything else blows up.

There are only 2 sets of Garmin maps to consider for Russia ... the OSM maps and Topo 6/RoR ... and Topo 6/RoR has the drawbacks listed above - needing to "convert" your hardware, and frustratingly inaccurate.

If you are getting off the main road mate ... i will be expecting lots of new waypoints from you :)


Then something isnt right. OSM maps have a very high level of detail ... change the level of detail to "Highest"

Hi Walter
Many thanks for the detailed answers to all my queries. OSM it is then (best for Siberia and I can also run it in MapSource). Will have CN-Russia (aka only Moscow and St Petersburg) and Roads of Russia (I was given that too) as a backup.

I think you're right: I didn't have the highest level of detail set and the "only road" I was referring to is the yellow M55, which I presume is the main highway. Attached are 3 screenshots from OSM: downtown Tynda, Vladivostok and western end of Lake Baikal.


I don't think I'll have enough time and the bike's suspension is too shagged out to do much off the main road stuff. If I end up with anything of use, I'll definitely share it.

cheers
Chris

I used Roads of Russia quite a bit, although only in European Russia. It is generally pretty good, except when it isn't...

As Walter says, a fair number of roads are off by several hundred meters, but also some major highways do not seem to be in the right place. But once you learn its tricks, this is not that big of a deal. It is more irritating when it tells you to go somewhere, and then all of a sudden it changes its mind and tells you to go in some other direction. Not exactly confidence inspiring. Let's just say I never leave home without a paper map.

That said, for all these complaints, it is really great to have (at least in European Russia); just today I returned from a trip to Belgorod, and used RoR to navigate back via all sorts of tiny backroads, very cool. Sure, I could have done it with paper maps alone, but it would be kind of a PITA and signage is not great on most of these little roads.

The biggest problem of all is the requirement for the distributor to reflash your Garmin device, I can't see this as being practical for anyone outside of Russia. You can load RoR without the reflash, but you can't read any city names, which makes it of rather limited utility.

Finally, for anyone coming to Russia, I highly recommend staying off the main highways as much as possible. They are choked with trucks and speedtraps, and just not very pleasant. Staying on the backroads is much more fun, but if you can't load RoR you'll need a decent atlas, the ability to read Cyrillic, and lots of time for when you get lost (and you will get lost...).

[QUOTE=motoreiter;336469]I used Roads of Russia quite a bit, although only in European Russia. It is generally pretty good, except when it isn't...

As Walter says, a fair number of roads are off by several hundred meters, but also some major highways do not seem to be in the right place. But once you learn its tricks, this is not that big of a deal. It is more irritating when it tells you to go somewhere, and then all of a sudden it changes its mind and tells you to go in some other direction. Not exactly confidence inspiring. Let's just say I never leave home without a paper map.

That said, for all these complaints, it is really great to have (at least in European Russia); just today I returned from a trip to Belgorod, and used RoR to navigate back via all sorts of tiny backroads, very cool. Sure, I could have done it with paper maps alone, but it would be kind of a PITA and signage is not great on most of these little roads.

The biggest problem of all is the requirement for the distributor to reflash your Garmin device, I can't see this as being practical for anyone outside of Russia. You can load RoR without the reflash, but you can't read any city names, which makes it of rather limited utility.

Finally, for anyone coming to Russia, I highly recommend staying off the main highways as much as possible. They are choked with trucks and speedtraps, and just not very pleasant. Staying on the backroads is much more fun, but if you can't load RoR you'll need a decent atlas, the ability to read Cyrillic, and lots of time for when you get lost (and you will get lost...).[/QUOTE


Hi I have the latest Garmin CN Russia NT 2012.10 and have loaded onto a SD card and selected it in a old Garmin 260w, it seems to work OK and I can search for streets (in Cyrillic naturally) in moscow and addresses and it shows in Cyrillic OK.
we are coming to Russia for a while near Moscow so I will be interested to see if it works without flashing, I am getting the latest Roads of Russia and Topo etc as well and will leave the Garmin in Russia with relatives, we do you get it flashed (in Moscow) We could get it done if necessary while there.
No problem asking in shops about getting it done if required
thanks

If you need to flash it, the place I had mine done was in the giant electronics mart ... the Gorbushka, at Bagrationovskaya metro. There are loads of garmin dealers there but you need to find the little shop / stall of the garmin distributor / franchisee there. Its on the ground floor ... I once wrote down the stall number but dont have it now. If you ask around any of the many garmin dealers there, they should be able to direct you. From memory it cost something like 1000 rubles and took 10 minutes or so.

Thanks Colebatch we will see how it goes and if it does not work correctly I will get it flashed, I suspect its operating off the card and not from units memory so it may be alright
Thanks again

My understanding is that CN will work without the flash, but its not very good. For RoR, you need the flash, I tried it without it a couple of years ago and you couldn't read the Cyrillic. I guess it's possible that Garmin's firmware has been update since then to allow it to work without the flash, but I kinda doubt it. Please keep us posted.

will do get there 12/6/2011 and will report later

In spite of the criticisms of Road of Russia, it is not really that bad. I have used it since 2008 mainly in western russia. The garmin distributor Navicom flashed my kenwood/garmin hideaway unit KNA-G520 and all worked fine. The comment about european characters is valid though. I now have 2 nav units, one with the latest european system and one with the russian system. I will get my russian system and Roads of Russia updated this summer. RoR has the road outside my dacha on it so it can be quite detailed. CN Russia coverage is far inferior to RoR coverage.
Les

PS I ought to add that older garmin units have apparently a map file size limit of 2gb. When KNA-G520 system 4.1 was released it enabled sd cards of >2gb capacity to be read. I use 4gb cards - have not tried larger ones. However, I am told by garmin that the map file size of 2gb remains. In addition, I also own a 2010 garmin 1490T and the RoR sd card works fine in that unit because, I suspect, that the files and system are much more advanced compared to my older 2007 KNA-G520 unit.

An OSM map of the entire world, minus Australia, Japan, the "old" Western Europe, and North America only occupied about 1 GB on an SD card. In otherwords it had S. America, Africa, SE Asia, China, Mongolia, Russia and SW Asia.

Charlie