Comparison of different GPS maps
 

I hope someone here can point out what I'm doing wrong.

I've been comparing the following maps:

• built-in low-detail worldmap that came with my Garmin GPSmap 60CSx
• SmellyBiker's Wanderlust world maps
• openstreetmap.org maps

Unless I haven't properly activated something in MapSource (I do have maximum detail selected), or my sampling has been really unlucky, openstreetmap.org maps are of far superior quality that the rest. I wonder why HUBBers don't seem to be using them that much.

Wanderlust has a wealth of Points Of Interest (POIs), but its drawing and street mapping is not so much more advanced than the (very low detail) built-in Garmin map.

It appears that overlaying the Wanderlust POIs onto the openstreetmap.org maps would produce an excellent result (best of both worlds?)

Other than that, when it comes to mapping roads and the accuracy of the terrain, at least on the PC (I haven't loaded OSM info onto the GPS yet) openstreetmap.org looks to be clearly superior to the competition.

Attaching some images for comparison - please do let me know if I'm missing something obvious.

(the order of the images is:

1. Garmin built-in world map
2. Wanderlust world map
3. openstreetmap.org

)

Beirut

Budapest
 

Maps of Budapest

Islamabad
 

Maps of Islamabad

Ushuaia
 

Maps of Ushuaia - I was expecting this to be superb on Wanderlust since Bob appears to have spent some time there... again, I might not be doing something correctly, but it seems POIs are all that is on offer and the rendering of sea vs land is questionable...

Wanderlust v1.60 (2007) snapshots
 

Looking for an explanation, I also installed the previous version of the Wanderlust maps (v1.60), and I noticed that interestingly enough for some places there was more detail (e.g. Buenos Aires and Ushuaia are way more detailed than they appear on the v2r03 maps).

There is definitely something fishy going on - don't know if it's a software or map bug (or chair-keyboard interface :-) but I'm hoping someone will help get to the bottom of this.

Some samples from the places mentioned above follow:
1. Beirut
2. Budapest
3. Islamabad
4. Ushuaia

How do I get open street map on my GPS ( Garim) It looks Great!

George

Hi George

There are instruction on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_MapSource but I haven't had the time to try them yet.

Please post back your experiences if you do & I'll try to do the same.

Alex

Successfully uploaded OSM tiles to Garmin GPSmap 60CSx
 

Following the instructions at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_MapSource I was able to import pre-generated OpenStreetMap.org tiles into MapSource, and hence my Garmin GPS.

This pre-generated tileset is for Europe only and as I'm learning in small steps I haven't even tried generating my own maps from primary OSM data (which basically allows me to selectively create the .img tiles that I want, for any location in the world, with the latest OSM data), so the comparison with Wanderlust (the best maps I have to compare with) is from EU places only, but I have to say OSM looks very good.

I don't know how to judge the accuracy of the maps, but there does seem to be a lot of detail there. I have the feeling a combination of OSM and Wanderlust would yield really good maps!

Comparisons follow, with the Wanderlust maps first, followed by OSM:

Beirut
 

1. Wanderlust
2. OSM

Budapest
 

As seen in MapSource:

1. Wanderlust
2. OpenStreetMap

GPS Maps
 

Thanks mate, great stuff.
Will have a look through the stuff.

Claudio

Ordnance Survey maps are licenced in the UK and the costs of integrating those would be....beyond Star Trek IMHO!

Oops, sorry for the confusion, OSM = OpenStreetMap - http://www.openstreetmap.org

Free (as in freedom). The license is a pretty standard Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

So it shouldn't be a problem to both use them individually and potentially use them to enhance the Wanderlust maps!

Ah! that clears up the OSM query Alexandros-
I've emailed Bob so he can look at your suggestions- He's the wizard on building his maps- I'm more up-to-speed on the user side of GPS and building POI databases for use with POI loader!

I´m trying to install the worldmap from OSM Worldfile Mirror in mapsource, but I can´t, how could I make it?