Quality of maps
 

As there are always several options I want to share my experience after more than one year in the southern half of South America.

I alwas have OSM installed on my Zumo but have it generally turned off and just use it as a backup.

If there is a specific country map you're better off using that one.

Proyectomapear is near perfect for Argentina, and very good for Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Garmin Bolivia BolmapR11 mapsource was good anywhere I went in my 3 months in the country, except on the Salar de Uyuni and the Lagunas.

PERUT=Peru Ruteable worked like a charm for southern Peru, so I expect it will guide me through northern Peru too.
I'll find out when I leave Lima tomorrow :scooter:

Anyway, you'll get by with OSM. When I was in Brazil early in my trip I found the OSM-maps quite sufficient. It has all the big cities and that's where a gps is really essential. And it's improved constantly, so don't download too far in advance.

I came across the CloudMade page and offers different things, might be useful for someone?

Adventurous greetings,
Coen

I didn't see a link in this thread to the morrocco GPS by Olaf

It maybe here and i missed it but thought I'd put it up

Cloudmade: as far as I know the Garmin maps are not meant for navigation, rather for loading into a GPS to go and find errors/omissions. Their OSM data extracts are faulty...

Olaf's maps: are they routable?

Thanks for your input, folks.

I used the olaf maps last summer they aren't route able, but I found them easy to use with point to point navvigation over the top of the map.

Something wrong with this link?

Grey Beard

No, but the site has been closed down.

New downloadable Europe OSM maps for Garmin
 

I've been lurking on the MkGMap developers list for the past several months and through that, was made aware of the existence of NavMaps.eu . I'm not sure but I believe it is largely the web site of WanMil, one of the very active developers on the MkGMap list. This guy knows his stuff.

There are three maps offered on the site:

1) Benelux - Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg
2) Central Europe - Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, France (incl. Corsica), Germany, Hungary, Italy (incl. Sardinia), Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sardinia, Slovakia, Slovenija, Spain, Switzerland
3) Northwest Europe - Andorra, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden

You can simply download the files, change the name to gmapsupp.img and install into the /Garmin directory of a 4G micro-SD card. Set the GPS to use the maps et voila! Be aware that these map files are large (up to 3.7 G) and extremely detailed with virtually every building, walkway (and public toilet) in most cities. They are all routable. The level of detail might be overwhelming while on the road but I plan to give them a try this summer. Also, because of their size, I wouldn't dare try to load them into internal memory on my GPS, just on a removable card.

Recently, the maps for Garmin GPS's, derived from OSM data and processed by MkGMap have undergone a significant improvement as the MkGMap developers have been able to work out a usable search routine for streets... without the use of Garmin's MapSource for loading the maps as had been required in the past. The search index is now part of MkGMap's conversion process from OSM to Garmin. Any limitations now seem to be in the OSM data itself, particularly in areas (like Vancouver, BC) where administrative boundaries are incomplete. They are now moving on to making the maps searchable by house number. It really has been a great thing to watch... I just wish my Java skills were good enough to contribute.

As a long-time Linux user, with MkGMap, GPSbabel and GPSPrune, I am now almost totally free from MapSource, POILoader and yes, Windows itself. bier Rosetta Stone Russian is my very last tie to Windows :clap:


Little clarification from SamIam
Hi Bertrand,

Yes, you are quite right. I am an active data contributor/mapper to the OSM project and have been following the recent developments in MkGMap. I also use Splitter and MkGMap to generate my own Garmin maps from Geofabrik's OSM data extracts. I used Lambertus's maps extensively on my last Europe-Asia trip and will continue to do so I am sure.

Maybe I was not clear in my post, but the navmaps.eu website offers maps, derived from current OSM data and processed by the most recent incarnation of MkGMap. One of my points was that the newest version of MkGMap has the search index and routine built in. I never used it because I don't use MapSource, but you will probably recall that in order to get the search routine to work well, one had to use the MapSource installer version (like one produced by Lambertus) and use MapSource to load the map to the GPS. I assume that Lambertus is also using the latest stable version of MkGMap (r2174) and if so, his gmapsupp.img files also have this ability.

The appearance and visible completeness of the maps offered by navmaps.eu is likely the result of the customization that has been used in the style and typ files. For example, maps by Lambertus have recently dropped the natural=wood cover and buildings are rendered in such a light shade of brown as to be virtually invisible... at least on my Nuvi 255. I believe that is a result of using the MkGMap default styles. ??? Lambertus's maps are fine, and on the road may even be more practical. NavMaps.eu offers a visible alternative.

Of perhaps greater importance, however, is that NavMaps.eu offers a few pre-generated maps of greater areal extent than is possible to download from Lambertus's site. Lambertus (rightly so) limits the download to individual countries or limits the number of tiles to a much smaller area than covered by the NavMap files. And combining .img files (possible in MkGMap) I believe breaks the search function.
I guess your question is how can the navmaps.eu site offer anything better if they use the same data and the same tools as Lambertus? It's how you use the tools. Both have their advantages. The NavMap site does not even offer maps outside the EU. Lambertus does.

A free (as in beer) map of Tunisia for Garmin GPSRs, made from tracks and other information people provided: http://gps.4x4travel.org/

Regards, Hans

search for free routable maps
 

hello traveller,

I 'm just on the jump to zentralamerika,
anyone know some free routable garmin maps
useable with mapsource from zentralamerika,
(panama,costa rica, niccarragua, honduras)
and from mexico ,USA and canada,
thanks for info's,
cant find here something

Check out Free worldwide routable Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap. For all of Central America, set manual tile selection at the top of the page and select only the tiles you will need. Submit your email on the left side and watch your email. When notified that your map is ready, download the MapSource version and install in MapSource. :thumbup1:

thanks for quick answer sam
 

I saw it before in an other thread, but need long time to open the site,

I download the panama one, looks not bad when i zoom in,
but I download a second one from costa rica and try to put
this on my mapsource but they system say i have to remove the old one, already one is installed on my system, that's mean i can only put one OSM
map on mapsource,from OSM, or ........................, :scooter:

Hi Fred, nice to hear from you again. ;)

Yes, this is a limitation of the site, but there are ways around that. The easiest is to select all the tiles you want to load at the same time. So, don't choose a country, check the box 'enable tile selection', then choose ALL the tiles you want to load at the same time, then let it build the map for you.

Tschuess,
Peter.

osm maps
 

The easiest is to select all the tiles you want to load at the same time. So, don't choose a country, check the box 'enable tile selection', then choose ALL the tiles you want to load at the same time, then let it build the map for you.

hallo peter und susan,

when i do this, I try it, is possibel.
but when the map is ready, and i load it to my mapsource, can i open small maps to send to my device,( etrex gps has only 25mb space),
I can't load a build osm map with 100mb on my gps,

check your privat email, ich habe es in verstaendlicherem deutsch zu dir gemailt,
fredo

Fred, you do the same thing again in MS, but this time you only select the map tiles you want to send to the Etrex with the Map tool. The tiles you selected on the web page are the same in MS. If you click the map tab in MS at the bottom it tells you the size of your current map selection.

Then again, don't download too big an area into MS, as it's updated every 1-2 weeks.

With the detail of maps available now I think the Etrex is coming to the end of its useful life. I found that my 60CSx could load city maps, but the CPU was too slow to display it.

God luck.