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Results from curvy roads option is worse than disappointing...

Former Member
Former Member
Hello,

first sorry for my English! since it is not my mother tongue it is not without flaws.

I have been trying some options with my new zumo and the basecamp editor and I find the tracks proposed by the "curvy road" options really useless. I have not checked the "avoid interstate", "avoid highway" etc. option, but simply by pressing the "curvy roads" option the basecamp proposes to travel for >30 minutes through downtown instead of taking 10 minutes the highway.... I guess driving through traffic circle is curvier than the highway but it is not really the result you would expect... I don't need the "curvy road option" to just take the road following the highway, there is the "avoid highway option" for that....

I want the "curvy road" option to find some roads with are really curvy even if I have to take the highway to get there (unless I check avoid highways of curse). Has someone an idea how to configure basecamp to get some better results?

An other part which is missing, in my opinion, is the time frame for the curvy road. There should be an option where I can say that I want the travelling time to be 4 hours even if the fastest way would only take 1 hour. Isn't the point of the curvy road option to find nice roads for driving?
  • 0
    I dont see a curvy road option in Basecamp. How do you access it?
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Basecamp is not a "smart" program. It's not connected to the internet in the way that most smart phone style programs are and it will not do any thinking for you. If you were hoping for functionality like this I'm sorry to be the bringer of bad news but there's no way to solve this with basecamp.

    I recommend searching through some web forums for information then programming your gps manually in the easiest way you see fit.
  • 0
    If you mean BaseCamp can't read your mind then you're correct, but I know of no program that can. The OP is asking for things that don't exist, so if he wants them he should do as I suggested and post on the website I linked to.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Well, I think the original poster wants more than just something that doesn't exist. It seems like the more important question was about what the curvy roads option is supposed to do. It's quite difficult to ask for "enhancement" when you aren't sure how it's supposed to work in the first place.

    For instance, does it only work in specific profiles? Is there something specific you need to do to get it started, eg. Use some via points or rubber banding to force it outside the urban environment to where it can start to find the curvy roads? Or is there a limited radius within which it has to find a curvy road to begin with or it won't work? Etc.

    ...ken...
  • 0
    I take your point, unfortunately the BaseCamp developer who used to regularly pop in here left Garmin earlier this year. I'm not sure therefore if there is an answer to the points you raise, but if there is I have no idea who might be able to tell us :(
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    As you pointed out, this is a user to user forum so one hopes someone has done enough playing with the feature to have some ideas they might share and enlighten us at least a little. Or at least we might get enough feedback to indicate the feature is of little or no value, in which case someone can go to the link you posted and reference this thread as supporting evidence. Either way, the thread produces some value.

    ...ken...
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    "Curvy roads is just math" (h/t drtbyk) and, IMHO is just a navigational AID and like the device it runs on is not something to surrender to. Recalc the route through an urban area using a different mode and recalc again using "curvy roads" once back to suburbia and beyond. Or use a big avoid area to stay out of urburbia.

    I do think a major problem with the "curvy roads" algorithm is that it appears to be unbounded, e.g., on at least one occasion when about 40 miles from home it routed me several hundred miles up to Canada and back to get me to my home in Connecticut! Perhaps there were no curvy roads crossing the Connecticut River until Canada.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Wow tanks a lot for all the comments.

    I still haven't found a way to make this option work. Looking at the map to find curvy road and then make my trip "by hand" is still the only reliable way I found in basecamp. An other way is to use the tomtom algorithm for curvy roads and then import the generated track into basecamp....

    @kganshirt : indeed some description how the algorithm works and what are the information it bases the decision on would be really nice.

    As I understand it basecamp has only a flag for curvy roads and no real measure of "curvieness". It seams to try to use the roads flagged as being curvy and not trying to maximize the "curvieness" of the track.

    There seems to be some measure of time involved too. If you force basecamp to take the highway at some point it might change to rest of the track so that the overall duration stays more or less constant, but I haven't found a way to influence the total duration.

    The 2 statements above are pure speculation on my part trying to explain the results I get.

    PS: yes I will post on the other forum
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Try deselecting the Residential Streets category, whatever it is called. I did that accidentally once when first experimenting with B/C. Doing so could eliminate unwanted shortcut city street routing on certain "curvy road" routes. Good luck.

    Disclaimer: I don't use BaseCamp for routing on my Nuvi 56, so have little experience with the App.