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Will I need more maps?

MIKE-SD
over 3 years ago

I have the Montana 700i.  I have only the maps it came with.  Seem to work fairly well, in WA State (USA) where I live.  I don't know if my maps are localized for this area or if they cover the whole US in the same detail.

I have a couple of road trips planned.  I did some basic routing and it does seem to get me there.  But will all the states have the same level of detail as I see in WA, or will I likely require any other maps, for other states?

Also, I'm planning a trip to Japan, whenever they open up the country.  I checked out one of the cities I will be traveling to, and they had only the very largest roads. None of the local roads.  Is it possible to get detailed maps of Japan that show all the roads, similar to the US?  I checked Garmin and didn't find any maps of Japan.

Finally, How do I get maps showing hiking trails, and jeep trails, for my Garmin.  I only found a couple of trail maps (Pacific Crest, Appalachian).  Do topo maps cover most trails, or will I need other more detailed maps and where can I get them, for the 700i?

Thanks

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    The 700i comes with City Navigator North America, the Garmin TopoActive maps (which nobody actually understands) by region, and the Garmin public lands maps (again, not well understood).

    CN covers all 50 US states, Canada, Mexico, and some random islands. These are the maps that perform road routing.

    As I understand it, the TopoActive maps are derived from OSM maps, but have some Garmin "secret sauce". In spite of the fact that they are OSM-derived, the are not road-routable. However, they claim to be routable in other modes:

    https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=IgBPZ9DlHE5zaIWuSuwCS8

    Public land maps are apparently a transparent overlay showing various kinds of federal lands in different colors.

    https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=wyveYkRf5T2niAlD7OOKh5

    As far as trails go, I've never had good luck with commercial maps of any kind. Even the best ones, including the extra cost Garmin 1:24k topos, don't have a lot of data. They typically show a seemingly random subset of trails in the national trail system. Any coverage of local trails (for example, in state parks) is hit an miss. And the data tends to be outdated and/or inaccurate to start with. IMO, if you want reliable data of this type, you are better off with one of the crowd-sourced sites like AllTrails. Some of them require a subscription fee and some are free. The common feature is that you are getting real tracks made by real boots on the ground. And fairly recent.

    Note that you do not need to get your maps from Garmin. The maps just need to be Garmin compatible. You can download Garmin-compatible OSM maps from a number of places, including http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/. However, it's not clear if they will be (or will remain) road routable on the Montana. There is also a large collection of state maps (of varying quality) available for free at gpsfiledepot.com. This is a good spot to look for trail maps, too.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to twolpert

    I was considering AllTrails, just to get actual tracks.  And I guess for my Japan maps I'll just look around for equivalent CN for Japan, from non-Garmin sources.

    Thanks

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to twolpert

    I found instructions for using open street maps from other parts of the world. I tried a city in Japan and it seemed to work OK except...

    1) all the roads that were added had no names or reference so I don't see how they would be routine. No references. They looked more like image ref and not routable roads.

    2) the open street maps didn't align properly with the default global map. 

    So I'm not sure how useful they would be

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to MIKE-SD

    A lot of what look like streets are, in fact, trails or alleys. They typically have no names. They are always foot-routable, but never road-routable. 

    I have never seen alignment problems with other cartography. That said, I've never tried Japan. This might be a matter of your choice of datum. Main Menu > Setup > Position Format > Map Datum. If you are in the US, this is most likely set to WGS 84. There IS an available datum for Tokyo. Try selecting that, then see if the basemap and the OSM maps align better. Note that select a datum automatically adjusts the spheroid to match.

    Do not forget to set it back.

    The real question is whether or not the Montana will ALLOW road-routing on an OSM map (or on anything other than  CN).