Auto calibration of altimeter not during activity?

The auto-calibration not during an activity is only done overnight during your normal set sleep time (and when connected to a phone with GCM running). More detail and source in the link below. It would be nice to see this level of detail in the user manual, but I guess to include the logic behind every feature might make it a very big manual.

https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-the-trail/wrist-worn/fenix-5-5s-plus/1365378-altimeter-calibration-using-maps-data?p=1365409#post1365409

Thank you for the information.
Unfortunately my phone is powered off during sleeptime (i guess more people got it powered off at night than by day?! :) ).
I would have loved to see the watch itself periodically turn on GPS and adjust the altitude autonomously.
Keeping dependency on a connection to a mobile at an absolute minimum has high priority for me with such a watch.

For me, even though the auto calibration routine is enabled in the watch settings, it does not work during sleep time. I have everything running and connected, despite this I still have to correct the altitude manually or it will always be wrong when waking up.

Does this work for anyone else?

If not, then I will log a ticket with Garmin.

You might want to check location services are enabled on your phone both globally and for the GCM app specifically.

I realise you may have reasons for turning off your phone at night, but could you not just use its 'do not disturb' mode instead?

Really, this is no acceptable workaround for me.
I'd love to see the option to have the watch use it's built in GPS receiver to periodically calibrate height.
I totally agree to keep battery drain at a minimum, but the way this feature it is implemented at the moment is somehow unworldly.

You realise how bad Garmin GPS is indoors, don't you? So the calibration will likely be inaccurate. As opposed to phones which do a far superior job (and have a do not disturb mode).

You realise how bad Garmin GPS is indoors, don't you? So the calibration will likely be inaccurate. As opposed to phones which do a far superior job (and have a do not disturb mode).

No, i realize that Garmin's GPS is doing surprisingly well even indoors - however this is not the point.
What you wanna use is DHM anyway and additionally the watch would aquire GPS location over several times with DOP values taken into account.
So there is no reason why this should not be done that (usual) way.

You might want to check location services are enabled on your phone both globally and for the GCM app specifically.

Thanks, I verified the settings, Location is set to High Accuracy and Connect has the location permission, but it still did not work last night. The phone was in range and turned on the whole time at my bedside.

Does this work for others, and is it only me that has problems?

I'm not 100% sure if I've seen this work yet either. but I don't fully have a grasp on all the logic around how/when it will calibrate. On the 5x I simply saved a location in front of my house and edited the elevation. This was enough to make sure that any runs I started from my house calibrated the Altimeter to that value. On the 5x this worked reasonably well with only a few instances where it didn't trigger.

I worry about the DEM data in the map and if I understand correctly the overnight calibration is going to grab location and then compare against that DEM data. I've been playing around with Basecamp looking at the new TopoActive map that the US Fenix 5x+ comes with and it is an improvement over the 100k topo v6 that was on the 5x from a trails perspective, but some of the elevation data is straight up wonky.

I'm climbing 4 well known 14'ers next week in Colorado (weather, lungs, and legs willing) and the TopoActive map has pretty much all the elevation figures incorrect massively incorrect.

https://www.14ers.com/photos/photos_14ers1.php

We are doing both Eolus peaks, Sunlight, and Windom

The TopoActive doesn't seem to have any of these at over 14k as far I can tell from looking in Basecamp. The Southwest 24k v3 map that I have is quite a bit more accurate (even if it is a little out of date for the approach trails).