Hand Railing or Off Course alerts

I hope I am mistaken MrUnderhill, but I fear there are no outdoorsmen left at GarminHQ. The feature you describe sounds like more than I could hope for, navigation has been borked for some time.

Hi all,

Well I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my old Fenix 1 straight up to the Fenix 5X and I'm loving it, but there's one little feature that I can't find.

How can I set an 'off course alert'?

The old Fenix used to allow me to specify a number of metres.. 5,10,20,50m and if I wandered that far off from my route line then it would BUZZ as an alert before I wandered too far off course.

This was a very useful feature for those cases when running at full effort across moorland in a fog concentrating on foot placement... it prevented that lapse in concentration from letting me wander too far off course.

I'm hoping that this is just VERY well hidden and not a missing feature as it's a pretty important important function that relates back to the Fenix's original reason for existing... i.e. as a navigation device first and a sports device second.

All I can find are 'sporty' type alerts like 'run walk', 'cadence', 'proximity', 'ete' but nothing like 'off course' or 'hand rail'.

Can anyone point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance.

I don't think the distance is customizable. But you should automatically get an Off Course alert if you are following a Course - there's not a setting for it.

I'm also checking release notes each time for navigation fixes (like waypoints actually showing) but unfortunately doesn't seem to be a focus.

That's something that would be nice to have!
And since (as you mention) it's been there in older watches, I'll add to my list of wishes (link below) :)

Thanks all for the replies.

I love that there's a great forum like this for Garmin users.

It's nice that there is an off course alert... but not so good that it seems 'built in' as there are times it should be turned off, and other times where it should be adjustable so that on some routes it warns at 10 metres to avoid cliffs, while the unpredictable terrain on other flatter routes might involve circling around gullies, pools or rock formations and where having a 10 metre warning results in battery draining buzzing.

I have to admit that waypoints used to get a bit annoying on the old F1 when zooming out to see the whole route... so a waypoint fix would be great if it had a way of turning on/off like a layer at the press of a button.

Having been out of the Fenix upgrade chain for a while I find it a little sad that the new Garmin philosophy is to hijack the watch as a 'jack of all trades' as it's the most 'day wear friendly' device they have.

There seems to be a lot of people wanting Golf features added when there's perfectly good golf devices out there... other's want step counters when there are fitness trackers already specialising in that function too.

I realise that I'm being a bit selfish/opinionated here, but this was primarily a navigation and hill walking device... So I think that Navigation features should be prioritised over all other functions. Especially where things like waypoints, distance remaining, and handrailing could be a matter of safety in a mist or in bad conditions.

Until the basic nav features are fixed, I don't think there shouldn't be any other development on the Fenix line.

While it may be the case that other sport activities might be 'essential' on other 'specialist devices' in the 'Golf/Run/Fitness/Triathlon' families... on a fenix the only 'essential development' should be hillwalking and trail running, with everything else on the 'nice to have' list.

Just my selfish opinion

There is utterly no circumstance under which a GPS can be trusted to be "good" within 10 meters in a real-time, second-by-second environment where the consequence for being "wrong" is death (e.g. falling off a cliff edge.)

Even on a precision ILS approach nobody can fly with "minimums" of 30' AGL before being able to see the runway (e.g. where being wrong by 10 meters means you splat) predicated on a GPS. Uh uh. And that's on flat land where multipath is probably not a factor. Handrailing? Oh, multipath is a quite-probable factor, eh? Physics says you can't get what you want, at least not to five-nines reliability, so this is clearly a situation where you're trying to do something you shouldn't.

With that said do I usually get an "off-course" warning before I cross both lanes of a road where I was supposed to turn (about 10 meters)? Yes. But would I trust that in a life-safety scenario? No way, and expecting that is not only expecting too much that might get you killed.

Please don't.

I hike with my F5x all the time and I find the navigation capabilities it has to be entirely suitable for that use. Perfect, no, but certainly suitable for the intended (and purchased) purpose, yes.

Did Hansel and Gretel use breadcrumb navigation? Quite a long time away from home though.

GPS will be landing aircraft soon.

Did Hansel and Gretel use breadcrumb navigation? Quite a long time away from home though.

GPS will be landing aircraft soon.

Not unassisted. It's simply not accurate enough.

Now in combination with a terminal system at the airport that is capable of much higher precision, sure. But even when WAAS is at "its best", which gets you into the single-digit meters accuracy realm, it still isn't good enough without further augmentation.

The issues that come with a wrist-based unit that has a rapidly-moving antenna while you are (e.g. while running, etc) and the power constraints that go along with a package of this size make for interesting engineering problems.

I'll note for the peanut gallery that a couple of weeks ago, when we had a little solar disturbance going on (which was publicized) I had a run track on my 5x that was wildly out of whack. The watch claimed the first mile had elapsed after about 0.7 miles was actually run, and it was similarly wildly out of touch with reality for another 20 minutes or so. Amusingly, the total distance covered, when I got done, was bang-on -- but a look at the track in Connect showed that it claimed I was running well beyond the shoreline for part of the route -- ON WATER.

Last time I checked I wasn't Jesus, and if there had been a life-safety issue relying on the position given, well, I'd be very dead....