Garmin Edge 530 - Route displayed on screen is not accurate to ground conditions

You’ve mentioned that all available maps are enabled. Try having only one routable map is enabled in any one Activity Profile, as enabling multiple routable maps can cause issues.

The typical use for these is road cycling. 

It looks like the roads you are using aren’t on OSM. That would be easy enough to check.

The big white arrows are what Garmin calls “turn guidance”. They are generated on the device from the course track but the course track needs to closely follow roads/paths on the map installed on the device. “Turn guidance” doesn’t really work if the course track isn’t tracing roads/paths. Thus, ideally one would create the course using a map that matches what is installed on the device. 

Topo maps might have roads that aren’t on OSM. 

If they are only using the maps that come with the device, they don’t have to disable any of them. 

The issue with multiple routable maps is when they overlap. The device may pick adjacent “tiles” (small map sections) from different maps and the roads may not link together (foiling route calculations).

Outside of overlapping, the devices are designed to handle multiple maps. 

Thanks. I should have said multiple maps covering the same area.

I think I know what is going on - I have EU basemaps and not North American basemaps on the 530 unit.  So yes they are all enabled, but not showing up anything in Canada (or the US).  But scroll over to France and roads and land covers show up on the base map.  So I assume that this is most likely the issue - the Garmin 530 unit has no road routes to go off?   I guess this is what happens when you buy a Garmin on a food sale from a England website.   So know how do I upload North American basemaps and what are the best ones to use?  I am planning a long distance bike off road bike route (Tour Divide) - so in the mountains mainly.  

Any suggestions?  

Thanks for that.   is OSM or Topo better to get?  Can I use multiple maps - from what is stated above that might be a bad idea.   

7695427 said:

I have EU basemaps and not North American basemaps on the 530 unit.  So yes they are all enabled, but not showing up anything in Canada (or the US).

“Basemap” in the Garmin world refers to a map that has little detail. They can’t be used for routing. They are meant to show something for areas that your unit is missing detailed (or “routable”) maps for.  All the edges come with a world basemap. The basemap should be enabled (but it’s not a problem if it is not). With the basemap enabled, you should see something in North America.

So you are talking about installing detailed maps (not basemaps).

The 530 doesn’t have enough space for world wide detailed maps.

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Most of the maps use data from Openstreetmap (OSM). These are basically functionally equivalent but they might look a bit different. Some of these sources are free.

Bbbike is a good source but others are fine too. one advantage of bbbike is that it lets you create a map for a custom region. This means the map can just cover the region you need (rather than a whole continent).

You can buy maps from Garmin but these don’t include updates (this doesn’t make much sense).

As PeterK_55 mentioned, be sure to use a “Latin” version (the Edges can’t use UTF maps).

I don’t know if OSM has the continental divide path (but there’s a reasonable chance it does). I like OSM but it’s possible that a topo map from a reputable source may be more reliable for your use. For wilderness use, you’ll need to be sure you have a good-enough map (OSM might be fine).

Installing maps is easy: just copy the *.img file you get to \Garmin. 

You can use multiple maps (as long as you have space). You just want to avoid enabling maps that overlap.

If you want to install different maps of one area, create additional activity profiles each with a different routable map enabled, so it's easy to switch to a different map.