Windows Phone Thoughts: Are We There Yet? - PowerLOC's Destinator 3 (v3.0.04) Reviewed

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Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Are We There Yet? - PowerLOC's Destinator 3 (v3.0.04) Reviewed

Posted by Doug Raeburn in "HARDWARE" @ 10:30 AM



Let’s Motor!


Figure 16: Rollin', rollin', rollin'...

When you’re on the road, Destinator can display your route as a map (Figure 16) or as a series of directions (as shown in Figure 13). Your next turn is shown on the top, along with the distance to that turn. The gray strip just below the map alternates between four displays: latitude/longitude, velocity/altitude, estimated time of arrival/estimated time remaining, and distance to destination. Any of the four displays can be turned off.


Figure 17: “In your face” directions are a good thing.

Another new feature that I like is the large turn alert that comes up on the screen when the verbal turn alerts are announced. If you glance at the screen when you hear an alert, you’ll see this large display that very clearly indicates the direction of your turn, the distance to the turn, and the road onto which you’re turning. This is just one more feature that Destinator provides to give you as much information as possible, quickly and with minimum distraction.

So how are the routes that Destinator 3 creates? For the most part, they’re great, especially when dealing with interstate highways. However, I was a bit disappointed with Destinator’s routing when you need to drive into an area with lots of side roads. For some reason, it has a real affinity for back roads and lots of turns. This generally isn’t an issue until you get close to your final destination.

For example, I set up a route from Milwaukee to the IKEA store near Chicago. Most of the route was what you’d expect, using interstate highways and tollways. But once the route got within about 10 miles of IKEA, Destinator had us exiting the tollway and following a circuitous route of highways, with way too many turns. This stood out in contrast to a route that another person on the trip had created on MSN, which was much more direct. I thought this might have something to do with having “Shortest” set rather than “Quickest” for the route, but the route that Destinator created as we neared the destination was circuitous regardless of the setting.

To test this further, I decided to do an experiment with a local route to a relative’s house about 13 miles from home. On the Quickest setting, the route that Destinator created consisted of 13 different roads and many turns. On the other hand, a route created using Pharos Ostia used four roads and far fewer turns. In fact, Ostia created the exact route that I normally take. As did the mapping service on MSN. And the mapping service on Yahoo. And MS Streets and Trips 2004. The route created by Destinator was about ½ mile shorter, but with the slower roads and the number of turns and stop signs involved, there’s really no way it could have been quicker than the routes provided by these other products.

Destinator is the fourth navigation product that I’ve reviewed, and over the span of these reviews, I’ve realized that you can’t penalize a product simply because it doesn’t take the same local route as you would. But the issue with my test was not that Destinator didn’t take the same route, but that it created a route that covered so many back roads with so many turns. So it seems to me that Destinator’s routing algorithm would benefit from some fine tuning.

Of course, when using Destinator to go to an area with which you’re unfamiliar, you may not notice if the route near your destination becomes a bit circuitous.


Figure 18: The scenic route?

I ran into one other routing anomaly with Destinator 3. In Figure 18, the route calculated by Destinator is the blue and white line. Notice that it took me off of a particular road on to two other roads, only to shuttle me back to the same road. Why it didn’t just continue on the same road is a mystery. I don’t claim to remember a whole lot from high school geometry, but I do recall enough about the Pythagorean Theorem to realize that this little detour barely saved any distance or time.

Since I used several paragraphs to describe these issues that I uncovered, I do want to emphasize that the routes created by Destinator are generally of very good quality. I just would encourage the designers to look at the product’s tendency to overuse back roads and create routes with more turns than necessary.

As for other features, Destinator 3 still provides the very useful advance warning that I liked so much in Destinator 2. Unlike some other products, if you’re on a long stretch with no turns, Destinator will notify you of an upcoming turn two miles in advance. That’s in addition to the standard early warning (generally around 200 yards in advance… this distance increases as speed increases) and the final directive to actually make the turn. I missed this feature in Ostia, which provided only the shorter early warning. You appreciate Destinator’s advance warning particularly in heavier traffic… it gives you plenty of time to make necessary lane changes to prepare for your turn or exit.

Another new feature that I like is the new skinning capability. Destinator includes skins for day color maps and night color maps. The night color maps display the roads in high contrast on a dark background, making them easier to read in low light. The capability to add skins is also included, though I was unable to find any other skins during the review.

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