Windows Phone Thoughts: Road Trip Reloaded: OCN All in One GPS Reviewed

Creating Your Maps


Figure 2: Creating a map isn't a drag… Click the image above for a larger version of the screenshot.

After a routine installation process, you can fire up the MapExport module on your PC. The product gives you a choice of the method to use to create a map.

The first method is the familiar "drag a box around the area you want included" method that every product of this type utilizes. As you can see in Figure 2, if I wanted to get the entire state of California in the map, I'd have to bring a lot of Nevada along with it. MapExport helps to minimize this extraneous data by providing the "Restrict the selected area to:" lists to the right of the map. Here you'd be able to clear the highlights for all states except California, so all of that Nevada information would be excluded.


Figure 3: Setting up a corridor - Click the image above for a larger version of the screenshot.

The second method is one of OnCourse Navigator's most significant features. You can create a map that's based on a "corridor" around a route. To try this out, I set up 3 primary waypoints… the starting point in Milwaukee, WI, an intermediate stop in St. Paul, MN, and a final destination of Salinas, CA. The corridor that resulted is shown in Figure 3.

Note that you can set up a radius around each waypoint to determine how much of the map of that area will be included. For example, if I was only going through St. Paul to pick up a friend, but spending a lot of time in Salinas, I could set up a small radius around St. Paul and a larger radius around Salinas. That would give me the necessary map data to navigate around Salinas and surrounding areas.

You can also establish a radius around the entire corridor, to allow for deviations from the route to stop at hotels and restaurants, and to deal with detours. I selected a 50 miles radius around the entire route. Even with that generous radius, the map file takes up only 46.9 MB. This represents a significant advantage for OnCourse Navigator over many competitors. To do the same with most other products, you'd have to create several maps that included all of the states (or portions thereof) through which you'd be traveling. Even then, if you had to use multiple map files, the navigation software can't include multiple files in a single route, so you'd have to set up multiple routes representing portions of the complete trip.

One effective alternative that I've seen is with TomTom Navigator, which includes a complete US map in a special single file that includes only main highways just for the purpose of creating routes for long trips (of course, the standard TomTom maps are very detailed). I find OnCourse Navigator's solution to be more useful, since it includes detailed mapping data within the corridor, as opposed to the sparse data provided by the special TomTom map. TomTom's solution would be an advantage if you decided to make a major route change, since OnCourse Navigator's solution requires that you have a good idea of your overall route and mostly stick to it.

One caveat about the corridor method… it takes quite some time to generate for a long trip. My desktop PC is very speedy, and the route outlined above took over an hour to generate. The "drag a box" maps are processed much more quickly, of course.

MapExport supports transfer of maps either directly through ActiveSync or through a card reader. Since some of the maps can be fairly large, I'd recommend a card reader, which is much faster than ActiveSync.