Tomtom is hopeless

Soldato
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My faith in Tomtom for all but the most basic routes has been on the wane for a while now, but trying to plot a route across Europe is obviously beyond it.

Birmingham to Nurburg, everything is fine up to Brussels but after that it all starts going pear shaped. Here's what Autoroute reckons:

Nurburg_ar.jpg


You'll note how it takes a sensible route along the main motorways, coming down to the East of Nurburg and then cutting back across to the West at the end. This route is about 500 miles.

Now this is what TomTom 5 comes up with, albeit reproduced in Autoroute:

Nurburg_tt.jpg


You'll notice here that it's taken a far more direct route, cutting out motorways in favour of smaller roads.

The Tomtom route is about 30 miles shorter but critically will take far longer to complete due to the nature of the roads involved.

It's clear that Tomtom's routing engine is a piece of junk. I think what's confusing it here is that the best route involves travelling in a counter-intuitive direction for a while, i.e. to the North and West of the destination, prior to coming "back in" as it were. It obviously doesn't consider any roads which would take you away from the destination which is a fatal flaw. I should also note that this wondrous route took around 20 minutes to calculate on my PDA!!

There appears to be no way to convince TT to take the correct route and so in this case I'd probably be best reverting to a map. Nice one :(
 
Soldato
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Are you sure it's in "Quickest" mode and not "Shortest" mode.


If that's the case, I'm sure if you put AutoRoute into "shortest" it will come up with a very similar route to the TomTom one.


You think TomTom is bad - try Destinator - it'll take you the "scenic" route (read: smallest possible country lanes) almost without fail - now *that* is a bad routing engine.
 
Man of Honour
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I have found that the route calculation logic in Tom Tom 5 is completely retarded compared to TomTom 3. I reverted back to version 3 as version 5 calculated that my trip from Middlesex to Holyhead ferry terminal should take me via Leeds. Give version 3 a try, it's much better.
 
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Scuzi said:
I have found that the route calculation logic in Tom Tom 5 is completely retarded compared to TomTom 3. I reverted back to version 3 as version 5 calculated that my trip from Middlesex to Holyhead ferry terminal should take me via Leeds. Give version 3 a try, it's much better.


Sensible Tom Tom, giving you more time to think about your personal safety in coming to Holyhead and make a wise choice and turn round !

:p
 
Soldato
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Just run the route on my TomTom910 (running v6 of TomTom software).

It takes the main road through "Vervier" and then into the bottom of helleshiem.

Post the full start/end and I'll run it again if it's of interest.
 
Soldato
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On my TT 510 you can give it hints as to which roads to take. So if you spot a glaring mistake like that you simply go into the Map Browser and select the road you would like it to go via and hey presto it recalculates a better route.

Also bare in mind that your TT maps could be out of date. The road weightings (i.e. motorways get very high weightings) may have been improved at some point... I'm just speculating though.
 
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Soldato
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The thing I am finding odd in TomTom 5 is that an awful lot of the time it will direct you to a destination using 1 route and the return journey will be on completely different roads...

I still wouldn't be without it, but it isn't perfect.
 
Soldato
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See what route V3 conjures up for Nurburg then Dave, I'd be interested to see if it takes the Autoroute way or a similar one to TT5.
 
Soldato
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Nope this is using the full Germany Plus map. Have also tried it using the GB Plus map and get the same. I'm convinced it's the routing engine rather than the maps.
 
Soldato
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Muncher said:
The thing I am finding odd in TomTom 5 is that an awful lot of the time it will direct you to a destination using 1 route and the return journey will be on completely different roads...

I've noticed it do this several times now, I do suspect there may be a bug or two lurking in the routing engine.
 
Soldato
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Only seen a tomtom being used once, in my mates car... tried to send us the wrong way down the m4, sent us cross-country into the middle of nowhere, and it said there was a petrol station 0.7 miles away, we found it 12 miles later.
We were travelling happily down the A40, where it told us to go to get to Oxford.. then it says "turn around as soon as possible".
So we did.. 2 miles after turning around...
"turn around as soon as possible"
So we did... and guess what..

Yep, bloody thing was actually sending us in circles.

:/
 
Soldato
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NathanE said:
On my TT 510 you can give it hints as to which roads to take. So if you spot a glaring mistake like that you simply go into the Map Browser and select the road you would like it to go via and hey presto it recalculates a better route.

Also bare in mind that your TT maps could be out of date. The road weightings (i.e. motorways get very high weightings) may have been improved at some point... I'm just speculating though.

Yep, same on the tomtom one. Or just go into into the full itinery mode and put in the roads/placenames you want to go via.

Havent tried mine down south yet, but its got northern motorways and towns spot on so far.
 
Soldato
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The only problem with with Tom Tom i find is that quite a few of the roads i need it to find for me are under "un named road" on it map database.
Not a lot of help TBH.
 
Associate
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Just as a recomendation for anyone looking to get satnav, get Smartnav, it's not cheap but it is by far the best there is, and is never out of date.
It also now does speed camera location as well and again auto updates.
I've ahd this system for about 3-4 years now and wouldn't use anything else.
 
Caporegime
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Rikk said:
Just as a recomendation for anyone looking to get satnav, get Smartnav, it's not cheap but it is by far the best there is, and is never out of date.
It also now does speed camera location as well and again auto updates.
I've ahd this system for about 3-4 years now and wouldn't use anything else.

Interesting, any particular models you reccommend? Never heard of that software.
 
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