In-car software for the mobile Psioneer
By Steve Litchfield, May 21st 1996
By Steve Litchfield, May 21st 1996
Secondly, I found the road junction overlay much more useful than I would have thought. For example, driving the A4 and approaching the turn-off for the A404 there are several previous junctions and roundabouts, but I was able to ignore them completely, safe in the knowledge that the junction I wanted was still half a mile away!
Thirdly, the filling stations are of interest but not that useful in real life, because there are so many of them across most of the country. Lastly, the town overlay, which is of general interest most of the time but only becomes essential in a large conurbation. For example, in Greater London, where there is much more scope for confusion, you would be able to see Fulham, Putney and Wandsworth all within a mile or two of each other. Having direction and distance on each of these when in the vicinity would be very helpful in getting a feel for actual position. Thus I didn't find the towns very useful on my somewhat rur al trip to Marlow!
The signed approach to Marlow involved driving past it on the fast dual-carriageway A404 and then doubling back on a smaller A road, and this was reflected in the actual distance being 15 miles rather than the 12 that Mapper-3a predicted.
Setting off on the return journey, I took a different route to the A404 which shaved some distance off, following a B road that Autoroute showed but which Mapper-3a and Findit didn't know about! This really is a strength of Autoroute, it contains the best part of a megabyte of road information, compared to Mapper-3a's 22 kilobytes!
Spotting a plane flying in to land directly overhead on the A404 prompted me to quit Autoroute and go back to Mapper-3a, which showed up the airfield as White Waltham. I left Mapper-3a running the rest of the way home, as it was able to give me position on the map and ETA, clearly and at the same time.