Q ! Re: Mapopolis Smartphone map download

[Guest maxmix]

Great SW, Is there any way to download all the demo maps together... Bit of a pain downloading every 'SHIRE' map that you need... Driving from Mull of Kintyre, Argyll down South E in the new year... Would like to see how it compares to R66 and TT :)

Dont fancy downloading the lot to see how Mapopolis 'fairs'...

maxmix

PS When you go for the 124 USD map versions, this gives you access to download what maps you need for a year... This is my only concern, they all have to be downloaded seperately....

[Guest Dr_StrangeTrick]

The Mapopolis web server only lets you download 3 demo maps at one time and if you want all of England (61 maps), Scotland (54 maps), Wales (8 maps) and Ireland (26 maps) you are talking about 150 individual map files.

If you purchase the European maps (approx £60 for all of Europe) you can then download each country as one big zip file. So you still have 160 maps but only 4 big downloads.

But if you are driving long distance you don't need each county map all you need is the starting point map, your end point map and the major roads map.

So you would start with GBR-SCOT_ARGYLLNGC.mlp something like GBR_KENTNGC.mlp and you would then use MAJORROADS-GBRNGC05.mlp this is the special map that links all the other maps together. It contains all the towns, villages, post codes etc but just the major roads so when you use Argyle and Kent with this map the local roads merge into the major roads map and when you get to the other end the reverse happens.

The beauty of using maps like this is that you can getaway with using the product without a memory card, the downside is that you have to keep changing maps.

But you got one big problem, Mapopolis don't have the major roads as a 'demo' map. They used to! so you may want to email them and see if they can bring it back for you.

Let us know how you get on.

[Guest maxmix]

Thanks Dr S.... Very informative...

Will look into it.... £60 sounds not bad... Just cant get mapopolis to work with my tiny 'Altina BT GPS'

May drop them a line :)

maxmix

[Guest chucky.egg]

That tip about the Major Roads was a good one, someone pointed it out to me a while back and I felt like a dolt for not seeing it!

The problem I have with the County based maps is that I don't know the names of all the Counties, let alone where they are, so I have to look up (on a paper map) the County that my destination is in.

What would be nice, for retards like me, would be the ability to point to a place on an image of the whole of the UK (for example) and say "that's where I'm going". I use the GPS position to set the start point, so that end is never normally a problem.

I suppose I could get a County map tattooed somewhere... (drops trou) ... well that's the Isle of Wight covered :)

[Guest Dr_StrangeTrick]

Hi Chucky, I had the same fun myself. When I first started to use Mapopolis I had my road atlas out and I was writing down all the counties I would drive through then go into Mapopolis and load them individually :roll:

But like I said the major road map has all the town names etc and this is what you use to find the county to load if you don't already know, this is what the guys at Mapopolis said and it does work.

Your major road maps are the key to finding the counties. View your major road map (using "Multi-Select" instead of "Also Load Contigueus") and zoom out on your major road map.

Do a find for the name of the town that you want, and go there. Then zoom out again, and look for the closest pointy-star icon. These contain the names of the detail map that contains the area.  

On Pocket PC, you can tap and hold the popup, and it will offer to load the map. On Smartphone, once you place the cross-hairs over a pointy-circle icon, the This Location softkey will pop up a menu that includes "Open Map."

In both cases, the icon will turn yellow to show that the associated map is loaded, and you will see the local detail fall into place.

I find that you have to get the right level of zoom/detail to see the star in 'busy' areas but I can tell you it does work.

As for your Altina BT GPS, I have not heard of one of these before. If you can bond the device to the phone then you are already halfway there. Try my notes in

this link I think everyone with a BT GPS has 'connection' nightmares somethimes but that usually sorts them out.