Satnav orientation

[Dr Jekyll]

I go for north at the top but relatives insist this is peculiar and unhinged, and confusing when heading South. My view is that North at the top is generally easier, especially if you are just using it for the moving map rather than to provide directions.

[emperorburger]

I think you will very much be in the minority using a satnav in such a bizarre way. It's wrong and you should stop this perversion.

[defblade]

Always traveling "up" the map.


I used to navigate in 12 car rallies... my map shuffling to keep heading "up" was so famous, the motor club presented me with a round map board and round maps to go on it

[ahenners]

I have a colleague who does this as well and I tell him he's odd. Direction of travel is the only way.

[Doofus]

Direction of travel. There's a compass on screen anyway to tell you which way north is.

[Doofus]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I have an inbuilt compass too, but I've accepted that it doesn't work when I use satnav.

Using a map (or my nose), it still works fine. So far...

[Pica-Pica]

Jasey_ said:

Anyone going north at top must be over 70.

Or a weirdo

Or a cartographer. Why not keep north at the top?

[Ardennes92]

Doofus said:

Direction of travel. There's a compass on screen anyway to tell you which way north is.

I’m with this, seems most logical to me

[Pica-Pica]

Jasey_ said:

Pica-Pica said:

Jasey_ said:

Anyone going north at top must be over 70.

Or a weirdo

Or a cartographer. Why not keep north at the top?

I'm using the thing not drawing it

Cartography. Def. the study and practice of making and using maps.
Anyway, the direction of travel is shown in the instrument cluster, the north-orientation in the Sat Nav itself. I can cope with both.

Edited by Pica-Pica on Tuesday 28th December 21:54

[Zarco]

emperorburger said:

I think you will very much be in the minority using a satnav in such a bizarre way. It's wrong and you should stop this perversion.

Yep.

[RazerSauber]

This was not the question I anticipated. I thought it was going to be a question of having it portrait or landscape when using it!

Still, always travelling "up" the map is easiest for me. Easier to differentiate left and right when you're driving somewhere unfamiliar and need to concentrate on speed, roundabouts, awkward lane splits and changes etc. All the video games I played when I was younger took this approach too so it seems most familiar to me.

[ATG]

RazerSauber said:

This was not the question I anticipated. I thought it was going to be a question of having it portrait or landscape when using it!

Still, always travelling "up" the map is easiest for me. Easier to differentiate left and right when you're driving somewhere unfamiliar and need to concentrate on speed, roundabouts, awkward lane splits and changes etc. All the video games I played when I was younger took this approach too so it seems most familiar to me.

Instead of thinking left and right, you can think more along the lines of clockwise and anti-clockwise, then the map orientation doesn't matter. You just "twist" the way the thing drawn on the map needs to "twist" to go the right way. You don't have to think "err, going down the map so what's left for it is right for me". The "twist" is just as immediate as having the map change its orientation. Why bother? The only benefit is that, for me at least, a map orientated North gives me a better idea of where I am in the landscape. The landscape's representation is fixed and I'm moving through it. If the only objective is to navigate from A to B with little idea where one has been, then there's no benefit, but I like to build a picture of where I've been pretty much just for the sake of interest.

[Pica-Pica]

ATG said:

The only benefit is that, for me at least, a map orientated North gives me a better idea of where I am in the landscape. The landscape's representation is fixed and I'm moving through it. If the only objective is to navigate from A to B with little idea where one has been, then there's no benefit, but I like to build a picture of where I've been pretty much just for the sake of interest.

That is exactly it for me, the Sat Nav sits there like a map, for reference to the local and national geography, which you can zoom in or out of with the iDrive rotary control on a BMW. It is like a great big AA motoring atlas but with an adjustable scale value (would you rotate that to look at going from, say, Derby to Southampton?). For actual driving guidance, the simple arrow, or roundabout symbols sit between the speedo and rev counter, that does stay in direction of travel, and also there is the voice guidance and your eyes too!

I think the replies here reflect the type of Sat Nav installed.

PS. I have just mentioned all this to my wife who does a lot of walking. She turns her walking map round to the direction she is walking. I can confirm her special awareness is poor!

[emperorburger]

Pica-Pica said:

I can confirm her special awareness is poor!

Maybe she just felt sorry for you.

[donkmeister]

Dr Jekyll said:

I go for north at the top but relatives insist this is peculiar and unhinged, and confusing when heading South. My view is that North at the top is generally easier, especially if you are just using it for the moving map rather than to provide directions.

I picked up a new-to-me car at the weekend where the previous owner had configured the GPS thusly... It was surprisingly unsettling as I was having to carry out a transform in my head at every junction to work out if I was going straight or turning.

So a stationary map should have a fixed orientation wrt the Earth - N at the top (or S if appeasing an Australian ) but for navigation systems these should be oriented with the vehicle's direction of travel.