RotoRooter

I know for sure we are getting a Panasonic color DVD-Based Navi that flips up in the RX-8. Does anyone know what model or what features it has? I am hoping it is the same as in the G35 and Z which has this really cool "bird's eye" view.

S

RotoRooter

Anyone out there have any info on the Navi?

Is it the Panasonic that allows the 3d bird's eye view?

ZoomZoom

It is also my understanding that it is a Panasonic NAV, but like yourself I do not know anything regarding the model number or whether it has a bird's eye view.

Puppy1

But isn't the software by Navitec??

ZoomZoom

Navtech only supplies the maps, most of the high-end systems use the Navtech maps.

boowana

The system in the RX-8 is not the same as the one in the G35 with the "birds-eye" view". I know that is pretty cool but I think you'll be happy with what is coming. We should all know shortly as cars will start to be in customer hands any day now.:p

RotoRooter

Now that some have the DVD NAVI in their driveway, can somebody please be so cool as to post specifics about views, features, menu, etc.

Have about some pics?

RotoRooter

I know I am being a pest. Someone please give me some info about the NAVI. please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boozehound

I'd tell you if I had mine... I'm pretty interested too...

RotoRooter

Thanks Boozehound, I guess we both feel the frustration . . . let me know if you get to see something.

jd62

I think birds eye view must be some kind of plan view from a perspective angle

No, it's just a plain map view, but it's a very impressive unit. I only have 125 miles on the car and haven't had a chance to go through all the bells and whistles yet, but it's a very nice toy. I love the automatic reroute and voice output.

P00Man

yeah, the system in the 8 is very nice, i didnt use the guidance, but i used the position tracker thing.
its just a plane map view, not the birds-eye view (which is actually kinda crappy anyways...) and it looks very good, pretty sure that it is integrated with the headlights too cause when the lights went on, the background went black and the colors changed to aid night driving

very impressive, 2million POI's too

and the mouse works, but the scrolling is 1 letter view at a time, not all with a highlight effect...and hitting enter requires a good push and hold, not just a quick click "in"
________
Multiple creampies

Boozehound

A NAV REVIEW!!!

Alright fellas - here we go...
I got the car last night and I've been playing with the nav for a bit and here's what I've come up with so far - but keep in mind that I haven't fully explored all of it yet.

The good -
1. The roll away screen with tilt is very nice and executed very well. Looks high end.

2. The calculations seem to be very quick.

3. The zoom feature is nice to have dedicated buttons for.

4. The screen is large and easy to read.

5. The color shift at night is pretty cool.

6. The POIs seem to be plentiful and up to date.

7. Having one dedicated button to return out of the menus and get to the map is quick and painless.

8. The button for returning through menus is nice - not just a generic 'cancel' button.

The not so good -
1. The address book sucks. - it's just a way to save street addresses as waypoints. Pretty ghetto compared to other systems that allow you to input names and phone numbers to allow for you to use it as a real address book. Other address books also help you find addresses by the persons name you input, so you dont have to remeber what street everyone lives on.

2. The joystick isn't the best way to input things. It can be difficult to get what you want, and to select things, you have to push down on the top of it. Not easy to do - I personally like the chrysler system that uses a roller-style **** and and a seperate enter button to select things.

3. Having the US divided into regions that have to be preselected kinda sucks. That took me about 15 minutes to figure out why there were no POIs in Texas... If you traveled cross country, you'd have to remember what the dealio is.



More to come later, and perhaps some screen shots of some nav - but my computer gave me the blue screen of death two days ago and I need to work on it before I do much photo processing. Otherwise you guys would get some wicked big pics (who wants 5MP??)... I'll also try to explore it more and come back with more info. If you guys can think of anything to try... throw down.

8_wannabe

2nd nav review.

Yes, the system is quick except for initial "boot" when you start the car. That takes about a minute. It remembers what you were doing when you last shut down the car.

Recalculation, if you don't follow nav directions, is almost instantaneous; certainly less than 2 seconds. This compares to a 2000 BMW that takes maybe 30-40 seconds to recalc. The 8 navi verbally tells you "Recalculating route." Very cool.

The tilt helps a lot with daylight glare. there are four preset tilt positions, electronically controlled. Screen is very readable. It dims when you turn on the headlights, but with the console dimmer switch you can bring it back up to full daytime brightness if you have your headlights on during the day.

Once programmed, you can shut the screen and it will keep talking to you. If you want to make it shut up, you'll find a menu to "Delete Destination" or something like that.

Boozer is right; I can find no "address book" function. Instead, there is a list of maybe your last 20 destinations and you can scroll through that. If you're manually entering an address, it remembers the last bunch of cities you entered. After you enter the first letter of the city you can scroll through the "most recent" list quickly.

Although the whole US and Canada is on the DVD, you still have to tell it what region you are in. I imagine this is to keep the list of cities short while you scroll. Mine was set to the wrong region and I couldn't find my city. Took me awhile to figure out (of course, I haven't read the directions yet; it mighta helped.)

My car came with Audiopilot Off (a Bose feature.) So, when the Navi is talking it was drowned out by the stereo. You can bring up the volume on the navi, but then with the stereo off it'll be shouting at you. I finally figured out to turn Audiopilot on and it solved the whole problem. Nav verbal directions are now suitable to the sound level in the car. Don't know what'll happen if you don't have the Bose system. There are only like 5 volume levels; 10 or so would have been nice to tweak it in just right.

Finding Points of Interest like restaurants, parks, banks, etc. is very easy once you figure out how. You can choose by name, city or address. Don't go by name or you'll have an alphabetical list of all restaurants in the US or at least in your region. Sort by city, then you can still pick the first letter of your facility and scroll through a much shorter list. I was looking for Round Table Pizza: Choose Restaurant, Italian, San Diego, and I had a very short list. You can search many different ways (by closest, or whatever); if you do it the hard way the long lists get very frustrating.

The map perspective is from directly overhead, like a paper map. You can keep North always to the top or your car heading always to the top. In the beemer navi, when you get to the edge of the map, it redraws with a whole new map in the area you are now at. So map is unusable for 10-15 secs while it redraws. The 8 doesn't do that, the maps scrolls continuously so you're never off the map. Exception: If you zoom in, it'll put you just off the edge and you won't see your car icon for a few seconds until it drives onto the map. No real biggie.

When you reach an intersection/interchange, the view changes. It zooms in to a detail of the interchange showing your precise route. It's very detailed. then zooms back out to your selected level once you've made the turn.

When you first select a route, you can bring up a list describing the entire route like if you wanted to read the directions to someone over the phone.

Question: There is an infrared receiver right next to the screen. Don't know yet what it is. I don't think it senses ambient light because screen brightness seems to be a function of headlights/console dimmer. I'll figure it out sooner or later.

For Boozer, you can do a quick click on the joystick to make selections but you've gotta be sure to press straight down. If you're a little misaligned, it thinks you're scolling and doesn't recognize the click. It takes practice cuz the joystick is so wobbly. If you can practice pressing very straight down, I think you'll find selecting/entering data much easier.

Now, here's the single worst thing I've found and maybe I just don't know the system well enough yet. I am used to having four route types: Shortest route, quickest route, max use of freeways, avoid major roads (i.e., scenic route.) On the 8 I have found only two selections: Shortest route or avoid freeways. I don't get it. Shortest, by definition, takes you through neighborhood back streets to get the shortest physical driving distance. It is not the most logical route. Usually, "quickest" keeps you on the main streets like to the bank and back, but that's not a menu choice. Maybe I'm missing something or will have to read the directions. I dunno, but it has chosen some screwy routes for me and I don't know what to do about it.

edit Ok, I just made a local run to the post office (which, strangely, is not in the POI database). I think I've found the answer to my gripe about routing algorithms. Instead of selecting "Shortest route" I chose "Avoid major highways" which I thought was intuitive since there are no major hiways btwn my house and post office. Anyway, once I did this it selected the common-sense route that I would have selected. With "shortest route" selected it was sending me off to the netherlands somewhere. I suspect Navitech has somehow figured out how to get from the 4 routing algorithms I mentioned above down to 2. If you pick the right one, it'll send you on a good route.

Sputnik

The way the packages are set up, I don't think that you can get the Nav w/o the Bose.

Quote:

Question: There is an infrared receiver right next to the screen. Don't know yet what it is. I don't think it senses ambient light because screen brightness seems to be a function of headlights/console dimmer. I'll figure it out sooner or later.

It might not do anything at this time. It might be part of a remote system that the Panasonic NAV normally uses instead of the integrated controls.

---jps

Boozehound

Ok, I've played more and it looks like you can name your own stuff in the address book. Pretty cool. The only thing I cant find is a cross refrence for phone numbers to find POIs or addresses.

More info to follow.

8_wannabe

Really? I haven't even found the address book yet. Can you permanently store addresses there? Or are you talking about the History list?

P00Man

i wish there was a "home" button or something like that

so if youre somewhere and you want to go home, you just press/select "home" and it immediately routes that, so you dont have to go through all the hassle of typing in an address
________
Uggs

Gord96BRG

There is - just set the #1 waypoint to your home location, then pick that waypoint when you want to go home.

Regarding the lack of an address book - can't you name the waypoints? Just give a waypoint the name of the person who lives there...

Regards,
Gordon

8_wannabe

It's obviously time for me to read the book. I don't have any idea what you're talking about. The Navi obviously has more capability than I've stumbled across by pushing buttons.

Boozehound

Gord's right - you just name your waypoints and when you want to go home, you just select the one you named "home" from your list of waypoints and say 'go.'

Yeah, the book's pretty necessary if you haven't played around with other navs, but I think I'll just have a read and fiddle around until i get everything figued out...:D

RotoRooter

Thank you very much for the reviews. Keep them coming. I think this thread will blow up as we teach eachother about the ins and outs of the Navi. Some comments then from me:

I checked out two Navi systems in 8's today. Mine still has not come in .

Th first one was on my own, the salesperson had no clue. He actually said the car did not have it since I could not seen it through the windshield, I had to tell him it flips up. I swear to God this is ture. Anyway, it flips up smooth, some crap about when not to use it comes up while it loads (10-12second delay is actually more annoying than you would think). All the pros were pretty much covered (DVD, Panasonic Quality, voice, color, POI). Negatives, check out the 350Z's Navi, it is bigger, brighter, with the famous "bird's eye view (like 1982 Atari vs. 1999 Sony Playstation) Honestly. Also, we don't get a remote control or a touch activated screen. Joysticking around to type in addresses is not cool. The two routes are not enough, but I reserve judgement until I drive it around more. Finally my street is not even on the Map (new development from 2000) -- this may be a problem for the blowing up real estate market in most of the country. I tried my friend's address (not found), my brother's new place in Florida (not found)


The second time I looked at the NAVI was with a knowledgable salesdude who sat me in the car and drove me around to get a feel for the Navi. The street typing thing is better if you go by zip code, much much much faster-- but you have to know the zip code. Overall he gave me a better impression of the Navi.


Overall impression (1-10) 6.5-7.0

Mine is coming with the Navi (+/- about the choice)

8_wannabe

RotoRooter, in the deluge of info on Nav you might have missed a couple of comments. First, in the setup screen you have to tell it which region of the US you are in. If it's set to the wrong region, it won't find your street or even your zip. My entire town was missing! Once we set it to SW region everything worked.

Secondly, I think the Navitech ppl who wrote the software are more clever than we realize. They found a way to get from 4 algorithms (shortest route; quickest route; use freeway; avoid freeway) down to two algorithms (shortest route or avoid major highways.) I'm not sure how they did it; the software must be smarter than previous generations. Around town, I use "Avoid major highway." Going further I use "Shortest route." Then everything seems to work out ok. Before I figured that out I got some pretty screwy routing directions.

Finally, because you pick a region of the US there is a shorter list of towns and cities. Typically, I enter only the first letter of the city and it gives me a short list to pick from. Then I enter the first letter of the street name and it gives me a short list.

It's the kind of thing you get better if you really play around with it. The more I use it, the more I'm beginning to like it.

I would have rated this about 5 on my first session or two; I was pretty disappointed. Now, I would rate it maybe 8.5. Once I figure out the address book it'll be a 9. I don't miss the birds-eye view at all; I love the scrolling maps; the auto-zoom-in detail when you're at an intersection/interchange; the AudioPilot sound level seems to work; the millions of POIs (Points of Interest) are very accessible once you learn the easy way to query the database (and there are some very hard ways!). It's getting better each time I use it.

8_wannabe

And now here is the single most important reason to have the Nav system; I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet. Only with the Built-in Nav will you get a ZOOM button on your RX-8!! Totally rad! though I don't know why they didn't label it Zoom-Zoom. :D

P00Man

BLAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAA

"no officer, its not a nitrous releas, its for the nav system...i swear......."

some one will do it, im sure of it lol

hopefully ill be able to ZOOM in my car by monday...
________
Lovely Wendie