I was fiddling around with my GPS unit and discovered that the little car driving on the graphic display’s map can be set up to either always be pointed “upwards”, regardless of the direction the vehicle is actually moving, or it can be set such that North is upwards, and thus the car can be pointed in any direction.
Ms. Malienation and I agree: choice 2 makes no sense. We say, just because maps are oriented that way doesn’t mean that GPS units have to follow suit. It’s counter-intuitive, too: if the sound is telling you to turn left, but the car’s path is pointed to one’s right (say, because the car is pointing South, which would be downward), one might become disoriented and accidentally turn right.
I figured this is one of those cheap “features” built into a lot of modern devices. You know what I mean, those crappy options that add to the advertising copy but that no one actually uses. I mentioned this to one of my friends, though, and he looked at me as if I had 2 heads and said, “North being always up is the only way to go. Hey, maps do it”.
It’s not just one guy, either. My brother-in-law agrees.
Stunned and aghast, I turn to the Straight Dope to vindicate me. What say all?
North up for me. I’m too used to maps with north at the top, and a constantly rotating GPS display will really disorient me. But I’m a cartographer by training and trade, so my experience is probably different from most others’.
From my grad school days (not long ago but easily forgotten) I vaguely recall reading some studies of map navigation that were interested in whether the user rotated the map or not. I want to say that females were more likely than males to rotate the map to keep the current heading at the top. These were pre-GPS (modern car GPS, anyway) but I’d think they remain relevant here.
Beyond that, knowing where you are is very important to some people (like me!) for successful navigation, while others can get away with just knowing the path to follow. The familiar north-up orientation is probably easier for the former category.
I use the GPS only on rather long trips or into places I haven’t been in a long time (I have used it probably about 4 times in the past year) but I always set it to the North always up setting. I also always set it to the British accent voice because it sounds so much less computerized. The map thing may come from my time before I had the GPS, when I was managing drivers - we didn’t have GPS for trucks, so I made them carry a lot of printed out Google maps with marking on them by me and my boss…and time wrote down for each stop so we could compare.
My wife likes the British voice, but definitely would never choose the same map orientation. The GPS lives in her car, so I suppose that is her choice on a day-to-day use and she could probably rationalize it.
Assuming that the car is smart enough to know where I’m going, the only thing I need to make is whether to turn right or left. It’s much easier to make that decision if I’m always driving in the “up” direction.
Yeah, that’s what I said to my friend. My attitude is, how is knowing that I’m heading, say, West helpful? If Mindy (um, Ms. Malienation named our GPS unit) gets us there, isn’t that the only thing that counts?
GPS units display very little in the way of map information. At best you get a few named streets surrounding your location. there is no sense of where you are in relation to anything. It makes no sense to display North up when there is nothing to reference it to. Contrast this to a laptop with a moving map/GPS display. You see a great deal of information and some sense of where you are and where you’re going.
I find the “north=up” orientation useful when I’m in a city arranged as a grid, because that way it can be easier to remember and/or visualize how to get to the corner of 14th & H from the northbound freeway.
I keep my nav unit with north always up. I typically navigate by wending my way a particular direction–I know I need to go north and west, for example. Keeping north up on the display makes it easy for know if a road is headed the way I want. If the map has a floating orientation, I have to look at the compass and then do mental rotation to know which way a road goes. Too much effort.
If I’m following the nav unit’s instructions (which I rarely do), it shows a small window for the turn. That makes it easy to turn the correct way. And then the window disappears so it doesn’t block the map.
I always have the direction of travel at the top - cannot use it the other way at all.
I also have mine set as a 2D map (rather than 3d fly-through) - it’s a shame more sat navs (other than smartphone / PDA based versions, which I have) don’t allow a portrait view.
I’m not interested in what’s to the left or right of me, just what’s ahead.
It’s much more important to know where North is when on a boat, especially if you use paper charts in conjunction with the GPS, as I do. For me, North up also helps eliminate any confusion with red/right/returning.
In the car, however, I have the GPS set to the car pointing up, and would probably be confused if set otherwise.
I can’t decide; I probably switch it back and forth every second or third time I turn it on. I’m good with (compass) directions, and tend to think of the world like a map, and I also zoom way out so I can see as many of the streets around me as possible. But sometimes I like the 3D view (which is first-person, not north up) for variety, and when I switch back to 2D it puts it in travel-up 2D – and for a while I like that better.
For tight city driving in a city I’ve never been in before: 2D, travel-up, zoomed way in so that distances are obvious.
I am vast, I contain multitudes. (And I didn’t vote, therefore)
I don’t know if my car GPS has a north up, travel up was the default. If I can change it I’ll give it a try. With my hand-held GPS and phone I always use north up.
Not much of a fan of the GPS’ but if I’m completely lost and have to turn it on, it’s pointed up… pointing it north without knowing where I am, or knowing where north is just makes no sense.
I can operate with it either way, but it usually stays set for travel up because that’s the way my wife likes is. And it just doesn’t make enough difference to me for me to bother to change it.
So… we have two basic types of views, one with the map staying still and the car symbol changing orientation, and another with the car symbol staying still and the map changing orientation. The perspective view could be considered a subcase of the second type.
Now, the car symbol relates to the car as it is when you’re driving forward. What happens when you back up?