[TurtleBoy]

Thanks guys, in my sheltered life I haven’t experienced those situations.

[mmm50i]

Originally Posted by jad03060

The only thing I've noticed occasionally is that it gets the side of the road wrong...like announcing your destination is on the left when it's on the right, but the location is accurate.

I turned off voice prompts. I wasn’t aware voice prompts tell you whether the destination is on the left or right side upon arrival. It’s useful and can be important to know.

Does anyone know if their Navi tells them which side their destination is on without voice prompts?

[Bolt1949]

Originally Posted by BRB-Prsch928S

I have had mine take me off a highway exit, only to get to the end of the ramp, and direct me back onto the highway. This has happened several times, in different locations. And, apparently it planned on that exit from earlier on in the journey - not just a re-route due to traffic.

I've seen this (NAV using off/on ramps to avoid a few seconds of time) numerous times. Apparently, it's a feature, nut a bug. Whether or not the feature is useful is questionable. I usually ignore it on freeways/interstates I drive regularly. On unfamiliar roads, I usually use full screen map view zoomed-in as needed to confirm what the NAV is doing. Still, when NAV recommends this, I find it is most often not worth the effort.

[jad03060]

The nav is integrated with the vehicle, so it has access to the accelerometers, wheel speed sensors, and the steering angle...IOW, it's a land navigation system that gets updated when it has GPS signals, but integrates your perceived position as best it can with the map date. Errors will increase without GPS inputs, but will still remain fairly accurate. Waze, Google, Apple maps, etc., have not been integrated that far with the vehicles...they could, but it's a lot more individual work than just relying on using the GPS data for your location, speed, and direction. That integration will differ by not only model, but by brand, so is unlikely to occur without a lot of work, money, and cooperation, that is not likely to occur, at least in the near-term.

I'm on my third BMW with nav, and all versions back to 2011 have indicated the side of the road the destination was on. It's usually right. When trying to find a waypoint, the exact name is usually required, as it's not that good about parsing an input...it's better with streets if you know the address versus the name of a place.

[eh777]

The reset seems to have resolved the issue I was having. I also input one of the "bad" addresses and then zoomed in to see where it was going this time, and it is going to the correct place instead of a random place on the road.

[Paladin1]

Originally Posted by Marty in NY

Well, I laughed at first but then thought back to when I was driving through Paris and using my TomTom for navigation, it worked extremely well except in longer tunnels and under long spans of bridges, which Paris has plenty of. It would continue to track for about 10 seconds then the screen would turn to black and white indicating it has lost the sat signal. Most of the times that was ok cause it would reconnect with the sat, turn to color and start working when it gains sight of the sky again but when coming out of a tunnel and immediately being under a long overhead bridge and seeing multiple turns while the dang thing is still in black and white is a freakish feeling. One wrong turn there and it can take 20 minutes to get back on track. Not sure how many of you have driven in Paris but its like playing bumper cars.

Try driving in Madrid (with the Iron Matadors). Or worse, Rome, where the Italian driving creed is "My car means nothing to me, and yours means less."

[Marty in NY]

Originally Posted by eh777

The reset seems to have resolved the issue I was having. I also input one of the "bad" addresses and then zoomed in to see where it was going this time, and it is going to the correct place instead of a random place on the road.

Chalk up another win for iDrive Reset!

.

[G Whizz UK]

Mine has it's, er, quirks, which I've posted about before. Despite setting home address as favourites, it's home-ish. Generally 200m either way from our house, including, strangely a different road. But never, ever been right. It'll also sometimes show the car location where it thinks home is, not where it actually is (alarming the first time it happens as you think it's been stolen until you look out of the window!).

[Marty in NY]

Originally Posted by G Whizz UK

Mine has it's, er, quirks, which I've posted about before. Despite setting home address as favourites, it's home-ish. Generally 200m either way from our house, including, strangely a different road. But never, ever been right. It'll also sometimes show the car location where it thinks home is, not where it actually is (alarming the first time it happens as you think it's been stolen until you look out of the window!).

Going on the assumption that you do not have any map updates awaiting you, there were a few threads on this topic, probably a year ago IIRC and the fix was that the owner took the car to the dealer, the dealer acknowledged the issue, updated the cars software and that solved it. I don't know if the post's topic was about the map issue or if the owner stated it in a different topic nor do I know what level of software their car had. Gee, that's not much help, is it? But, but, my point is that if you are not at the latest iDrive and Map version levels, go complain to your dealer in hopes they will give you free updates and in hopes once again that it solves the issue.

[jad03060]

When maps are drawn, they're referenced to a particular datum and spheroid. If you happen to have a topographical map, look in the lower right-hand corner. The GPS data comes down from the satellites in a single format, and the software needs to massage that position to what the map data expects. I've always wondered if BMW always had those two things properly synchronized. Depending on which one is selected, you can have up to a couple of kilometers of positional error. Datum and spheroid help to overcome the facts that the earth is not a perfect sphere...the datum and spheroid helps to correct the map to the actual curvature of the earth and lets the data become more accurate. The larger the area those apply to, the larger the errors there can be from the reference point.

There are a few that are considered world-wide (like WGS84), but not all maps are drawn to that one, and the accuracy isn't great everywhere.

[sharkymcpeterson]

Here's me driving in the ocean…..I think bmw maps might need an update from time to time as illustrated here in my picture but mine has been accurate aside from this trip into the Atlantic.

[cellarrat]

We are on our first significant road trip in the 45e, and have had a couple of minor issues. Our hotel was a block off the main road, I could see it and the road leading to it, but BMW wanted us to take a right at the next stop light in 100 feet. (1) There was no stop light in 100 feet; (2) Why, with the hotel right there? Weird

[bobs111]

Originally Posted by jad03060

The only thing I've noticed occasionally is that it gets the side of the road wrong...like announcing your destination is on the left when it's on the right, but the location is accurate.

Agreed
Frequently tells us to turn the opposite direction of where we should turn. Also tells us the destination is on the opposite side of the correct location.
This happens too often.
Not sure how to remedy but making us not like the system.

[eluded]

Everytime I use it, I get lost.

[Guy Fleegman]

We just returned from a long road trip. I used the native navigation for most of it but I got a few really bizarre directions that didn't make sense. It couldn't find one of the hotels at all (it was fairly new, about a year old, but both Google and Waze had it). It also insisted that I couldn't take one route because of road closings, except they weren't closed, and the suggested alternative would have cost me an hour.

I think I'm done with it now, at least in unfamiliar areas. I like how it integrates with adaptive hybrid mode but it's just not worth the aggravation.

And how does the car not know when you change time zones?

[jad03060]

I still wonder what spheroid and datum the map is using versus the ones used to produce a position. Having them mismatched can have the calculated position as much as a couple of kilometers off relative to the map. Now, if the earth was a perfect sphere, we wouldn’t need spheroids or datum’s.

[smyles]

Not sure if it's because of the most recent update, but already twice the destination addresses were off by a couple of miles. Not the location of the vehicle, but the actual addresses. Had to switch to Google maps for clues why instead of a business I was in some ghetto...

[jad03060]

Each version of GPS satellite seems to get a stronger transmitter, but the original ones were barely 75W, and being about 14000-miles up, the signal at the ground was pretty small, and easy to block or jam or spoof. The newer ones have a lot more power, but while it’s illegal in the US to try to spoof or jam that signal, it’s happening, especially in war zones in other parts of the world. If you are a pilot, there are regular warnings about GPS issues in specific areas, including the USA.

I remember one time I was driving in Ontario, Canada, and the nav system’s position had me paralleling the road I was driving on, offset by probably a couple of miles. Luckily, this was an isolated area, and there were no other roads around, so it was fairly easy to figure out. There is logic in the navigation system to ‘lock’ onto a road, but the decision to select a roadway versus who knows where is not perfect, and can produce some annoying artifacts at times. And then, you might not actually be ON a road, so that can mess things up, too.

Things are much better now than at the beginning until they turned off selective availability (that put a random error in the civilian channel of the GPS signal, requiring the encrypted military channel to remove the error). Note that a gps that can handle differential inputs can be more accurate IF those satellites are in view.

[aaaaaaaaaz]

Originally Posted by eh777

Does anyone have issues with the accuracy of navigation?


For example - I have now had several instances where I put in an address - let's say 4000 Main street (which exists and has for years). The navigation seems to simply take me to Main street and disregard the 4000.

.

I think BMW uses HERE map, which you can download an app on your phone to verify if it has the address in their database. If it is not, then you are out of luck

[Marty in NY]

I just returned from a 4,500 mile trip and used the on board Nav 100% of the time without any of the issues in this thread. Before leaving, I made sure I had the most up to date map. Those who are having issues, is your map up to date?

[jad03060]

There are about a million or so points of interest changes per year, and some much smaller road changes. I was in the US SW one time, don’t remember exactly what city now, and they had recently changed a bunch of roads to one way…that was a BIG pain getting where I needed to go! While the later MY get free map updates, keep in mind, at least in the USA, BMW does NOT push map updates to the whole country to your vehicle…only your ‘zone’. You have to physically be in a different zone to get updates, and that won’t be instantaneous. In Europe, from what I’ve read, you can download updated maps from the BMW website and then manually transfer them to your vehicle via a USB memory stick. Personally, I’d prefer to have the entire database updated so I’d have whatever area I was to drive into rather than having to wait for things to decide it should download that information on its own and on its own schedule. The base map doesn’t get updated all that often, but the POI entries do as long as your connected drive account is active.

[Shovelhead75]

So I like the look of bmw map but it is not correct half the time. I go to two or three places regularly and it always gives me three choices , none of which is the way I usually go and also the way google maps and Apple Maps tell me. Further distance and longer times . Makes no sense. I mentioned it at the dealer and they told me bmw is not in the map business so basically live with it.
I would like to use bmw map but it just doesn’t cut it. Thank goodness bmw accepts Apple Maps and has the hud working but it’s not the best look. Sadly googlemaps doesn’t give me hud. Yeah I know I have an iphone