interesting / cool features you've found in the MK7

[JoeGTI]

You have the std Nav dont you Joe ?

Are you finding it pretty good ? Worth speccing over the std media unit and good enough not to spend 1900 ?

Andy

Yes I think it's very good. Functionality and ease of use is streets ahead of the RNS 510 in the MK6. Map details also look far superior. Ideally the screen could be slightly bigger, but shelling out another grand for the PRO is a luxury too far IMO.

[Exonian]

  thread. Nice one Joe.
Especially relevant to me as the car I ordered is very similar in spec.

[Bill_the_Bear]

Another cool feature I just spotted at lunch...

The fuel warning light came on (not so cool!), but then the Nav / Media screen prompted me to ask if I'd like directions to the nearest filling station! How accommodating and polite of Mr. VW 

As long as it takes you to a shell station and not Morrisons 

Haha, it did a search and listed off about 10 stations, in order of distance! There was even a little Shell or Texaco or whatever brand icon next to each one.

Did it do them by route distance or distance as the crow flies?  I used to have a nav unit that did this but if you were on a motorway instead of finding the next station in the direction of travel it would usually find some off on a B Road station, typically several miles back the way I'd come.  Since it wouldn't show them on the map until you'd picked one from the list (and why wouldn't you pick the closest if that is all the data you have?) I'd usually give up on it after trying the first 10 results and finding that the 0.5 mile distance claimed was more like 10 miles to the next slip road then 20 in the opposite direction of travel, then same again to get back on course.

So I'm hoping VW thought of this problem and avoided it!

[JoeGTI]

When you select a destination, it offers you 3 possible routes and you select one.

I haven't looked closely enough at it to see how it determines these 3 routes (probably based on shortest/fastest/motorway versus non-motorway, etc).

[Bill_the_Bear]

When you select a destination, it offers you 3 possible routes and you select one.

I haven't looked closely enough at it to see how it determines these 3 routes (probably based on shortest/fastest/motorway versus non-motorway, etc).

Is this for finding filling stations?  I assumed the route guidance would be just the same as selecting any destination, but what I meant was when it suggests filling stations is it smart enough to take into account your direction of travel and the required route when prioritising them?

The (useless) system I used to have would simply locate the nearest filling station irrespective of how close it is by an actually traversable route.  Presumably this saves computing time as it doesn't need to calculate the route, it just uses spacial coordinates and trig to find which stations are close.  The problem, especially bad on motorways, is 99% of the time the nearest filling station to you is much much further away than other stations because you have to get off the road you are on, often travel in the reverse direction for some distance, then do that again to get back to where you were.

This can mean a big detour.  Many times I was on a motorway and it would suggest a filling station that was theoretically only a mile or less, yet I'd have to travel to the next junction, then go back the other way to another junction, then take many miles of A and B roads to reach it.  Then do the whole thing again to get back on the motorway I was on.  If it had been smart enough it would have known that instead of this it could suggest a station that was maybe 10 miles further up the road I was on even though that station was ranked at about the 25th closest.  You'd be surprised how many filling stations there are!  It would easily find 50 or so within a 10 mile radius but usually 48 or 49 of them would turn out to be 20 or 30 miles away when you asked to navigate to them!

Apart from trial and fail (or fail until you punch the system) there was no way to determine which of the 50 were a ~60 mile round trip in the wrong direction and which were the 2 stations you were going to drive close to anyway, giving just a 1 mile detour, if you kept going on your current route.

Sorry, too many words. I'm not good at explaining myself.

EDIT:
Might be easier to look at is this way.  What the system *should* do is calculate the distance to filling stations as the distance from them to a point on your current route that you haven't yet passed (+ distance from you to that point).  What they actually do, in my experience, is calculate the distance in a straight line from your current location, regardless of if in practice that would require you to take a ferry that is 100 miles away (as an extreme example) resulting in a 400 mile round trip to reach the "closest" station.

[JoeGTI]

I think you're over-thinking it.
I didn't examine it closely enough to see how it is working out the routes, but I assume it is clever enough to work out the optimal route. I mean, it knows you're on a one-way street or a motorway for example, so it's not going to suggest a route that involves a 30 mile back-tracking detour. Any sat nav worth it's salt wouldn't do that!

The 3 route suggestions is for every selected destination (not just petrol stations).

[Bill_the_Bear]

I mean, it knows you're on a one-way street or a motorway for example, so it's not going to suggest a route that involves a 30 mile back-tracking detour. Any sat nav worth it's salt wouldn't do that!

Trust me I'm not over-thinking this.  The sat nav manufacturers are under-thinking it!

I've never met a sat nav that can take this into account.  I suspect it is because to do that requires them to calculate the route guidance for each filling station on the list before it tells you how far they are.  That is very processor intensive because there are going to be 50-100 stations within maybe 10 miles when you are in a populated area so it might have to calculate hundreds of routes just to decide which stations are actually the close ones.  Then you actually need even more complexity to decide which are the smallest detours because a station 20 miles away but on the road you are already on is an obvious choice to a human, but the sat nav will still pick to turn around and go backwards for 15 miles because the maths says that is closer!

The system I owned never made a sensible suggestion, but I'm hoping the VW one will finally have cracked this problem and will do it properly because its a really great feature if it actually works!

EDIT:
Part of the problem is basically it is using the same algorithm to calculate the route for a user entered destination as it used for the filling station.  When you say I want to go to address X that is fine, but for a filling station you don't want a specific location, you want the shortest modification to the current route.  Its a whole different algorithm.  Otherwise you get the problems I've described with going backwards or making huge detours when there are much better options.

Ok you are right, I'm thinking too much.  My comes out when I see an algorithm not working well and then start to think for hours about why and how to fix it.  I know I know, I'll go sit in the corner.

[matchboy]

Do what I do Bear - have a look on a map before you go, then when the sat nav tells you the way, if its the same as you expect then you know its right!

[Bill_the_Bear]

Do what I do Bear - have a look on a map before you go, then when the sat nav tells you the way, if its the same as you expect then you know its right!

Its a good suggestion, but then why have the feature on the Nav in the first place?  I was asking Joe how it makes the suggestion because the system I have used (and all other systems AFAIK) simply give you a list like this:

Shell: 0.2 miles
Tesco: 0.3 miles
BP: 0.5 miles
Shell: 0.5 miles
Total: 1.1 miles
etc etc etc x50 or something.

Which is based only on the crow fly distance from you to the stations.  Until you make a choice you have no way to know if that choice if going to result in (for example) going up the M1 to the next junction for 10 miles, then on A roads for 15 miles in the wrong direction to the station, then back another 15 miles to rejoin the M1.

What you also don't know is that if you scroll down the list to entry number 29 (BP: 9.8 miles) then that would actually be the closest station because its the next services coming up in the direction you're already travelling and you're going to pass right by it anyway.  To find this out you have to select each suggestion 1 by 1 and then review the route it gives you, then cancel and repeat for the next station on the list ... 29 f*cking times with no way to know you'll ever find a good suggestion before you either pass it anyway or run out of fuel.

Now you might think it will be bad like this above example maybe once in 10, but 9 in 10 will work fine.  Not what I found.  I don't recall my Nav unit ever making a good suggestion, but I'd almost always want to punch it after wasting 10 mins of selecting and cancelling bad suggestions.  Granted in my example you'd just sit on the M1 and wait for the next services, but it was just an example.  I think the last time I used it was travelling north on the A10 where you don't know how long for the next station.

Like I say, I hope VW have got a better system than this.  I'll stop hijacking the thread now! sorry chaps.

EDIT:
Here.  Which is really closest?  Who knows?

[JoeGTI]

Jaysus...
It DOESN'T base the route on how the crow flies. I've never come across a nav unit that does that. This isn't a helicopter. The RNS 510 in the MK6 certainly didn't do that either.
In the Nav settings, there's options for choosing how to select optimal routes - such as fastest / shortest / most economical / avoid toll roads / motorways only, etc, etc.

Depending on your preferred settings, it'll base the route (or the 3 suggested routes) on that.