Over the last week or so, I have had the opportunity to evaluate some software from RoadTour Ltd, designed to provide feature rich (and even multimedia-enabled!) points of interest on a simple satnav unit or a Microsoft Mobile equipped smartphone. The demo kit I was provided with at first consisted of a brand new Garmin Nuvi 300 and an SD card containing the Roadtour software. I then moved onto a more recent Garmin Nuvi 610 – more on that later.A single printed sheet provided with the software described where to find the software in the Garmin’s menus. It also explained that when the unit was switched on, it would offer the option of installing the material from the card onto the unit’s internal memory, but that this was an unnecessary step as the details could be read directly off the card while in use.
The products I had were “Roadtour Heritage UK” and “Roadtour Pubs and Inns 2007”
Both files were found on the SD card in the same folder:
Garmin/POI/RoadTour Heritage UK V1.5.gpi (320 MB)
Garmin/POI/RoadTour Pubs and Inns 2007 v1.2.gpi (59 MB)
I’d like to point out straight away that I am not normally a Garmin user, so I had to be careful to decide whether any niggles I had were down to RoadTour software, the Garmin software or the Garmin hardware itself.
The first slight confusion I had as a reviewer of the content, was that these were found in completely different menus on the Nuvi 300 I was using for the first trial - Pubs and Inns were in the “Travel Kit” and the Heritage sites were under “Where to”, but since then Garmin have released a new “Content Tool Kit” to software developers (and are apparently in the process of dropping the “Travel Kit” menu) Roadtour have now been able to put all their products into the same place - “Custom POIs”. To see this, I moved onto the rather newer widescreen Nuvi 610
Roadtour Pubs and Inns 2007
On the Newer Nuvi 610 both of the RoadTour products could be found under Where to? / Extras, with “Pubs and Inns” and “Heritage” both correctly named in the Custom POIs heading.Once you have selected the Pubs and Inns category, you can choose to list them in order of proximity to your current location, your destination, along your route or in a different town, but you have to choose which “Near to…” option you want BEFORE you select the category, which I found slightly awkward and unintuitive. Obviously this is a Garmin issue rather than the RoadTour software.
This will then give you a list of the fifty pubs closest to you (with distance and a rough direction arrow) or you can select “Spell” to search the entire database for a particular name.
When you choose one, you are taken to a screen with a written description and possibly a photograph. About 75% of the entries I browsed had a photo - these are the pubs with a full review, whereas the “worth a visit” ones just have a generic picture.. Tapping on the photo will enlarge it to full screen and tapping “More” will bring up the full review.
From the main screen you also have options to ‘Go’ (there), ‘Show’ (on the map) and ‘Save’ (as a Favourite).
Curiously, I found that on the widescreen model the font chosen was rather small, making the information harder to read than on the smaller screen.
As far as the choice of pubs went, I was quite impressed. Although it was missing my favourite local in West London, it DID have my favourite pub of all time in a tiny village in Kent (and I’m NOT going to tell you where it is!). I also discovered several hidden gems very close to me, which I didn’t know about and which will have to be tested at length at a later date!
The data has been compiled from the printed guide “Alastair Sawday’s Pubs and Inns of England and Wales” (RRP £14.99) and all 640 main entries (plus an extra 250 'worth a visit' recommendations) are included. The only difference I could see in the way that these were presented was that the “worth a visit” entries had no photograph and the written details were usually rather shorter. They were still perfectly adequate descriptions of what to expect though.
Roadtour Heritage UK
When I first tried the Heritage Sites it had an adverse effect on the operation of the old Nuvi 300, slowing down the screen redraws to an unacceptable degree. However, rather than just saying the older models could not use the software, RoadTour set about finding out WHY and soon discovered that the Garmin didn’t like the extremely large folder size of the Heritage Sites. So they set
about splitting the data up into more manageable-sized chunks, first alphabetically to check the theory worked, but for the final release they have now arranged them into geographical areas.To access them manually, again the menu sequence was: Main menu / Where to? / Extras / Custom POIs , and tapping on the main “RoadTour UK Heritage” heading brings you to the list of the various areas of the country: Scotland, South West England, South and South East England and Wales.
On entering any of these sections you are presented with a list of attractions, in order closest to your present position, and a “Spell” option to find one alphabetically.
It is possible to sort them in order of their closeness to a different city etc. but again you have to make this decision BEFORE you even select “Extras”. If you tap the screen to choose one you get a photograph and the address, along with the same ‘Go’, ‘Show on map’ and ‘Save’ options as before and a “More” button to get to the extra information.
Click to enlarge...
Now, here is where the main difference is found between the Pubs and Inns and the full multimedia Heritage sites.… There is also a green triangular “play” icon (was a loudspeaker in the original version); and tapping that begins a 60-90 second spoken commentary on the attraction, much as a real tour guide would give.
These guides use a nice female voice; fairly similar to the one used by the Garmin for its navigation instructions. On the first trial version I thought it slightly “sibilant” giving some distortion on “S” sounds. But on the new version this was much improved on both the Nuvi 610 and the 300. (Click here for an mp3 sample of one of the commentaries)
The actual content, on the many that I listened to, was very good. A nice balance of factual details and chatty anecdote, again, much as a real guide would give.
Entries include all the places you’d expect, for example my route to work takes me near to Syon Park House, Osterley Park, Kew Palace and Gardens, Chiswick House and grounds and Marble Hill and Ham Houses; all of these are included in the Tour Guide.
Selecting another city such as “Exeter” gave me a list of 40 places to visit starting with nearby Killerton House National Trust property and ending with Laurence of Arabia’s house 56 miles away. ALL of these have the spoken commentary available.
Overall there are around 600 sites listed, including all the attractions found on the “VisitBritain” website. The commentaries have been written by RoadTour themselves and they ARE good. The only slight oddity I noticed was that Osterley House was referred to as “Osterley Park Old Town Hall” which it hasn’t ever been as far as I know.
Finally there are two “automatic” options for the Tour Guide, both selected in the settings menu.
These are “prompted” and “autoplay” and I’m afraid for me this is where the Garmin itself lets the software down…..
“Autoplay” seemed to just play all the visible commentaries as soon as you selected it, while
“Prompted” shows the name of the feature at the top and a loudspeaker (or loudhailer) icon on the normal driving display when a tourist attraction comes within a certain range (about 4 miles).
Unfortunately, having set it to “prompted” mode, if you then pressed the play button once , the system would play ALL the commentaries for any entries within range. On my journey to work through west London, this meant that up to NINE, 90-second speeches would play sometimes more than once if my route went around an area like Kew Gardens, with no obvious way to shut them up! While it was doing this, the TourGuide banner at the top would confusingly stay on the first Heritage location, NOT the one that was playing now.
When I mentioned this to Roadtour, they said this problem has only seemed to manifest itself in London where the locations are so close to each other and that that they have since reduced the “capture radius” to 1 mile in cities in order to reduce this effect. I’m glad to hear it!
I should also emphasise that the commentaries DID pause when a navigation instruction came through!
Although I didn’t have a chance for a detailed look, I have been shown the same software running on a Windows Mobile smartphone, where there were several improvements. Firstly the range at which the commentaries are triggered can be set by the user to several different radii (see the screenshot below) but the major difference is that you can now have multiple pictures and additional icons which show child friendliness, credit cards, beer options etc. There is also good integration with Windows Explorer and the phone.
Finally, I also noticed from their website they have already launched a third product - ‘Harden's Restaurant Guide’, and I was given a chance of a quick
preview. (see screenshots to the left)As you can see, the restaurants are indexed using Hardens 1-2-3 scoring system for Food, Service and Ambiance, as well as average price, which makes choosing very easy.
This guide costs £9.95 (download only at present), excellent value I think! Plus, France is coming in the next 8 weeks and further European products are planned.
Note also the change in colour scheme. After feedback from their users, all Garmin versions are now being produced as black on white for improved readability.
Syon House
