Garmin Oregon 2.86 Beta – Forget About It
After being without my Oregon for almost four weeks I finally received my unit back from Garmin and was anxious to try the 2.86 beta software. My goal was to see if I could reproduce the GPS accuracy problems that have been reported with this latest code from Garmin. On the first attempt over my test course I could see that the software was behaving strangely. The map page and compass rotated constantly, the track was very “noisy” and near the end of the test the unit drifted off about 100′-125′. I’ve seen a number of reports of this in 2.86 and now that I’ve seen it myself it’s pretty obvious you’ll want to stay away from this software until Garmin has corrected the issue. The image below shows the 100′ drift (blue track) off from the previous day’s track (green) and the test track reference (yellow).
I am happy to see Garmin spending some effort to improve the Oregon’s sometimes sluggish tracking but it feels like they’ve gone too far in the other direction. As many users have reported, the GPS Accuracy that the unit reports is better in 2.86, although given what I saw the unit certainly isn’t performing any better. When my unit did drift I was encouraged to see the accuracy prediction indicate that something was amiss. At one point I saw accuracy numbers in the 50′ range when the drift was about 100′. As soon as it recovered the accuracy jumped back down to 8′.
I did not experience any improvement in WAAS performance with this release. After enabling WAAS (it was not enabled during the test above) and waiting for about 5 minutes my unit never locked on to a WAAS satellite. This is similar to what I have reported with earlier releases of software.
For now, stick with the 2.85 beta software. It has been very reliable and I would recommend it over 2.7 or 2.8 given the instability around configuration and profiles in those releases.
Related posts:
February 26th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
No probs noticed here. My GPS was the most accurate of the etrex, 60csx, 400t trio out geocaching downtown LA the other night.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
So, this basically upgrades the Oregon to become a Colorado
February 28th, 2009 at 7:36 am
It sort of has that feel! The big difference is that the EPE goes up when the Oregon is in trouble, the Colorado would sometimes drift 200-300′ and still indicate that the EPE was in the 30-40′ range.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
(Oregon 400c)
Just got a 400c and it will not show U.S. Topo v3.02 or City Navigator NT v8 maps when zoomed in a lot and the basemap (Blue Chart) is enabled. Topo and CN are loaded to micro sd card. Anyone else experiencing the same thing???
Ex. in Automotive Profile with only CN NT v8 and U.S. Marine g2i v2.51 enabled my street detail appears at zoom level 0.2 miles, as I continue to zoom in all street detail disappears at zoom level 500′ and I only see the Blue Chart base map. In Setup: Detail set to Normal; Shaded Relief Off; Text Size set to Medium for all choices; Zoom Levels all set to Auto.
Ex. in Recreational Profile with only U.S. Topo v3 enabled and U.S. Marine g2i v2.51 enabled all topo detail is lost at zoom level 0.2 miles and is no longer viewable (only the Blue Chart base map is viewable) until zoomed out to 0.3 miles. All Setup settings are the same as stated above.
I can Disable Blue Charts (base map) and I can view the street detail and/or the topo detail all the way down to 20 ft. zoom level but then I can’t zoom out beyond zoom level 50 miles, without a base map, and screen redraws are very slow. I had tried both beta versions 2.85 and 2.86 and 2.80 and get same results on all versions.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
In your first two examples (Automotive profile and Recreational profile) I’m surprised that disabling the Marine maps doesn’t work. Topo and City Nav both should have base maps that become visible as you zoom out and should require the Marine maps to be enabled. Are your Map Detail settings under Setup>Maps set to “Normal”?
March 9th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Hi Scott, Thanks for the reply. Under Setup>Maps>Detail is set to Normal. If I disable the Marine maps in any profile then yes the CN Street Maps and/or the Topo maps do appear at all close in zoom levels as they are supposed to. But, with the Marine maps diabled, the unit has no base maps and won’t zoom out more than the 50 mile zoom level and the map redraws are extremely slow. Is there anything that I may be missing with this new unit. I’ve contacted Garmin, but no response yet on replicating the problem.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I thought about this a little more and maybe this is a bug with the 400c built in map. I was assuming on my 400t that the basemap in Automotive mode comes from the City Nav maps (so that when I’m zoomed way out the performance is good) and it would work the same for you on a 400c.
But if the basemap in automotive mode relies on the unit’s built-in basemap (in my case it would be the basemap included in the 400t topo maps, in your case the 400c maps) then disabling the built-in maps should not disable the built-in basemap (they really should be treated as two different maps). I would talk to Garmin to see if they agree with this.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
From what Garmin’s Customer Service said earlier today on the phone, I should not disable the Marine maps at any time, regardless of the profile because they are the basemap. Customer Service Tech. said he would try to replicate the problem tomorrow. Curious to see what he finds out after conferring with Software support.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I’ve suspected from the beginning that this is a layering problem that is only associated with the Blue Chart maps when they are in the unit’s internal memory… so would only apply to 400c units. If this problem had occured in the 400t or 400i I think there would be a lot of people complaining.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
That works fine as long as the internal bluecharts maps are always the lowest priority map loaded on the unit. In that case if you have Topos or City Nav loaded they would always take precedence IF they are available at the zoom level you are using. Since this doesn’t seem to be the case based on your initial experiments it would seem that Garmin needs to fix one or the other.
IMHO they should never disable the basemap on the unit (regardless of the enable/disable state of the marine map). I’m pretty sure that is what they’ve done on the 400t and it makes more sense than relying on the precedence of different map types.
March 10th, 2009 at 11:13 am
[...] changed so it seems like Garmin is still trying to tune GPS performance after the issues with the 2.86 beta. Let us know if you see any issues by posting here or on the Oregon wiki discussion [...]
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I have the same trouble as ED talks about but my GPS is a Oregon 400I. the roads around my house somewhat disappear after panning from left to right (sections are missing). But after disabling the inbuilt US Inland Detail Map with Imagery. The sections of roads are displayed as they should. I updated the software to Beta 2.93. When I go from 0.2 mi I have all the roads, but zoom out to 0.3 mi and all roads disappear, like the City Map took a “hike”. Upgrading did not solve the trouble.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
To me 2.93 and 2.94 are not to recommend.i own two units Oregon 300,i ran both software on these two units side by side and even 2.94 still do not do the job.The two units shuts down on routing on road and off road.The new features from 2.94 are ok