Comments on: Garmin Oregon Firmware 2.86 Beta

By: Garmin Oregon 2.86 Beta - Forget About It - GPS Fix

Garmin Oregon 2.86 Beta - Forget About It - GPS Fix — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:32:29 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: maingray

maingray — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:21:33 +0000

I’ve been using 2.86 for a bit now, no issues with finding caches…certainly been within <10 feet of caches most of the time. I’m also seeing WAAS lock a lot more stably now..on a three hoiur drive this weekend I had “D” on most of my bars most of the time.

garmin response to my email to the new Beta email address regarding the POI database issue:

[i]Thank you for helping us test this beta release. The problem where the “All databases” will show “no results found” will be fixed in the next release. Thanks for you other feedback and suggestions as well.[/i]
Oregon Beta

By: Mona

Mona — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:07:09 +0000

I have set Calculate Routes to Car/Motorcycle, went by foot, and have noticed that. But on Car not yet.

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:45:26 +0000

If you are autorouting to a destination and go off route the Oregon should recalculate your route automatically. Are you seeing different behavior Mona?

By: Mona

Mona — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:12:04 +0000

I have noticed that the Oregon only supports static routing. I mean when we choose a way that is not on the routing, it does not automatically calculate new routing to the target, so that we must do some button work for the new routing. Maybe this way dynamic routing is very computing intensive and causes the device to freeze, but for short distance maybe very useful. Maybe we have an option to switch between static and dynamic routing?

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:18:31 +0000

I’ll run some in-depth tests tomorrow morning but based on some more preliminary data taken tonight it looks like there is really something glitchy with the position calculation code, especially when sat coverage is less than nominal. I’ll post some images in the a.m. over on groundspeak.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:00:26 +0000

I’ve now read reports here and on several other forums indicating GPS accuracy may be worse with this beta release of software. The reported accuracy appears improved but the actual measured accuracy (by comparing tracks to previous Oregon releases or the 60csx) seems to show lots of drift under tree cover.

By: Vidar

Vidar — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:33:15 +0000

Regarding accuracy: 2.86 is a big improvement, but doesn’t match 60CSx/Cx. Don’t trust the displayed accuracy metering: It is marketing lies. (You can’t sell a GPS unit that downs its predecessor.)

By: Robert Duering

Robert Duering — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 10:32:29 +0000

@Scott, thanks for the hint. Track logging defaulted to “do not record” after the firmware update. Re-enabled it, and elevation plot works fine now.
No other problems so far. I really like the speed improvements w.r.t map panning / zooming.
—Robert

By: Vidar

Vidar — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 09:25:41 +0000

Manually copying GUPDATE.GCD to /Volumes/GARMIN/Garmin, it was. Garmin should have distributed this as a ZIP-archive and include a script for convenience: (CopyToGarminFromMac.command) `cp $(dirname $0/Garmin/GUPDATE.GCD /Volumes/GARMIN/Garmin`

And now: Out cross-country to test accuracy improvements. The Oregon has been a disappointment so far regarding tracking accuracy.