Can the GPS be wrong?

[Davemented]

There have been several trips so far where the GPS has sent me on a shorter route using the narrow one-lane roads rather than taking a longer route but on a three-lane highway. However, as I'm sure many of you know, those smaller roads can take a LONG time to travel down once you get stuck behind a truck doing 40 km/h.

Is it sometimes faster to take the longer, but faster, highway route? Do you ignore your GPS and take those routes? Are there any mods to improve the GPS into giving you faster, rather than shorter routes?

[BayneRav]

agreed, the GPS does not take in account for traffic, road speed, so IF a faster route is shown with a highway that have been able to plan. Then need to null the suggestion and use your route plotting from the worldmap, It WILL once get on a close proximity to a shorter route, will re-calculate the distance, ect. from the new quicker route.

As for a mod... would be nice with the F1 pause, were able to readjust the points of interest that the gps MUST take before reaching final destination, yet so far seems its out of ones control to alter the GPS system.

[Davemented]

The GPS is a little too primitive for a driving game. When I skip an offramp from the highway, the stupid thing keeps telling me to GO BACK, like I can just pull a u-turn and go through the concrete divider. It should immediately recalculate the route, and if it's still faster to go back it should at least point ahead to the next offramp.

[Dinky]

Originally posted by Hello Stonehenge!:

The GPS is a little too primitive for a driving game. When I skip an offramp from the highway, the stupid thing keeps telling me to GO BACK, like I can just pull a u-turn and go through the concrete divider. It should immediately recalculate the route, and if it's still faster to go back it should at least point ahead to the next offramp.

The problem when it comes to this isn't entirely the GPS's fault. There's a lot of routes where a missed exit means a 1-2+ hour detour (not counting illegal u-turns) because of a lack of alternate routes. I get the feeling that to avoid the GPS calculating very sub-optimal routes as a result of this, it's set to require a very long deviance before it recalculates.

[zbobg]

You do not have to follow the GPS route which is the shortest route but not necessarily the fastest route. The definition of shortest does include average speed limits on a route, it's not just a distance calculation. The problem is that the player driver usually must drive at a much slower average speed on two lane roads due to the ridiculous AI traffic. The exception is where there may be two routes near a city where one route goes thru the city and the other route goes around the city. Examples of that are London and Paris. You are always routed around the city when possible.

I often just drive thru Paris but I also don't pay attention to speed limits or red lights so it's much quicker to go that way.

For example, instead of following the shortest route which may use a slow two lane road, you may choose to take a 4 lane highway which is farther but faster (or just easier for the player to drive).

The GPS will recalculate your new route using the 4 lane highway when that route becomes the shortest route which is usually after you have driven a few kilometers.

[Alryn]

I very often ignore the GPS, so that I can take the quickest route... i.e. avoiding the country lanes the GPS would love me to follow. I don't mind the country lanes, but they can be very slow sometimes as in my current journey to Plymouth with a long line of traffic in front of me.

[PatronV]

Also, I tend to take routes I haven't discovered yet, so bit of both worlds. And if I get stuck in traffic there's an easy trick; park your truck, save the game and reload; voila, blissfully empty roads (well, at least for a while :)).

[Hentaisocial]

I look at where the GPS wants me to go, usually I can turn 800km of road into 800km of highway with a small detour.

[Davemented]

I've just about given up on the GPS routes, as taking the highway seems to ALWAYS be faster than a shorter route on a single-lane road. But the fact that (seemingly) so many people ignore the GPS shows poor design. I hope it gets some improvement in the next patch, like having options like "take highways whenever possible", or taking less than ten minutes to recalculate after missing an exit.

[Dinky]

Originally posted by Hello Stonehenge!:

I've just about given up on the GPS routes, as taking the highway seems to ALWAYS be faster than a shorter route on a single-lane road. But the fact that (seemingly) so many people ignore the GPS shows poor design. I hope it gets some improvement in the next patch, like having options like "take highways whenever possible", or taking less than ten minutes to recalculate after missing an exit.

Alternatively, they could just fix the more pressing issue and have trucks on single-lane roads go faster than 40 km/h. It has to be a bug that they drive that slowly constantly. It would be understandable for them to slow down at turns, but that's not what's happening.