Have a 05 with v4.2 nav dvd. In general, I find it pretty accurate for everywhre I drive. Usually, when I enter an address I am not familiar with, it gets me right there. My home is on a private road that is 3.6 mi. long. It complained that they did not have the road data and when I left the county road, she basically said I was on my own. Sitting on my driveway, I presse the entry to memorize my location. The next time, the entire private road appeared on the screen. Surprise! It is still there, however, it insists that my home is next door, but I have no problme finding my place if it gets me to the neighbors. As to the change, if (as several posters indicated) that the version can be chanced by ejecting the old dvd and putting in the update version, why must the dealer do it? Some her have indicated they put in the newer dvd t hemselves and others have said they scheduled the change with the dealer, who had to get instructions from Toyota to do it? There seems to be some conflict here. Got to go out and peer under my seat to see what it looks like.
Driver's seat all the way forward made it easier for the technician. Disk didn't pop until the eject button was leaned on for a bit. Apparently, when one is driving on a mapped road, you 'stick' to the road until you move past some distance tolerance onto a parking lot or field. Since my work complex is just a field now, I come too close to I-77 and am mapped to it, even as far as North- or South-bound lane depending on which way I'm approaching it. It's a huge leap over to the South lane, then when reality creeps back in and I've moved far enough away, I leap dozens of yards at once to where I'm supposed to be. This brings back previous discussion of GPS accuracy, where it mapped me where it thought I was despite my current GPS location, then when it decided I couldn't be there anymore, it snapped to where I really was, pretty much exactly. GPS can't be that far off if it switches between a fake and real location that well: dead-reckoning 'enhanced' by GPS would take longer to correct, I would expect...
I took a quick look at my 4.2 DVD and noticed how old the GDT and Navteq copyrights are. Your new road is newer than the data. Unfortunately Toyota does a some sort of formatting of the data so you need to get it from Toyota. And this adds to the time to get the data to the cars. For a number of other makes one can get the update directly for Navteq through their web site. (Its $199 for an Audi A8.)
My little corner of the world may need a long time to make any update, so I'm happy that the name of the road is there now. I do see virtually the same information on maps.google.com (same vendor), so if they ever update my neighborhood I might expect a new NAV DVD made after that might be worthwhile. Of course, some of the other roads they finished a few weeks back will take years, and waiting for that might be good too. It seems sad: too high a price to just grab yearly updates to find out what's there, unless $288 is something like your monthly coffee budget so you wouldn't care much... More bad: most ROADS seem to be laid out OK: you're on the road, the map shows you there. Virtually every on- and off-ramp for highways are not 'mapped': you drive onto one, and eventually you snap to it after a few hundred feet. Why draw the red lines as being connected to the highway if the software doesn't know you're on the darn ramps for hundreds of feet? And you can't be routed properly to an 'open field' near a highway. When Work had roads (3.1), I was told how to get to my parking place. NOW I'm told that I should drive past an exit off I-77 and just turn into the spot where I park, fences and trees be damned. Leave the highway at a valid exit? GET BACK ON it says, since no other road could lead where I need to go. Idiots...
what you are refering to sounds like "snap to grid" or maybe "snap to route" function which is used to overcome small mis calculations by the GPS system by assuming you are on a road. you maybe to disable that as my mapping software also has that.
Maybe everyone should start another class action to get Toyota to give 4.2 users v5.1 for free. mikepaul, if you want to see how your neighborhood (or any other area) looks on a newer version, just PM someone with the higher version, and ask them to photograph and email you the coordinates you are interested in looking at...
Ok, I'm reading all the stuff on the nav disks but I can't seem to find out what to do to get a current update for my 2002. The parts dept quoted me over $1000 a couple of years ago. I've been tempted to buy a Lexus DVD of the web but it sounds like it may not work. What's the cure?