
So, for example, you cannot browse the detailed Kansas road networks shapefiles in GR3 with a Colorado radar selected. Note: road shape files only show up when you select a radar that covers the road area. You can load up a few states before a chase in ~two minutes. Almost all states shapefile size are between 100 and 220 MB. The files also are not large compared to RAM on most current machines. For any modern machine, typical delay of is going to be 5-10 seconds or better only at startup and when changing radar sites to another state- not something that has ever bothered me chasing. My previous extremely underpowered netbook was also able to handle loading roads by state, but the starting of GR3 or changing radar sites to another state could sometimes take 20-30 seconds (especially huge states like TX) again that netbook was very weak and had Windows 7 on only 2GB of RAM and a slooow processor.
Franson gpsgate pro#
I'm using a middle range Surface Pro 7 here with an i5 processor and 8GB of RAM, nothing fancy at all and I never have any lag or issues when loading roads by state into GR3. Not AT ALL worth spending HOURS loading these by county for a couple seconds of perceived lag when starting up or changing radar sites to another state, but maybe that's just my opinion. With several statewide roads shapefiles loaded, almost any computer made within 3 years will have only a very slight slowdown when starting GR3 or switching radars, but we are talking seconds here (5 seconds average, or even less). I'm not sure what benefit there could be to doing that on a modern computer but we each have our ways of working. If you want to use roads shapefiles from within GR3, then adding shapefiles, in my opinion, is best done by state or radar site, not county. I am able to navigate almost entirely with GR3, although I run my car nav screen or google maps as a second view. New census data updates them every few years.
Franson gpsgate Patch#
The roads files have every dirt patch and side road that existed up to the year the shapefile was made. I've used the aforementioned model of receiver for 8-9 years so can vouch that it is reliable and rugged.Īs for maps: GR3 shapefiles are exceptionally detailed with the only drawback that names are not shown on each road unless you mouse over (has never bothered me).

Franson gpsgate install#
Machines not running Windows 10 (8, 7, XP, etc) might have to install a driver which is easy to find and install. The GlobalSat BU - 353 - S4 works as simple as it gets, by plugging into any USB port and selecting its COM port from GRLevel3 in the GPS menu. Every time I buy a new computer I have to do it all over again, except for the downloading part. county-by-county, one at a time.ĩ9.9% of you would think I'm insane to do it that way, but I wouldn't have it any other way. That doesn't include the time spent downloading all the files from the website. It took me somewhere between 40 and 60 hours to load all the counties for each radar site that I may potentially use.


If you load entire states at a time it will slow your computer down by requiring massive files to be loaded each time you bring up a radar, and there are other reasons, too, but this is EXTREMELY time-consuming to prep each radar site county-by-county. You can download by county or state, or even USA, but I prefer to do it by county so I can choose which counties to load for each individual radar site. Anyway, after you download you have to load them + stylefiles into GR元. After browsing around a bit I see that 2021 shapefiles are apparently available but farmed out to "partners"? That is new.
