> followed by a (north-centric, vs. vehicle bearing) map.
Isn't north-centric map confusing for you in such situations? I know it is for me. Vehicle bearing maps take away one quite expensive mental step of translating and rotating your world to fit the map (or vice versa) in your imagination. I personally always prefer maps oriented in the direction where I'm heading, to the point that I always rotate paper maps in my hand so that it is constantly aligned with the direction I'm looking at. I wonder if anyone else does the same?
I sit there rotating my phone sometimes to point in the direction I am facing. Last thing I need to worry about while lost is "is that turn really a right turn like it shows, or left because I'm headed south?"
It might be easier to know which direction your turn is, but using bearing vs. north=up maps makes it a lot harder to learn where things are around you in general. I keep my "next turn" vehicle-relative, but the map display itself north=up, which seems to be the best of both worlds.
I liked the existing SatNav in my Prius for this. I could split the display, the left hand side showing the 3D turn-by-turn navigation view, and the right showing a top down, north-oriented view. On longer trips, I'd also zoom the right map all the way out to show start and end, so I could visualize the entire trip.
I hate it when my GPS does it, i can't turn it off and it completely disorients me to the point where I can't tell where things are properly. I always keep my map north facing and in my mind always have east as right, I am not a great navigator, maybe maps oriented in my direction is the way to go, but it doesn't make sense to me. I do sort of have to turn to tell if it's a right or left coming up, but at least I know where i am in relation to other objects in the map.
Isn't north-centric map confusing for you in such situations? I know it is for me. Vehicle bearing maps take away one quite expensive mental step of translating and rotating your world to fit the map (or vice versa) in your imagination. I personally always prefer maps oriented in the direction where I'm heading, to the point that I always rotate paper maps in my hand so that it is constantly aligned with the direction I'm looking at. I wonder if anyone else does the same?