Disable new cyan blob feature

On 25 Feb 10 I downloaded a UK map (gmapsupp.img) from Lambertus’s server at http://garmin.na1400.info/routable.php. (May I say how much I appreciate this service, since my modest home PC doesn’t have sufficient horsepower to make routable maps of this size.)

On my Etrex Legend HCx at higher (more detailed) zoom levels, each way now shows a cyan blob displayed on the centre. This seems to be a new feature (compared with a map downloaded end Jan 2010). If I “mouse over” these blobs then I get a “tooltip” box which displays the way name / . The way name is redundant because that’s already displayed on the map; the district text is mostly (in the small sample I’ve looked at so far) inaccurate, imprecise, or just plain wrong.

I find the blobs clutter the display, and as indicated add no useful info. Can I turn them off at source? If I configure my Garmin in Setup/Map/General/Detail to “Less” rather than my usual setting of “Normal” then the blobs go away, but I also lose other details that I’d rather retain.

This is a result of the --road-name-pois option for mkgmap. It allows you to search for roads by creating a POI for each road. Lambertus must have enabled this option recently, or changed the type code used for the POI, rendering them visible where once they weren’t. I don’t think there’s much you can do about it.

This “road-name-pois” contains bugs, it takes sometimes the wrong placename.
I prefer to disable this option or at least make it invisible because it clutters the map, too.

Thanks guys. I now see that this question has also been raised on the Worldwide routable Garmin maps: http://garmin.na1400.info/routable.php thread, and Lambertus has replied…

Martian with chicken pox describes the display very well, but I wasn’t sure it was the same disease that my latest map has got!

This --road-name-pois option that causes the the chickepox appearance had been added in the last update and proved to be unsuccessful IMHO. It does seems to fix the address search (generic POI street search) in some Garmin models but this behaviour on other models spoils the benefits. The option will be disabled on the next update.