Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation | Hacker News Reader

Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

theguardian.com

202 pointsmislankanova87 comments

Fascinating article. I love getting lost in Tokyo too. Here are a couple of tips I could add in case of Tokyo...

* All the TV antennas point at Tokyo Sky Tree.

* All the regional train tracks (except Yamanote) are radial. They're all going toward Yamanote Line.

* Major named streets (except "Kanjo" or circular streets) go to the Emperor Palace.

* Tokyo is a city carved by rivers, so it has many ups and downs. Pay attention to town names that are typically indicative of its configuration, e.g. -yama (mountain), -oka (hill), -tani/-gaya (valley), -saka (slope) etc.

* Beware of subway lines and subway exits because their shapes are very unpredictable, with confusing station names.

Looking at the title, I guessed this would be an article about Tristan Gooley, and yes, it was - I read "The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs" and it was both entertaining and informative. If you do outdoor activities, it is a nice supplement (even if you keep using GPS etc). Just parsing the environment a bit better is so much fun and kind of deepens the experience.

I recently started to watch the birds as well when hiking, and that again gave more depth and makes me feel more a part of nature. The example in the article of loud bird cacophony as a sign for something interesting happening is a good one. I was in Berlin's largest park yesterday, with birds tweeting around everywhere, but at some point, it was a bit off, so I stopped and started looking, and sure enough, there was a beautiful buzzard hunting.

Trees are the kind of obvious thing to watch, and they tell a lot about the environment. The next thing I'll try to get a better understanding for is weather phenomena (actually the most helpful thing to learn for outdoor activities as it can save your life). There's also a similar book by Gooley on how to "read water" which looks interesting.

Tristan Gooley was interviewed on the Rough Guide podcast late last year: https://pca.st/RvTf I found his approach to staying oriented fascinating.

I live in Berlin too, and I do that a lot. I put my phone in my pocket, take random directions until I get loss, then slowly find my way back. I discovered a lot of things that way, and learned to orient myself in the city. I also saw lots of nice little gems that go unnoticed if you are not paying attention.

A useful one for Berlin: trains usually drive on the right, so you know which way a station is by looking at the train signs.

GPS is a great way to get from point A to point B without learning the first thing about the location that the route guidance software is navigating for you. If you're only passing through, fine. But you just don't build the same mental model of an area when you don't have to think about it. When the phone dies or there's no reception, you're utterly helpless. When I'm navigating my local areas, I only use a map application to plan routes and occasionally to correct course (like you'd use a physical map). I'd encourage everyone to give it a shot. Don't be a foreigner in your own city!

But maps give you additional advantage such as , live traffic due to which I save time by taking a different route (may be caused due to an accident or other reason)

Cell phone maps are utterly useless in too many situations. A lack of reception being one. Or equally as bad -- too much reception, as in competing GPS and cell triangulation signals bouncing off buildings in a dense urban environment.

People always make the excuse that you can just download the maps into the phone. But that wouldn't have helped me in the places I've been over the last two weeks when my phone repeatedly went into thermal shutdown because the ambient air temperature was too hot. (No, I don't have a case that traps the heat.)

If I relied on electronic maps, I'd be lost or dead or both by now.

(Even better than paper maps are maps printed on cloth, which you can get wet, roll into a ball and stuff into your jeans, etc... But those are kind of rare.)

If you're going into a situation where you'll end up lost or dead, then certainly yes do not rely on electronic maps.

For the average GPS-using situation, the worst case scenario is they you to start reading road signs or stop ask for help. In these cases, a GPS navigator can be very handy, such as on a road trip I took last year through an area where an earthquake had shut down a significant portion of the road network. Either I sit for hours and pour over lists of road closures and construction dates and cross them off my paper map (the info changes monthly so there aren't any preprinted maps), or just use an app that already knows everything.

I don't need reception to use a cell phone map. I often load up PDF maps of the area where I am, as well as public transport route maps.

Of course there are situations where cell phone or similar devices don't work well -- particularly, rain or frost. Apple devices in particular are hopelessly bad in cold temperatures.

Just don't rely on GPS always telling where you are.

This is even more important in the outdoors - I had an instance last year where I messed up and didn't check the weather report before going, so I found myself in the middle of a forest in what turned out as the worst storm of the year. My phone's touchscreen immediately became unusable because of heavy rain and no cover. I fell back to a mix of intuitive knowledge of the area and a small compass I keep on my wristwatch, for general direction. It was a not so much fun run through a massive thunderstorm but worked out fine in the end.

I prefer to discover my city by taking long walks. The car is for getting from point A to B as efficiently as possible.

I'd love some kind of GPS mode that just gave the most important or trickiest directions, then was completely silent for the rest of the trip.

I know how to get out of my neighborhood and onto the northbound freeway. I'll never need directions to do this. I know I'll be driving for 30 minutes. I just need the exit to take when it's coming up, and a few tricky turns near the destination. Just give me that and I'll figure out the rest.

A related thing I'd like is a navigation system which understands that some turns are not important. If I'm driving on a Manhattan-style grid, I'd like it to say "You could turn here if you want, but straight is good too." I'd probably go straight if it's green and I'm doing 45, but if I'm at the head of the queue and it's red, I'd rather turn right.

Or maybe a navigation system that has a bit of personality. I feel like they've remained robotic while companies try to inject a personality into their personal assistant counterparts.

It used to be a thing to download celebrity voices to your TomTom. John Cleese was popular.

There's a Japanese navigation app that has a bunch of anime voice actresses doing different stereotypical characters. You take a wrong turn and they scold you, or ask if you're feeling OK http://maplus-sp.jp/voice_list.html?ct=cvi1

100% agree with you and parent comment, though Google does make some effort to offer alternatives (with "about the same"/"x minutes slower" annotations), and regardless of that, you can always skip a turn or turn sooner and let it adjust.

Google Maps used to have a mode where they only announce important turns, or if you miss one. But I can't find it in the app anymore.

Try turning off the sound in your map app. That way you can ignore the steps you already know and look at your phone whenever you need directions.

Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear mentioned in passing, that you should always program your navigation device so that north is up, not direction of travel is up, and (in his typical hyperbolic manner) "you'll never get lost again.".

I liked this tip, it shows me the general direction I'm going (east/west/south), not "up" through an unfamiliar geography that morphs when you turn.

I didn't know Clarkson said this (though I know he said many other things). Here I've been taking his advice without even knowing he said it.

This is a low grade source of tension between my wife and I. Neither of us used gps until about 12 years ago. She didn’t actually drive for a long time - was driven or took public transport. So north doesn’t mean nearly as much to her as “what’s right in front”l right now”. Similarly, I find the 3D exit ramp overpays distracting - I always feel more comfortable with plain maps.

Likewise. It's not because my wife can't read a map - she's an orienteering enthusiast and can handle it, but alas, orienteering competitors tend to hold their paper map with the direction of their line of running on top.

I can't even do a run in the forest so that I'd turn the map, I still want to keep north to the top.

Oh my, I find it so annoying when maps in public places don't have north up.

Usually when I'm in a new place, before leaving my hotel I look at the map and I remember where to go, which turn to take etc. There only problem is metro - I don't know which exit to take, so I always check the map of the area at the metro station. So I look at the map, I know the street I'm going to is in the south, but I cannot find it. Only then I remember to look around the corners of the map, and then I realize, that south is on the right!

I've been wondering why don't just all maps have north up, and I could never come with a very good explanation.

Barcelona is one place where this happens. The coast goes SW - NE but many maps are aligned to make it look going north - south. We got lost once trying to navigate west :)

Ha. Can't believe someone mentioned Barcelona. Went to London and a few other European cities and my cheapo-wrist compass made it so easy to navigate.

Then we reached Barcelona, where every damn road is at a 45 degree angle! Argh. It's not trivial -- at least when you've had several sangrias -- to stand at an intersection, facing NE, and then try to figure out whether to turn left or right to go SE. (Yes, yes... In sure someone here will reply as to how simple it all is... But, keep in mind the sangrias...)

Those maps are usually orientated so that the direction you're looking at them is how things are laid out.

From traveling in different countries, I've learned to first look for the compass rose before assuming north is up.

That's fine if your navigation device has a big screen or is at least close to square. With the typical aspect ratio on a phone, you can't see far enough ahead if you travel east or west with north up. (See also, why don't more navigation systems show you the next three or four turns, so you know which lane to choose when you make turns)

This may be unique to following roads. As far as I can recall, the advice when performing pilotage (navigating by the correspondence of the landscape to the map), whether hiking, sailing or flying, is to orient the map according to the direction you are looking, which is most often the direction you are traveling. When using an electronic map in a car (as a passenger of course), I prefer north-up if I am finding a route and forwards-up if I am following directions.

Maps that always rotate with you are the bane of my existence. I don't understand why would anyone want such a catastrophe. Luckily, you can lock north on top in most apps.

Once I was travelling through Morocco and the general advice I got from other turists even before the trip was “don’t trust the gps”. It turned out the medinas (old towns) themselves were so densly packed, that you could not see much of the sky to get any lock on satellites, and the internet coverage was very spotty.

And you “had” to learn how to read paper maps, because otherwise you’d fall pray to the many “tourist guides” that will scam you for 5-10 bucks each time, or worse. In that unique environment, where there's a need and a threat model, you get the hang of it pretty quickly, and boy oh boy was it worth it, after the inital bit were you “learn the map” I could navigate the busy winding streets of marakesh with confidence, spending way more time looking at the splendor of the souk(bazaar), choosing “alternative” routes to explore new areas, while having this worm “at home” feeling.

And that “skill” persisted for quite aome time after the trip. We had an orientation challenge team building event, and my tream beat everyone handily mainly because of the medina training I got :)

I got the same advice in Edinburgh. Apparently the old crazy roads and verticality really don’t translate well into a 2D-ish plane and route finding algorithm!

> It turned out the medinas (old towns) themselves were so densly packed, that you could not see much of the sky to get any lock on satellites, and the internet coverage was very spotty.

Instead of a paper map I usually use Openstreetmap (OsmAnd client) for that - you download the map beforehand, and then just read it like a paper map in case you have no satellite. Switch on landmarks etc for recognising places better. It also has much more footways and small streets than google maps.

I haven't been in all medinas of Morocco, but never had a problem with GPS there, have you actually tried to use it? :) I think the only place where I really had a problem were Caruggi of Genoa.

One tip to have a better location awareness with electronic map is to enable trip recording, if you see your previous way you can sort of continue walking "inertially".

I did try using Google Maps on my phone in Marrakesh a few years back and it failed completely and left me with an astounding data roaming charge.

Easier to pay a local to walk you back to your hotel if you get completely lost!

Nowadays Google Maps lets you download an area ahead of time, and then use it offline.

Still doesn't help since Marrakech medina has practically no streets drawn in on GMaps / OSM and you're not getting a GPS lock worth a damn. Your phone will just put you somewhere a few 10m off which can easily be another snaky street.

Maps are awesome there.

(This is experience from this year.)

It was more like swimming in deep waters - sometimes you get to an area with a big enough opening that you get satellite lock in, get your bearings and can once again “dive”. But not using gps at all was a lot more fun though

I was in Marrakech before smart phone maps. I did once get lost in the Medina for about an hour before finding a familiar landmark.

I took a road trip from Ouarzazat to the dunes in the south east near Algeria. Some of the directions to hotels included “take THE road south of the village and turn off the road at the sign about 41 km from the city. From there head east on the hard sand about 9km. Follow the dunes counter clockwise until you reach the hotel.” That was an awesome adventure!

I just had a discussion about this with a friend of mine, Jaffar Salih (we studied Interaction Design together so topics like this fascinate us), and what he remarked is that navigation apps could actually be educational tools for learning to navigate yourself. They just need to add clear markers of landmarks in their route descriptions.

Even more interesting: since Google already keeps track of where you are very often, it could use your favourite shawarma place or regular bus stop as a "personalised landmark". to give you things to orient by and help you connect the dots and fill in the gaps. Same thing with familiar routes.

My "counter-argument" was that it was not in Google Maps's interests to make you less dependent on their navigation app. But maybe someone should get on making an OSM-based kind of app that does it instead.

A classic book is "Cross Country Navigation" by Neil Phillips and Rod Phillips (1989), aimed at the sport of Rogaining. It emphasises navigation by using the surrounding landscape and its features, rather than trying to impose a rigid coordinate system on the landscape. In this way, one works with the landscape, continually adapting to follow the (quickest) path of least effort, rather than trying to blast through on a preconceived "best" course. The philosophy is the same, whether one is inside or outside a city. It's sort of like Parkour on a large scale.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/cross-country-navigation/oclc...

"Look for satellite dishes. They all point towards the equator. In London, that is roughly south-southeast."

If by "roughly south-southeast" you mean "south" and by "in London" you mean "in the northern hemisphere" :).

Well the direction depends which satellite is been tracked on the geostationary orbit.

So depending where you are on Northen hemisphere and which satellite provider are you using your satellite dish points to anywhere between south-west to south-east.

For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_(satellite)

Geostationary satellites occupy specific spots over the equator. If you want to catch a satellite from the edge of its reception area, you point the dish quite noticeably eastward or westward. Since the Atlanteans never put up TV satellites, in the UK that means all the dishes are either pointing south or southeast, never southwest. You can often take a surprisingly educated guess at the immigrant ratio of a building just from looking at where the dishes are pointed.

In the UK almost every satellite dish will be a minidish and pointing to 28.2E. Sure a few ex-pats will have dishes pointing at other locations, but they won't be the typical sky dish.

That only really works in the UK though. If I go up to the roof of the building I'm in now, I see some dishes pointing east, some west, and some directly up (well almost)

Something I loved about living in Bogota, was how easy it was to navigate there.

The whole city was built on a grid, with the east-west streets increasing in number as you went north. And the North-south streets increasing in number as you go east to west.

There is a mountain range to the east, so if you can see the mountains, and know what streets you're on, you can always find your way

Something i love about much of Tokyo is many of the streets curve and twist which makes walking around feel like an adventure of things to be discovered vs just a utility of getting from here to there. I agree curvy street cities are harder to navigate but I find them much more romantic.

They can both be helpful. The grid system is great for getting from coordinate (a,b) to (c,d). Much better than a natural city core as most older european cities have (and I mean old in the european meaning, i.e. >1000 years). But grids are extremely bad for mental mapping, as they are virtually featureless. So to remember your paths in a city without the coordinate system, it is much more helpful if the place has curves and outstanding features and little weirdnesses and so on (you can have outstanding sites along the way on a grid as well obviously, but because the streets are all just long tunnels, you will almost never see anything of it except for extremely tall parts like the mentioned mountains outside, or very high buildings).

For me grids are way better for mental mapping!

Each street and intersection has different buildings, stores and vibe.

I love Tokyo's chaotic street layout. It yields great opportunities for exploring. And since so much of the city is reachable without a car, it's the next door neighbor to user-friendly.

I have a map/guidebook from the early 80's that explains how the system works in great detail, and once you understand it, it becomes easier and easier. You also learn instinctively which addresses are near each other.

The book stated that unlike in some cities with chaotic street schemes (I'm looking at you, London), Tokyo's wasn't organic. It was done on purpose to confuse potential invaders.

I don't know if it's true, but that thought has always stuck with me.

Venice is also like this. Unless youre following the canal, the city itself is a twisty little maze of passages, all unique.

Twisty little maze of cabbages, all alike. Sorry, OT, couldn't resist.

That mountain range and Monserrate are super helpful. Similar in Rio de Janeiro, once you know the different rock outcroppings around the city, it's really easy to locate yourself.

The thing about Rio is to learn where the coast takes turns. I used to live in a neighborhood where the sea faced east; now I live in another area where the sea faces south. I used to get confused!

Even if you don't have the sea in visible distance, many major urban roads are roughly parallel, strong sudden winds come from the sea, etc.

Much of rural America is like this. It's useful for pinpointing people in emergency situations.

Unfortunately, it leads to ugly addresses like:

  Jane Doe
  E18873 Rural Route 74
  Smalltown US, 80001

Or even worse...

  Jane Doe
  N7883 W17382
  Smalltown, US 80001

Precise for first responders with auto-routing. Not exactly descriptive for humans.

I think grid-based cities are almost soulless. Designed for routing efficiency and land parcelling, and not for human living. Very little in the way of designed vistas, and not much scope for landmark buildings to add up and create an aspect. The architecture seldom gets a chance to create an emotional impact on the pedestrian. In fact grid-based systems are usually not designed for pedestrians at all.

I'm guessing GPS has saved more marriages than any other modern technology.

I'm guessing that's still less than the number of marriages ended by the cellular phone.

Counterpoint: the automatic ice-maker

I'm very confused and interested. What do you mean by that?

https://youtu.be/oM51OMn3Kdk

No more fighting over who took the last of the ice (especially if someone took from the wrong tray or did not refill an empty - you monster).

Although the iceman interpretation works too ;)

Kinda like pilots learning to land again.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/automation-addiction-pilot...

"the sun rises in the east, sets in the west and moves through the southern sky"

That last part is dependent on your latitude, correct? If you were far enough south, the sun would move through the northern sky, wouldn't it?

Fear not, you are correct.

Yes, it does depend on your latitude.

> The first qualitative change occurs at 23.5° latitude, where the noon sun on the June solstice passes directly overhead. This latitude is called the Tropic of Cancer. Farther south, in the so-called tropics, the noon sun will appear in the northern sky for a period of time around the June solstice. At the equator, the noon sun is straight overhead on the equinoxes. And after you pass 23.5° south latitude (the Tropic of Capricorn), the noon sun is always in the north. Much farther south is the Antarctic Circle, where the sun never quite rises on the June solstice and never quite sets on the December solstice. Researchers at the South Pole have continuous daylight from September through March, and continuous night (including twilight) from March through September.

[1] https://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/ua/SunAndSeasons.html

Yes, Gooley's books focus mostly on what he experienced in Britain - they would probably be useful in other northern european countries, or maybe in northern parts of America, but (I guess) not so much in New Mexico etc, where vegetation and animals are wildly different. They're interesting reads and good introductions, but if you want that kind of understanding for travels outside that area, you probably need more local information and general knowledge.

Yes, anywhere south of the Tropic of Capricorn

Yes, and I still hate myself for not specifically looking at this aspect when I spent 6 months in Argentina. Six months with the sun turning in the wrong direction with me not having any clue of it!

Yes, and in the tropics it depends on the time of year. For instance I've just been reading this thread on the walk from the hotel to the office in Nairobi. It's about noon, and the sun was high on my right shoulder, so as it's May I was walking West.

When I did the same walk in February at the same time the sun was high on my left shoulder.

However assuming the sun does rise (i.e. you're not in a polar region near the solstices), it will always rise somewhere to the east (even if it's south-south-east) and set somewhere to the west.

First time in Southern hemisphere (RSA, in late July i.e. winter): come from the airport, settle at the Jburg hotel, take a bit of a walk and find a nice restaurant, decide it's warm enough to sit down and have a beer at the terrace.

Choose a nice table that'll be in the sun for the next hour... and 5 minutes later realize that yes, the sun moves the other way round than in Northern hemisphere.

If you really want to learn "natural navigation" but don't want to leave home: https://www.geoguessr.com/maps/world https://www.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/ for tournaments (Warning:Its a major timesink)

I navigate natural instead of using the gps to force the brain to learn the way. Otherwise without using it the geospatial part of the brain gets lazy. One is also forced to ask strangers for directions and help. I World recommend trying more natural navigation. We are evolved to rapidly learn the way through geospatial points ie memory learning techniques like Loki.

Toadalone's comment is worth reading: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/may/06/ditchin...

Every now and then, when my wife and I leave a place we’ve driven to in our car (rare in the city) we’ll intentionally go out of the way and make a game of finding our way back. You always get to see a new neighborhood with different character.

Since I mentioned biking, thats also another great way to see a place differently and learn your way around.

Having lived in old cities/towns with high traffic, you adapt by finding shortcuts where you can save time on a frequent commute. The bigger the city, the higher average commute time it seems. The longer of a drive you can accumulate those shortcuts too. After getting used to always being on the lookout for a faster route, moving to a smaller metro area, with better, newer infrastructure, it's been an odd mental adjustment. Almost like I forgot how to relax, and now that I can, I still charge ahead. I can see that being a contentious issue in the future with car ownership, vs giant companies just providing transportation, and what sort of greater good compromises will be made to demand safer and safer transportation.

Amusing how we let go of some technological item to suddenly re-discover the world.

When I gave up smartphones for a period of time I found myself wondering what I could do to spend the time on my ~1hr commute home. I remember being excited when an old acquaintance caught the same train as me, knowing I could pass the time talking. I ended up getting to know a lot of the Train Transport officers because we'd talk about the weather or some local incident.

Not having Google Maps though - that was not a fun experience at all. Yes, I asked people but usually they didn't know and would whip out their smartphones to consult Google Maps on my behalf. The worst thing is when you're in a rush or when the weather is bad. You can't afford to spend extra time looking for that place you need to be, especially if you're looking for a public toilet in your city.

Interesting, I occasionally use GPS in areas I have not been to. My general philosophy is navigation by approximation, slowly closing in on a destination by finding big landmarks first. Its not the most efficient but it makes for great tours and trips when not in a rush.

This is exactly me and my friends are doing these days. When we have enough time and we want to go someplace on the other side of the city. Instead of using maps to navigate we follow a general direction to reach a landmark first then look at the map once to see our route from there.

During my time in London I used similar tricks (looking for the sun or finding the BT tower by looking for some window reflections) to find my way after leaving the tube, but then I was taking a vacation in Rio de Janeiro and when I was walking towards to sun to reach the south facing copacabana I had to learn that in Rio the sun is north :-/

At first I felt kinda stupid but then I realized, it was my first time on the southern hemnisphere and until that point the sun was always south of me ;-)

I've got no sense of direction. Zero. I can get lost in my own office or go the wrong way down a street I've been down 100 times.

Still, I've noticed that because I bike and walk around when I can I'm much more able to get around San Francisco than most of my friends. You just use a much larger and more generalizable set of "clues" to get around. When you use GPS there's no decision making so you never really learn why you turned on Street X not Street Y.

Washington, D.C. has a street name system which, once you know it, can help you get around without a map or anything.

https://dc.curbed.com/2014/8/13/10061100/facts-and-myths-abo...

I switch off the navigation sometimes on UK roads. The roads here a signposted well, so it's not really that tough to stay on the right path. It's actually quite a pleasurable drive when you're not continually monitoring the sat nav. Plus, I'm more aware of the road conditions.

magic compass only showing the general direction of your target:

android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pointtopoi...

iOS https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/crowsflight/id444185307?mt=8

(haven't tried either yet)

I remember navigating without GPS. No, but thanks no.

The only thing a Marine fears more than a Sailor with a rifle is a Lt with a map and compass.

LOL. At least when I was in the Army 2002-2006, they were still teaching land navigation using map, compass, and protractor. GPS-enabled devices were absolutely forbidden on the land nav course. We also did night land nav, which was definitely more difficult :) I would bet the military still teaches folks how to navigate sans-GPS, because assuming GPS would remain available during a conflict with another great power would be... foolish.

Also, north-is-up mode is the only way to go when navigating with your smartphone :)

No thanks. I have a horrible sense of direction and constantly get lost. I could not live without Google Maps any longer.

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