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On 6/16/2016 12:18 AM, John D. Howard wrote:
> I think the north-bias should be universal.  Take New Zeland - when I
> landed in Christchurch and rented a car I could drive around and know
> where things were because the map was north up - just like driving
> around Paris or Toyko.  Try finding Mt. Fuji by reading a map where east
> is up.

An interesting notion. My automotive Garmin GPS allows me to choose
either north as up or my direction of travel as up. North up takes me a
second or two of thought to orient my vehicle to the surroundings,
similar to standing while facing a direction other than north, then
trying to point out east, west etc. (I possess about zero innate sense
of direction.) Direction of travel up orients streets etc. to the
vehicle. Unless I am traveling in roughly the same direction the
constant rotation of the display is unnerving to me. It robs me of the
information most important to me, that being an overview of where I am
in space and direction of travel.

As a sidebar, a close friend of mine now has his masters license. He
preferred direction of travel up on his automotive GPS. When he was
testing for his captain's license, even though he had taken an extensive
training course, he failed the navigation portion and was on the phone
to me for help. We got him through the retest with flying colors. As you
might imagine we used different screens on our Garmin handheld marine
units (before they displayed charts) when sailing together. He liked the
highway, I opted for the compass with course and bearing.

   

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