Navigation Route Options

Hello, Stan:

Depending on whether you have the Intouch PRO navigation system, or the STANDARD BASE Intouch version I have on my humble XE prestige, my advice may or may not help you much.

There’s a STACK of preference settings that are hidden in your SatNav Settings menu. “Hidden” is the right word, because as you’ve noticed, the owner’s manual doesn’t care JACK about helping us understand where and what the settings are. My Lord!.

I found by a lot of digging around in the menu, that the SatNav decides what route to guide you on, based on realtime traffic problems being reported to it on the fly.

It also decides to keep you on your original directions, or RE-route you in the middle of your trip, based on HOW LONG a delay the traffic problem is estimated to cause. (How it estimates the amount of delay a particular traffic incident will result in, I don’t know).

I do know that there is a setting in the menu called “TMC” or “TMZ”. When you select it, it allows you to pick how LONG a traffic delay you want the SatNav to allow before it decides to re-route you off your current path.

There is also a setting that instructs the SatNav to ‘warn” you how long the traffic delay is FIRST (so you can choose whether to sit in the traffic or not), OR you can instruct SatNav to autonomously make the re-route decision for you without even telling you it has done so or giving you a preference NOT to be re-routed.

By DEFAULT, it finds 3 possible routes for you to take, but always gives you the most fuel-economical route. Not the shortest route or the fastest route.
Once it initially maps out a route for you, BEFORE you touch that box on the screen that says “yes”, touch the “options” box next to it. This will allow you to select “Fastest Route”, or “Shortest Route” or “Economical Route”, very similar to good old Mapquest.

Also, once you’ve selected your route, touching one of the icons on the left side of your map will bring up the option called “Turn List”. This shows your directions in a Mapquest-style print format.

Took me 2 months to get SatNav on the XE to finally excel at its job, and earn some bragging rights. There are a dozen settings and preferences I had to find in the menus that really need to be selected, but I hope these few I mentioned here are helpful to you. Let me know.

Yikes, don’t get the wrong idea that I am knowledgeable at the Intouch PRO version of the SatNav. Mine is the standard InTouch with the 8.5 inch screen, and from what I’ve read, there’s a trade off between the two systems.

My standard system is a pretty much refined and completed Navigation set-up, with a healthy amount of presets to go through… but I don’t think there’s any room for software patches and improvements to change how it works.

I think the InTouch PRO may feel jittery and incomplete right now, missing some of the options that even the humble standard version has… but the PRO is expected to be added to with new software expansions from Jaguar as the months go by. If that’s so, yours will surpass and get way better than my SatNav version.

I’ll try to post some pictures of the menu screen options, from when I’m driving on some errands over the next few days. Then you can check your PRO SatNav menu---some of the same options OUGHT to be available on both our versions.

All my steps and my photos are from the InTouch STANDARD nav, with the 8.5” screen. The numbers you see in RED are added by me for reference.
From what I’ve heard from owners of both versions, the STANDARD seems to be the fully refined Nav system (and the Jag technicians are kinda proud of it), while the PRO seems more driven by the idea that you’ll be buying your car with a rudimentary half-complete Nav in it, and every other month expansion packs will be added to its brain to fully refine it later. But this is just my optomistic theory.

http://www.jaguarxeforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=706&thumb=1

See the RED "1" on the screen above? Touch that symbol, and you get what I think is called the "guidance" menu.
This menu creates a lot of the objects and clutter that appear on your 8.5 inch screen while you're being guided on the route.
Location of traffic jams, type of traffic jam, lane recommendation symbols, repeat next-turn instruction, estimated ETA… on a tiny screen that can be TOO MUCH info.
You’ll have to pick the visual items that suite the way YOUR mind drives a car, and turn off the ones that really don’t work for YOU. This takes time to weed out.
On Settings Pg-1, anything that has a check box next to it, first try driving with the item Unchecked, and see what you prefer.

http://www.jaguarxeforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=714&thumb=1

Play Voice Guidance Prompts--is a debate. If you have a jealous passenger, or wish the voice had a British accent like the UK Jaguars have, you don’t need it (her directions are given to you in at least two other ways on the trip).
But if you drive mostly in seriously busy commuter cities, she is great for telling you about brand new traffic problems popping up around your current route. I tend to keep her turned ON. She comes in handy in conjunction with two other settings I found, and I'll explain this later.

Lane Recommendation--- See the first photo where I marked it with a "2". This row of arrows along the bottom of the map help me on the city expressway, where there isn’t a whole lot of time for me to get in the right lanes.

http://www.jaguarxeforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=738&thumb=1

JUNCTION VIEW--- Apparently Garmin users are very familiar with this graphic. (Remember Garmin?). If you have the Junction View box checked, every time you get to a fork in the road, or a lane-split on the highway, your SatNav map on the screen will briefly be replaced with this second picture.

http://www.jaguarxeforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=730&thumb=1
In a Jaguar, this image matches the time of day when you’re driving, shows which lane you want to get in, and which lanes you need to avoid. You get this screen automatically when you get within about ½ a mile before an important junction. This is familiar to Garmin users, and works for me when I’m on the expressway. But you have to decide for yourself if it’s useful.

TMC Route Mode--To me this setting has the most powerful control over SatNav.
Let’s say 20 minutes after you’ve started driving on a course that the Nav has created for you, the SatNav “sees” a new traffic accident that just happened somewhere ahead on guided route. You haven’t reached the area yet, but eventually the traffic is going to clog up, with you in it. If you've set TMC Delay Mode to 'Manual', SatNav will notify you of the traffic problem ahead, and the screen will ask you if you want to be Re-routed around the traffic jam before you get caught in it. You get to choose whether you want to go around it, or want to take your chances with a little slow traffic with no regrets.

If you set the TMC Route Mode on 'Automatic', SatNav will make the re-routing decision without you.
You won’t know WHY you’re being told to get off a perfectly good-looking road, and it may not seem logical to you---you’re simply being told “now, take the next right and get off this road”. You just have to trust that something just happened somewhere up ahead, which caused SatNav to kick you onto a new route.

If you set TMC Route Mode to “By Delay Time”, SatNav's decision to re-route or not re-route will be based on the estimated delay the traffic problem will (likely) cause.
IF you choose “by delay time”, you also have to adjust the next setting, to tell SatNav HOW LONG a delay you consider reasonable. A NYC driver like me doesn’t mind sitting in a traffic delay of 10 minutes, (but longer than that, and I start to feel trapped). So I set mine for 10, and SatNav will only re-route me if there’s a brand new traffic problem ahead that’s going to slow my trip down by 11 minutes or more.

…I have never tried driving with the TMC Route Mode set to OFF.