How to make custom vehicle icons

very nice! good job on the vehicles!

I'd like to see some supercars.....that would be cool..

The owner of the website is active on gpspassion.com.

Great Mach 5!! Thanks for the vehicles. Hope you can find a 1960s Batmobile to work on!

Would be good if the file names had the halo color. Couldn't figure it out from the letter suffixes. Why did you choose blue and yellow? The yellow blends in nicely with the day maps. Are the blues for night?

How about an Ambulance????

those two colors best contrast the colors of the vehicles i made. my preference is still for white which is (and should have been but for the masking problem) almost invisible in daylight mode.

next time i update the files -- which won't be this week -- i'll include the halo color in the filenames.

Let's not stop there... how 'bout a taxi cab, police cruiser, wrecker, bus (school, charter), 18 wheeler, fire engine, the chariot from "Lost in Space", a Star Wars speeder, Nascar favorites, etc...

I prefer the white also. What is the masking problem?

Does there need to be a halo? It doesn't look like the Garmin vehicles have much of a halo at all.

but i prefer having them. the haloes have nothing to do with the masking problem -- doesn't help, doesn't hurt.

the masking problem has to do with the fact that the alpha only seems to handle black or white pixels. i suspect that this is a flaw in the ping to srf converter. any level of gray pixels produces trashy edge artifacts. but gray levels are needed to produce a smooth anti-aliased edge. otherwise the edge is harsh and jagged.

after much experimentation (as evidenced by the letter suffixes on my srfs), i've found the problem can be minimized by placing the icons, with or without halo on an absolutely black (rgb 0,0,0) background. then tighten the alpha by pushing most of the gray levels to either absolute black or white (see illustrations using photoshop).

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m78/aarrgghhv2/batmobile/...

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m78/aarrgghhv2/batmobile/...

it would be nice to get garmin's in-house converter, which i suspect doesn't suffer the masking problem. especially since they've apparently gone to a new format with accepts even larger icon dimensions.

Geez, this thread has really taken off. I absolutely love it. Thanks for getting this going "aarrgghh" and all the hard work you are putting into creating these vehicles. Custom vehicles was something that was missing.

Thanks for the explanation. I have noticed edge effects on some of the vehicles from the German site.

just an obsession of mine. who doesn't want to drive a batmobile? this is as close as it gets for most of us.

Thanks again! I've got most of them loaded for my different moods.

Mio

Lots of great icons - now I just need to build a fleat of vehicles as expansive as the icon library...

a new vehicle icon is up on my blog and available for download: the 1966 tv batmobile. i have to thank the folks at 1966batmobile.com for the treasure trove of reference material.

http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-thats-missing...

Love your contributions and I know this website appreciates all of your hard work!!

agreed.

nice pchopping!

Very nice aarrgghh, thanks for the hard work.

something a little different this time -- the beatles' yellow submarine:

http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-thats-missing...

I love it!

So has anyone noticed that Gramin has a new stock car? I thought they already had one and I looked through my old icons and they did already put one out. I found that there are two of them depending which Garmin page you use!

The new stock car #19 http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/

The old stock car #66 http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/bundles/allvehicles.html

The OLD ONE is a TRUCK. The NEW ONE is a CAR.

There are two cars #19 and #66 and one black truck #80.

So I have a very extensive supply of vehicle icons. (currently 123). 33 of them are different Mini coopers. I created a jpeg file of them since all you see in nuvi folders on the computer is the name.srf and not the picture. It is helpful since Garmin names the file differently than the online picture (i.e. Garmin names a picture online as "the BurbMobile" but the file is actually minivan.srf). Anyone interested in the jpeg of vehicle icons? Maybe Miss POI can put the jpeg online somewhere?

Paul

Since discovering that the vehicle icons can be changed, my wife is dying to get her light blue 2002 Prius sedan onto her Garmin screen. If anyone has an .srf of one (or knows where I might find the picture files to make one myself) you have the potential to help me become a hero. lol.

Actually, any light blue car that looks like this one would help until I can find the real thing:

http://www.edmunds.com/apps/vdpcontainers/do/MediaNav/styleI...

Thanks!

BTW, the instructions on this thread are GREAT.

Sorry, I don't have anything that resembles a cheese wedge but you can probably just do a paste and compy from Toyota's web page from their 3D views.

Are the vehicle icons interchangeable on the 7200?

Unfortunately not.

Anyone seen an airplane in the groups of vehicles posted? I like using the 200 while flying and thought it would be cool...

I think the difference is the #66 is from last year. They are sponsoring a new team/car (#19) this year. Still co-sponsored with Best Buy.

And the truck is from last year, too. I do not think they are sponsoring a truck anymore (at least I cannot see them mentioned on the www.NASCAR.com web site).

I think they just realized it since both those addresses now point to the #19 car.

Thank you for the Bat mobiles...great job.

Awesome job on the custom Batmobiles, lets see The Bumblebee Camaro from Transformers, and Optimus Primes Rig

Aconite,

Just wondering if you would send me the 2D arrow that you modified through email? I haven't had time to sit down and modify mine. Thanks....

very nice site, some of the custom vehicles are worthwile.

Hey - I've got both! I wonder if it is like owning a rare vintage automobile - will my #66 appeciate in value?

I have all the old icons too. I have saved all that has been available to a CD. They just put out an ambulance now. http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/bundles/allvehicles.html

Maybe if they hurry up, they can give us a Leprechaun for the next holiday!

WOW! Your Yellow Submarine is Brilliant!!! I'm a Beatles fanatic -- this is great! Now, can anyone make a VW Beetle? Mine is gold ... but any color would be nice!

I've made a plain white monster truck and thought I'd share it over here too. I posted it at:

http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=78125&...

the Garmin Garage just put out another vehicle. Now a Taxi Cab and it even has people inside. It looks like they are starting to crank them out now!

http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/

I wonder why they suddenly have been adding so many? 4 in last 2 weeks? Since they seem to be doing service vehicles lately I bet a Mail Truck is next!

Hopefully they make a good airplane soon.

I must say your persistence has paid off. You can be proud of your achievement. Well done!!! They look GREAT!

I am in need of a Zamboni. We travel all over for hockey and this would be a neat addition.

This might be an odd question buuuuut, what's the maximum number of vehicles that you can have on the Nuvi?

I am guessing as many as you have room for. But never tried it.

No known limit except the memory in your unit. I've had about a dozen at most on my nuvi 350. Also I don't think you can use SD cards for vehicles. Note each vehicles takes a little more than 1Mbyte.

I think I have about 6 or 7 on it now and the rest I store on my computer. When I get bored with the ones on there now, I just remove them on upload the others from the computer. I was just curious if there was a limit.

you're all very welcome.

aarrgghh -
Yes, the Batmobile and Mach 5 are both outstanding. My wife's expression was priceless when I chose the Batmobile for our last trip with the kids. She wants me to grow up now ... but I don't think I'm ready yet!!
Thanks again.

I just wanted to post this here since this thread has all the links to the customized vehicle icons.

All the posts above should be the icons listed in the attached jpg.

Clint was able to put it on his web page for me for easy access. (Thanks again Clint)

http://www.clintsworld.com/temp/nuvi_vehicles.jpg

Could it be that the Joker stole the best Batmobile ever!