What3words

I’m sure this has been raised before, but it would be great to be able to use what3words.

On my iphone I can find an exact location in w3w, then share and can then open tomtom go which navigates to the w3w destination.

MRA isn’t offered as an option, and neither does MRA recognise w3w destinations

Stefan Hummelink

@Berin I recall this one being mentioned about 1.5 year ago or so. At that time it did not receive a lot of support and since then it has never been mentioned again;).

Con Hennekens

@Berin, I think the value of W3W is declining a lot, since there are so many options of sharing locations. Also the risc of making mistakes by misspellings and accents is a lot higher then when you pass a normal address.

@Con-Hennekens
I disagree entirely. It’s used for example by the emergency services in the UK, as well as many other organisations.

And any errors would be eliminated by opening MRA from w3w.

Con Hennekens

@Berin, it is of course entirely allowed to disagree. before the wishes of you, and the one before you in 2022, I had never heard of W3W. Virtually no one in Europe uses this system, and I think it is for good reason. This time I will not make the criticism up myself:

What I did not know, but found out just now:

Are you by any chance affiliated to W3W?

EDIT:
Even in the UK the W3W method is questioned...
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57156797

@Con-Hennekens

Rather rude, @Con-Hennekens. I am not in any way associated with W3W, other than as a frequent user.

I use a lot of unpaved roads and locations which do not have addresses and w3w is a perfect way to share these. Even finding houses, where there may be many houses in 1 postcode, or addresses on a business park, or entrances to parks, is made much easier with a precise location, and providing that location via w3w is a very easy way to do it.

The issue with getting the words wrong is of course fallacious in its entirety, especially when comparing it with providing a string of numbers and letters separated by different symbols that represent the corresponding lat/long.

Con Hennekens

@Berin, Oh I am sorry but I was not in the least intending to be rude, hence the . I just don't think W3W is worth it, and it will most likely not be free to use for MRA. The same difficulty people have pronouncing strings of numbers is also limiting the use of words instead. The examples linked to above explain that. Thereby people these days are more and more sharing locations by app, with exact coordinates, so neither method is really adding value to anything anymore. And obviously I am not alone in this.

Con Hennekens

@Berin, Still I was intrigued... Could I be so wrong about it? So I have been playing around for five minutes. These are the results:

Below I was trying color.bicycle.mud

A new attempt with muddy instead of mud:

Below I was searching a location for colour.bicycle.mother. This is what I got:

I really don't want to offend anyone. But how can this be accurate?
Difference between color and colour is unhearable but leads to different results
On the phone mother can easily be mistaken by other or vice versa
And there are of course plenty of other examples possible.

@Con-Hennekens

I'm really not sure what point you are making.

You've typed in 3 entirely different word sequences and no surprise got different locations. But I have never typed, manually, a w3w address - I've opened it in a nav app, or texted it, or emailed it, or airdropped it. Oddly that never gets the location wrong.

Consider this as an alternative:

36.279707, 3.076172

Transposing 2 numbers moves the point 100's of miles.

This is the same place.

36° 16' 40.9452'' N 3° 4' 34.2192'' E

Different numbers. Different format. Big opportunity for confusion

Spelling 3 easy words? Quite easy.

Corjan Meijerink

Thanks for the suggestion.
It has been a suggestion posted before but at this point MRA does not find the need to implement this.

As this discussion does not appears to become very constructive, I'll lock the thread