Portable or vehicular navigating apparatus and method capable of

Abstract

In an apparatus and method for navigating a mobile body such as a vehicle or user, an accurate and easily grasping road map graphic data in a bird's eye display mode are achieved with a running route on which the mobile body has traveled maintained and having a continuity to the past running information and operability of the navigating apparatus is improved. In the navigating apparatus and method, the present position information and display parameter information are previously set, a line of sight is determined on the basis of the forwarding direction information, a view point position is determined on the basis of the forwarding direction is determined. A road map data expressed with a two-dimensional X-Y plane as a reference is stored. The road map data stored receive their coordinate transformations on the basis of the determined view point position and direction of line of sight to generate the bird's eye view. Such generated bird's eye view image data are output to a display unit so that the bird's eye view can be viewed from a display image screen. Furthermore, character data such as names of places are selectively superimposed on respective minor regions of the image screen without superimpositions on other character data belonging to adjacent minor regions.