Garmin's Birdseye imagery on your GPS

[Jmnhunter]

anyone try this 1 year subscription through garmin's HSOforum on your Garmin GPS yet? how are the quality of aerial photos throughout MN?

[MN Mike]

If no one chimes in by the end of the weekend I'll let you know how it works and how it looks.

I bought Birdseye early last winter after hunting season was over but I have not yet activated it ( Garmin sent a ' special offer ' for Birdseye ), I'll be heading west soon for Elk and Mule Deer hunting and I need to install it to a Garmin Colorado 300.

Mike

[Kirsch]

I have been very disappointed in Bird's Eye Imagery for Garmin. If you are used to using satellite imagery from Google Earth, Google Maps, Android Maps, Bing or virtually anything like this, Birdseye isn't in the same league unforutnately. The maps are way too large in size, downloads take forever and it just isn't user friendly. I downloaded a relatively small area about 20 miles by 20 miles, and it took almost all night to download and upload into the memory card.

I create GPS maps for a living so I take maps very seriously and to me the only good thing about Birds Eye was it was only $30. The idea of local data available is a good idea as downloading data realtime such as smartphones do isn't always a good idea either, but I have not been impressed so far.

[MN Mike]

Here are a few screen shots from the computer of the BirdsEye software.

The first one shows the difference between a low quality image download and the highest quality download. What I did was download an area in low quality, then I selected an area INSIDE of the low quality area to download in the highest quality, there is a big difference in image quality as you can see by the road detail, farm field detail, building site detail and the woods ( especially where the blue line cuts thru that woods ). Anything inside the blue border is the highest quality setting.

Below is our hunting area in Colorado, looks like it will be a good reference tool, you can see clear cuts ( old and new ), county road ( upper right corner ), logging trail ( left hand side ), ranch road ( middle of the screen above the BirdsEye pop up, meadows and creeks. This was not the highest quality image I could download, just the middle of the road setting.

The lower image is just a tighter shot on a draw we hunt.

I uploaded this image to my Garmin and it gives me a similar quality view. I would say the image quality is better than the free version of Google Earth but not spectacular.

Mike

[Jmnhunter]

kirsch, what areas are you downloading (ND images or MN) and what GPS are you running?

thats my main concern is download times, my laptop is getting old, but I might be able to do it at work.

mn mike, the 1st image doesnt look too bad, and looks like a MN aerial?

how does it look on your colorado? I'm looking into a oregon that has the same screen size and screen quality, I heard that Garmin uses images from DigitalGlobe, which provides aerials for Google and Bing..

[MN Mike]

Yes, the first image is a MN shot, I'm not sure who supplies it though.

It looks good on the Colorado, there is a slight blueish hue to the image though, not sure where that is coming from but you can see exactly what you see on the images on your computer.

Now we will just have to see how accurate it is

Mike

[Kirsch]

Jmnhunter,

I downloaded an area in South Eastern ND. I chose Medium quality because low quality looked terrible on the GPS and high quality wouldn't let me load that large of an area. The idea of having a small area on the GPS may be an option such as a small hunting area, but it does not seem feasible for the person who wants a larger coverage area.

[Jared_P]

I know I am digging up a old thread but I am curious if this product has gotten any better over the last couple years. I am thinking about purchasing for our hunting area up north and really interested as to what it would look like. Also, do you get to keep the images after the 1yr is up? Thanks...

JP