Birdseye imagery

[tonahutu]

Hello all, looking for some advice. Is Garmin's BirdsEye Satellite Imagery worth buying for my Oregon 450T for hiking. Would love some tips. Also, are Garmin's 24k maps for sale better than the California 24k topo that i downloaded from this site? Any advice would be helpful. Thank you

[maps4gps]

You will have to be the judge on what is better for your purposes.
Few if any of the mapsets here are routable; and no one has reversed engineered how Garmin codes address searching nor the use of gridded elevation data.  The gridded elevation data will allow a shaded 3D view and record the elevation along tracks.

[leszekp]

You can download small sample sections of BirdsEye imagery for free using BaseCamp, so you can check it out. My personal opinion is that the aerial imagery isn't top-quality, and the image contrast can be so low that it's difficult to pick out details when viewed in sunlight. The topographic maps, on the other hand, look very good IMHO. While you can load topos with Custom Maps, you're limited to only 100 tiles; the convenience of BirdsEye topo maps along with the ability to cover much wider areas probably makes them worth the money.

[Boyd]

You should definitely check out birdseye in your local area because the source and quality evidently varies considerably. Here in NJ they are using the excellent 2007 orthoimagery produced the state. I have made my own custom maps from this same imagery and it's definitely the same thing. Only difference is that they have re-sampled it to about 2 feet per pixel where the source data has a resolution of 1 foot per pixel. At $30 for unlimited downloads, it's an excellent deal for me. People in some other states have reported very different results, so you need to have a look for yourself. It's free to download and use in Basecamp. You only need a subscription to use it on the device itself.

BTW, be sure to register your new unit at Garmin, as you will get a 10% discount certificate to use on any map or subscription purchases.