Oregon 450 Icon Size

[+maxkim]

I have a new 450 and it is great except for the tiny cache icons on the map, they just don't stand out enough. Having been used to the Memory Map ones for years on my PDA with no problems. Sorry if this has been asked before but I couldn't find it when searching. Cheers Max

[+dfx]

you can't increase the icon size directly, but the oregons support custom icons, which can override the preinstalled ones.

 

http://www.gpsfix.net/custom-symbols/

 

so you could create a set of larger icons and use those instead of the preset ones. of course chances are somebody already did that somewhere...

[+ecanderson]

I looked into this after purchasing my 450, and noted in both the Garmin docs and the gpsfix article on custom icons that the icon bitmap can be no larger than 32 pixels in either width or height. Kinda puts the damper on things. I'm not certain if the originals are 24x24 or not. I'm sure they are not the original 16x16 from prior days. If they're 24, 32x32 would only provide a 33% improvement.

[+dfx]

I looked into this after purchasing my 450, and noted in both the Garmin docs and the gpsfix article on custom icons that the icon bitmap can be no larger than 32 pixels in either width or height. Kinda puts the damper on things. I'm not certain if the originals are 24x24 or not. I'm sure they are not the original 16x16 from prior days. If they're 24, 32x32 would only provide a 33% improvement.

the traditional cache icon shown on the map is 14x14 pixels.

[+maxkim]

Thanks for that. Cheers M

[+ecanderson]

I looked into this after purchasing my 450, and noted in both the Garmin docs and the gpsfix article on custom icons that the icon bitmap can be no larger than 32 pixels in either width or height. Kinda puts the damper on things. I'm not certain if the originals are 24x24 or not. I'm sure they are not the original 16x16 from prior days. If they're 24, 32x32 would only provide a 33% improvement.

the traditional cache icon shown on the map is 14x14 pixels.

Yes, but I believe that is being scaled down from the original icon, isn't it? The icons appear in two locations. The full size version is what you see in the list when you run a "Find Geocache".

 

I tried the first set pointed to in the gpsfix article as an experiment, and didn't see much (if any) difference when viewing the map, and they're a lot bigger than 14x14.

[+dfx]

Yes, but I believe that is being scaled down from the original icon, isn't it? The icons appear in two locations. The full size version is what you see in the list when you run a "Find Geocache".

no, not at all. i just did a quick test and took the cache icon from gc.com, resized it to 22x32 and assigned it to the "event cache" type (so there's a direct comparison). it shows up in full size everywhere:

 

 

i didn't get the transparency quite right, so it's kinda ugly. but it shows that it works.

[+c_dog]

I looked into this after purchasing my 450, and noted in both the Garmin docs and the gpsfix article on custom icons that the icon bitmap can be no larger than 32 pixels in either width or height. Kinda puts the damper on things. I'm not certain if the originals are 24x24 or not. I'm sure they are not the original 16x16 from prior days. If they're 24, 32x32 would only provide a 33% improvement.

the traditional cache icon shown on the map is 14x14 pixels.

Yes, but I believe that is being scaled down from the original icon, isn't it? The icons appear in two locations. The full size version is what you see in the list when you run a "Find Geocache".

 

I tried the first set pointed to in the gpsfix article as an experiment, and didn't see much (if any) difference when viewing the map, and they're a lot bigger than 14x14.

No, the 450 doesn't scale the geocache icon set. The 450 won't substitute a custom icon for one the predefined symbols, including the onboard geocache symbols, unless they a in .bmp format, less than 32x32 pixels in size, in 24 bits/pixel format, and named, for geocache symbols, according to the symbol names in this list: http://www.garmindeveloper.com/apps/Garmin...eocacheList.txt or http://www.garmindeveloper.com/apps/Garmin...mSymbolList.txt with a '.bmp' extension.

 

I made a set on 'custom' geocache symbols that I converted with IrfanView from the 'official' Groundspeck 32x32 .gif format icons, that I grabbed from Groundspeck's own cache type definition pages. The converted symbols substitute automatically, even though you will not see them on the symbol selection screens, and display a little over twice as large as the on-board Garmin geocache icon set on the map screens.

 

I'll often play with scaling symbols to less than 32x32 pixels, because screen full of 32x32 'Geocache Found.bmp' Smileys can really clutter things up.

Edited November 11, 2010 by c_dog

[+dfx]

Groundspeck

[+ecanderson]

...unless they a in .bmp format, less than 32x32 pixels in size, in 24 bits/pixel format..."

Hmm... "less than 32x32", not 32x32 or less. I was running a full 32x32. I wonder if it used the default icons instead when I did that?

 

I made a set on 'custom' geocache symbols that I converted with IrfanView from the 'official' Groundspeck 32x32 .gif format icons

Did you do those as 31x31 or 32x32???

 

Need to go out and get the Oregon out of the car and establish what's right, I guess.

[+dfx]

it would be "32x32 or less". the one i tried was 32x22 and that worked too. it took me a few tries to get it working though, as at first i was saving it as 32-bit bitmap (including an alpha channel) which was silently ignored by the oregon. it looks like all icons on http://www.elsinga.net/poi-icons.html are actually 8-bit bitmaps, which won't work.

Edited November 11, 2010 by dfx

[+c_dog]

[Did you do those as 31x31 or 32x32???

 

32x32 or less will work for Custom Symbols on the 450. You'd think Garmin would have carried this over to custom POI symbols on the 450 (or the 550(x) and 62/78(x)s for that matter). A custom POI symbol can only be 24x24 'or less' pixels and must be an 8 bit/pixel .bmp to work.

 

Also, the position of the transparent 'magenta' mask (255,0,255) will rarely line up between the 8-bit and 24-bit palettes. So, you have the re-fill the transparent color areas when decreasing the color depth a 24 bpp to 8 bpp icon.

[+HHL]

[…] for the tiny cache icons on the map, they just don't stand out enough. […]

Have a short look on what it might look like:

 

http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=...mp;#entry106250

 

Frohes Jagen

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