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Colorado - Birdseye


eusty

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Checking on the Garmin website doesn't show the Colorado 300 as supporting Birdseye maps, although when I use Basecamp it say it does and did I want to buy any.

 

First up, does it support them.

 

Secondly are they worth it? I use the talkytoaster GB maps and they are fine for most things, is the Birdseye much better (like 25k OS maps?) Also is Birdseye routable?

 

Cheers :)

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The Birdseye images are a kind of an underlay. Any vector map's "line" information is shown over top of the imagery. Polygons like lakes and airports do not show over the birdseye images. "Line" and "point" features like roads, streams, topo lines, and POI's do show up on top of the images. All in all a very pleasing presentation in my opinion.

Edited by yogazoo
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On this side of the pond, Garmin's Birdseye refers to areal (photo) imagery not vector lime maps. You can download small areas of your choice at no cost, so you can decide for yourself if you think they are worth it to you. They are not routable as the data is source pixel images and not refined vector lines.

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I'm more confused now!!! :laughing:

Don't be. Birdseye, again, is satellite or aerial photo imagery - a PICTURE - so not routable or anything of that sort. It just shows you a bird's eye view of the area underneath any major navigational features of whatever map you might have running. I run a set of topo maps on top of those images here. As someone has pointed out, your Talky Toaster maps will sit on top of any Birdseye images you have enabled on your unit. Remember, they ARE pictures, and if you download them at the useful resolution (there are three, and the highest is really needed in most cases), they eat up a lot of memory in a hurry. If you don't already have an SD card for that unit, you will probably want to consider it. Birdseye is indeed available for the 300.
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I mean the Birdseye Select which is 25k topo maps rather than satellite images :)

 

Ahhhh, that changes everything. Ok so those are topo maps, but they're still downloaded as raster images, which is bitmaps, not vector data. So that's not gonna be routable. Basically it's a scan of a paper map loaded onto the GPS. I would think vector topo maps are superious, assuming they provide the same level of detail.

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What I'm hoping is that with the talkytoaster maps & Birdseye Select over(under)lays that you would basically get the same as the GB Discoverer maps....but at FAR less cost.

 

It's just it would be nice to know that someone has done this before shelling out £20 to find it's not what I thought it was!! :)

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