Can birdseye be previewed without buying a compatible unit?

Former Member over 14 years ago

Hello,

I tried to search on this and I see there are some posts about demo birdseye software.

I've tried in both my mac/win versions of basecamp to access the birdseye images and it says that I need to have a compatible device.

Is there any way to preview the birdseye image quality in the areas *I* want to use it in without going and buying a compatible gps? Basically being able to get aerial imagery would be my big motivation for stepping up to a custom map compatible unit, but if I can't preview the maps before hand there's no way I'm going to spend $400 on the off chance the quality is okay.

It used to be you could preview the map products from garmin (topo/city) etc. on their website before purchasing in regions you wanted to use them in.

0 azdrmn over 14 years ago

Currently there is no official way to preview BirdsEye imagery without a compatible unit. Hopefully this is something we'll be allowed to add in the future. In the meantime, sorry for the inconvenience.

0 Former Member over 14 years ago

That's unfortunate for sure. I understand them not wanting to give away data when it's a subscription service but considering it's probably the biggest new feature in the newest gps units it would be nice if there was a web viewer that would at least show what the imagery looks like.

Is there at least a minimum pixel/meter resolution that all the birdseye data is at least as good as?

0 Former Member over 14 years ago

See: http://garmin.blogs.com/pr/2010/01/garmin-launches-birdseye-satellite-and-aerial-imagery.html?activeBranchId=newsroom

The images are among the most highly-detailed available – offering 0.5 meter per pixel resolution in many areas of the United States.

Here in New Jersey, Garmin is using the NJ 2007 Orthophotography which is very high quality at 1 foot per pixel resolution. You can see that BirdsEye has reduced the resolution a bit, so I would say that .5m/pixel is about right.

Based on user comments, the quality of BirdsEye imagery varies significantly with location however.