Global Base Map Labels

Former Member
Former Member
In Basecamp I mainly use Great Britain OS 1:25k Birdseye maps, which are in the Library along with my tracks etc. of hikes. In the Maps menu I have the Global Base Map (which gets installed with Basecamp) selected. However the Global Base Map road labels (but not the actual roads) and areas of sea labels show over the top of the Birdseye maps. Changing the dropdown Detail Level menu has no effect. This sometimes obscures detail on the Birdseye map.

I'm sure on a previous installation of Basecamp on an older PC I had installed a different Global Map which was an empty map (no detail of roads, land, sea) as recommended by someone on this forum. That was 3 or 4 years ago and now I can't remember where I got the map from. I may even have overcome the issue on my current PC until I installed the latest version of Basecamp as I don't recall having this issue again until the last couple of months.

Any suggestions?
  • I have some of those maps and don't have the basemap showing through. There have been a few reports of BaseCamp showing 2 maps, but its a fault in the BaseCamp installation somehow and not by design. You could try uninstalling then reinstalling BaseCamp.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    I don’t use Birdseye maps, but on Birdseye imagery to prevent underlying map showing roads, contour lines, streams, you have to change draw order of image tile from 0 to 100. To do so you DoubleClick on image tile, in property tab slide the button to the top. All underlying map features should disappear.
  • Good point, that could indeed help. I'd forgotten that little nugget.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    I've only logged in to this forum occasionally (although I browse it quite regularly - I'd even forgotten my password) so I've only just found my previous posts about this issue from July 2012.

    I'd already set the draw order of the Birdseye maps to 100. If I set the draw order to less than 50 then the Base Map roads show over the Birdseye Maps. If I set the draw order to more than 50 then the roads are hidden but the labels still show, even at a draw order of 100. I've attached screen shots (I hope) from my 2012 posts to show what I mean.

    If I select a different map for a different part of the world from the dropdown map list, for example California, and click on one of my tracks to return me to the UK, then the Birdseye maps are greyed out and only my tracks are visible.

    The answer to the issue back in 2012 was this post from the forum member POPEJ . . .
    ======================================================
    Discoverer maps include vector maps, quite similar to City Navigator. What you need is empty vector map, that can be used as a background to your BirdsEye raster.

    Doing empty map is easy
    http://www.anpo.republika.pl/files/EmptyWorld.7z

    Unpack this file (use 7-zip archiver) to any directory and run included "install.bat". You will get "Empty World" usable in BaseCamp.
    ======================================================

    However I see from an earlier post this worked on an XP PC but not on a Win 7 PC. Anyway that web address does not seem to be there anymore.

    The issue isn't a massive problem. It is an irritation and it occasionally obscures some important detail on the Birdseye maps in which case . . . I could always look at the real thing . . . a PAPER MAP ! ! !

    So thanks for the suggestions anyway.


    EDIT
    Just realised a couple of the attached images are about my annoyance with the pop-up balloons in earlier versions of BC. I still wish they could be turned off completely ! ! !
  • You can download Empty World form here:
    http://www.gmaptool.eu/inne/EmptyWorld.7z

    It works for me on Windows 10, shouldn't be problem on Windows 7 either.
  • Not at my PC right now but you can now set the delay before they pop up. May even be able to turn them off completely but I can't remember.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    POPEJ

    Thanks for that. When I run the batch file I get 4 "Access denied" errors. Win 7 64bit Pro PC.

    Looking at the batch file I see it's trying to load into MapSource. Should this work for Basecamp? I know it did work with a previous set up but that was with Win XP.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    SUSSAMB

    In the Edit/Options/Display menu yes you can turn off or set a delay for the balloons that give you more info and a search box for whatever you've clicked on. But even with that turned off you still get a balloon with just the name of the map or track you click on. I already know what map I'm looking at and if I click on a track or waypoint then it gets highlighted in Library pane. I really could do without the balloons. But thanks for your input - you and others who contribute daily have offered thousands of people solutions to Garmin's peculiarities.
  • Have you tried making a custom Profile and unchecking the transportation lines? The profile is made via Edit>Options and clicking on the "+" next to the Activity Profile. Map features can be removed pressing the Map Display Features "Select" button under the General tab on the same pop-up screen. This should remove all roads and their symbols. I'm not sure if this is what you want. Other symbols can be removed as well. If you don't like the new profile, you can just delete it without messing up anything else.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    SUCCESS - almost!

    BTLAAKE

    Yes - that's almost done the trick. Thank you.

    I normally have the Direct profile selected as I don't use BC for routing on roads. In fact I don't use Routes, just Tracks so that I can plot a very defined path to follow and I record the tracks of hikes and load them into BC. The GB OS maps are not routable anyway.

    So unchecking the Lines option as you suggested removes the road labels. I've also unchecked the Areas and Points options also as I normally don't use or need them to be active. The only thing this process does not seem to clear are Labels for sea areas but that really does not matter (I don't do much walking on water ! ! !).

    As I'm writing this I've just checked on BC . . . guess what . . . I'd already done this process (and forgotten about it) in my Hiking profile some time ago and I must have switched to Direct profile recently so the Labels all came back, not realising that the options are applied to each Profile. So I'll create some Profiles for my different needs and name them so I know they're my set-ups not BC's default ones. It's a pity that the Measurement settings can't be included in the Profiles like they can on the GPS unit (I have a GPSMAP62S) so that you could have Metric or Imperial or US settings in the Profiles.

    I still think that because of BC's way of handling maps (some are in the map list and some are in the library list) it would be handy to have an empty or see through base map, or an option to have no map. Maybe I'll try installing POPEJ's empty map on a clean installation of BC on another PC and try to figure out why I can't get it onto the PC I normally use for BC.

    It's a good thing some of you know what you're doing! As I said earlier - Thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge and experience.