Birdseye Discontinued

This is ridiculous Garmin. At least give us the ability to keep side loading our own JNX maps made with tools like SASPlanet. Without Birdseye subscription I cannot sign/unlock the maps I create on my own, so you are just killing a feature on the device that was working perfectly fine.

Hear me out on this: It's fine you want to discontinue the service, but give me a workaround to keep using my own JNX maps moving forward. This is simple to you guys to do: Just remove the requirement of JNX files having to be unlocked/match device ID. That will allow us to continue to use our own maps.

atlas_cached said:

BirdsEye and BirdsEye Direct are not

Ah, ok, I did not know that, as I do not have anything else on 66i but this birdseye icon which definitely works as expected.

Is the problem concerning other devices then 66i?

Yes, pretty much every Garmin GPSr model before the GPSMAP 66 series will no longer have any access to BirdsEye satellite imagery. 

Newer models will retain (for now) BirdsEye Direct, but they will also lose BirdsEye access via BaseCamp, which is unfortunate because BirdsEye Direct maps are not visible in BaseCamp.

If you check my post history, I just tried again. Not a single response from Garmin. They did the same thing with Fenix7X it’s a flagship device less than a year old, that now can’t have access to birdseye image or to even load custom JNX. 

garmin has 0 respect for its loyal customers. 

So true, I tried to explain them that without birdseye the garmin is useless on a river as you don't see anyting , an Iphone is ven better . It took me a lot of phone calls and mails to get my money back of my new Garmin device. Garmin is now on its way to loose a lot of customers and when they behave like this its on their own. In march I'm going to make a documentary for one of the biggest broadcasters in the world and will show then why a Garmin device is nothing without detailed Sat maps. Maybe they will then learn to threat their customers better

That is really nothing, what you say is that if you have something for the US and further nothing, the way you threat your customers is terrible and it seems that the only way to get your atention is by bad publicity so I will explain during the making of a documentary in the jungle of South America why a Garmin device is nothing without proper satelite images maybe then you start listen better to the complains of your clients and will become less arrogant

I asked them for something so simple: Currently they have a software lock for their file format .JNX. I explained that they can for sure shutdown BirdsEye service and even discontinue basecamp, as long as they remove the software lock from our devices that block us from side loading .JNX maps.

If they performed this simple change, people like myself would be able to provide FREE satellite imagery using tools like SASPlanet. There's a lot of better satellite image sources than BirdsEye ever was, but will be dead because of Garmin greed and lack of respect for its customers.

I'm saying it again, I bought a Fenix7X at the beginning of this year, I was sold on it by Garmin  ADS saying it supported satellite imaginary, but now they killed it. So HOW is this even legal at this point ? You sell me a hardware and then you make one of its key functions unusable.

If you need any help on your documentary to EXPOSE how Garmin is software locking us out of the features of the hardware they sold us to begin with, let me now and I can put a comprehensive demonstration of all this.

I believe that the source of the original BirdsEye imagery was public-domain USGS imagery. Same as the USGS topos.

The existing solution to DIY is to create so-called "custom maps". This process is well-documented and does not involve .jnx, .img, or any other proprietary Garmin format.

Sorry, I'll have to vote you down because you clearly does not understand the difference in formats. .JNX maps, which is a GARMIN proprietary format, allows you to create whole continent satellite maps. They fast to load and provide multilayer, IMG or KML/KMZ ones are slow and size constrained.

So please, before jumping in and commenting on this matter, research it a little bit in the future. It does not help the discussion tampering it with incorrect information.