Garmin Earth Imagery for Outdoor GPS
GPS Maker Garmin announced today that it will begin offering an annual subscription service to download highly detailed aerial and satellite imagery to a number of its outdoor GPS handheld. Called “BirdsEye Satellite and Aerial Imagery”, the service, to be available in March 2010 in the United States, costs .99 per year and allows the user unlimited downloads for a single Garmin device.
This imagery can be displayed on Garmin’s high-end outdoor handheld Oregon, Dakota, and Colorado series. The quality of the imagery is 0.5 meter per pixel resolution in many areas of the United States. Users can also view imagery at every zoom level – from 12 miles to 20 feet. BirdsEye Satellite Imagery also lets users overlay vector maps, to get a better idea of terrain contours and points of interest. The data is collected by DigitalGlobe, a leading provider of high-resolution satellite imagery.
The European availability of this subscription has not been confirmed at this stage by Garmin.
In addition, Garmin has recently announced Custom Maps, a free utility that allows to transform paper and electronic maps into customized downloadable maps for Oregon, Dakota, or Colorado handhelds.
