Google Earth - Do NOT Trust what You See ;)

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Custom Maps

The info is pretty self explanatory-
- get the picture,
- geo-reference at Google,
- load to your device.

I am afraid only the newer things from Garmin have this function. It is very nice indeed.

BTW I did see on the web some sort of software that geo-referenced anything for Garmin offline. But it was not free and my Garmins do not have Custom Maps so I did not try that one out.

Anybody?

barnie

You don't understand how dense I am at doing these things or what kind of luck I have had when putting things into a computer of any type.

- get the picture. Huh? how, where. What picture?
- geo-reference at Google, Huh? what does that mean? Convert it, move it, put it into something else?
- load to your device. WOW, something I had to do with tech support on the phone as my device did not know what the date was. So hand-held I got something from their site to my desktop, moved it to the card and got it in the Garmin......somehow. Yippee except then if I put in all my old waypoints and tracks then when I choose to save a new track the button for "save track" does not appear. If I reset the whole machine and wipe my data out then I can create and save a new track.
Something with the latest "upgrade" totally shlupped me up.

They have no answer. Corrupt data? From the machine to a card > upgrade software to latest version > card back to machine = b&u#p%c*u@s.

I guess I will remain too chicken to do anything except what I know I can do with it.

Thanks anyway.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Therapy

I guess I will remain too chicken to do anything except what I know I can do with it.

Hmmm. Are you in a place where there is anybody with good computer skills nearby? It does all look simple from Garmin instructions. Maybe you can ask a fellow sailor to go thru the process once or twice so that you can do it on your own later?

You are posting on the forum - so you can't be that bad at computers. Probably once you get it done once it will be a piece of cake later.

b.

[barnakiel]

BTW it is interesting what you say about the WPTs issue. A pity I do not have one of the new Garmins to play around with this specific functionality.

b.

[Palarran]

We are all looking at google earth from a sailing perspective and that is not a large portion of what they are working towards. In Chicago you can go to my sisters street, turn the camera, and see her front door plain as day.

A little side line, my first cousin is Mark Aubin, who you can google. 10 years ago he quit Silicon Graphic's to start a small company called Keyhole. We had a family reunion where he described the concept of flying in to a location from space and being able to see a street location. I'll never forget looking at him and saying "Who the hell would ever use a program for that". It always cracks me up when we get together.

[Healer52]

LOL.

My Uncle is an attorney who about 20 years ago was offered a bunch of stock from some little company called Qualcomm to pay a legal bill....

Smart enough to be a lawyer, not smart enough to take the deal... The amount of stock would have been worth (literally) $billions......

[AK_sailor]

Originally Posted by Pblais

..... The edge matching process is far more complicated than you may think. They stretch and warp the images to make them fit together not to make them accurate. with so many to match it is totally visual. In some situations the coordinates may be off enough to make trouble if you rely on them for any close work navigation. There isn't any way to tell by looking at them because they optimize so they look nice and pretty.

The process is sometimes referred to as "rubber sheeting", as in print it on a rubber sheet, then stretch to match. (They don't really do it that way, it's all done mathematically.) It, or something very similar is always done to georeference imagery (satellite, air photo, whatever). Done properly, it can be quite accurate. Howevery, given the the sheer volume of imagery that Google Earth uses (it is Google Earth after all), I doubt that it is very well QC'd for many out of the way areas. And, as others have noted, the age of the imagery is a serious issue.

As others have said, using it for general orientation is fine, but not to be relied on for precise navigation.

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

BTW it is interesting what you say about the WPTs issue. A pity I do not have one of the new Garmins to play around with this specific functionality.

b.

Actually it took me three reads to remember WPT is waypoint. Hah.

If you do get one to play with I would be more than happy to send you my file so as to mess up your unit.

Don't worry as I know how to reset it now.

Sorry all for the thread drift on Garmin.....over and out.