Last August, the Garmin nuvi Prestige series was announced, promising us a new feature – Bird’s Eye lane guidance to show you the proper lane with an overhead perspective. While I haven’t been crisscrossing the country much lately, it seems to me that, just like Junction View initially, this feature has been slow to roll out. Well, in case you haven’t seen it yet, the screenshot above shows what you can look forward to. The bird’s eye image pops up right before the standard junction view visual.
Thanks to scottmds on YouTube, who has posted a video of it…
http://youtu.be/zstrM3svwrE
EDIT: Oops, meant to ask – Where are you located and have you seen this in your neck of the woods or not? Big thanks to Andrew for chiming in so fast or who knows when I would have thought to add this!
About Rich Owings
I have the 3590LMT and have observed that here in the Seattle area it is in place at all the freeway interesctions that I have been thru. It is very robust and I like it a lot, however my only gripe is that as you are getting close to a cloverleaf you are usually paying more attention to the merging traffic and the screen as a result isn’t up very long to look at.
Hey, thanks for chiming in. You reminded me I wanted to ask folks if they had seen it and where.
Believe it or not, I have seen it quite a bit here in Northwest Indiana, some quite surprising.
I get one coming off the Indiana Toll Road at the Lake Station spaghetti junction, which is notorious for having multiple pull-throughs for one transition.
The same applies to the recently completed ramp connecting I-80/94 west to I-65, with Birdseye Junction popping up anytime my 3490 tells me to connect to the I-65 south flyover ramp. Once they add the remaining piece of the ramp puzzle in the next map update. I’m sure there will be more.
The upper Midwest has quite a bit of this feature in execution, and you could see why if you lived where I do.
This just seems like another Garmin gimmick, and IMO adds nothing to help in navigation but just adds to information overload. If Garmin simply stuck with rolling out lane assist and photo real junction views at every major junction instead of diluting their efforts with something that you’d only see if you were flying across a junction then I think we’d all be far happier. What next I wonder … a satellite view of the junction?!!
FWIW, I checked some major thoroughfares in Atlanta and DC, and never saw this, but that doesn’t mean it’s not in this areas.
Can you help me? Im really interested in the Garmin 3590LMT, but its not in any stores. Everyone says just check out the 3490LMT, but its still trying to compare apples and oranges, plus I like to touch and mess with what Im going to buy. Do you know or can you find out if it will be in any stores? Thanks.
Link: Amazon