NEW - - AREA CALCULATION USING GARMIN MAPSOURCE

The recent free Garmin MapSource update to Version 5.0 (and higher) added certain area calculation capabilities to its products (US Topo, Roads & Recreation, etc.):

Added ability to calculate area of a track and display on track dialog.

[Load a saved track from a GPS receiver, then go to track properties - information provided includes track length, area enclosed, leg lengths & elevations, and elevation profile of the track].

Added area calculation to distance measurement tool.

[Use the tool to trace the perimeter of a viewable area or trace an existing route or connect perimeter waypoints. Perimeter length and area enclosed are viewable -but not saved - at the bottom of the screen].

Added user preference for area to the units tab of the preferences dialog.

[Go to edit - preferences - units. Area options include acres, hectares, sq. feet, sq. miles, sq. meters, sq. kilometers. Distance options are statute, metric, and nautical].

Fixed issue causing distance measurement to display distances in the status bar with too little precision.

Added ability to filter tracks. This can be done while real-time tracking, or with previously saved tracks. In real-time tracking, the points are filtered as they arrive using filter settings that can be modified from the GPS tab. With saved tracks, a user can filter the entire track or any sub-selection of two or more track points from the filter button on the track properties dialog. A user can filter by time, distance, or automatic in all situations and by maximum points on saved tracks only.