High in the Sky:Complete England review

Verdict:

Review Date: 18 Aug 2004

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Mike Bedford

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

As part of the millennium celebrations, aerial photography and mapping company Getmapping conducted a complete aerial survey of England (the rest of the UK is now being added).

The result is a high-resolution photograph of the entire country. Portions of this 'Millennium Map' have been available from www.getmapping.co.uk for some time.

Europress also got in on the act by selling individual counties on CD at £17 each. However, these would soon become expensive for anyone wanting more than a single county. It's good news, therefore, to see Europress's High in the Sky DVD, which offers all the England photographs for £72. This is also good value compared to the Millennium Map data.

Before you reach for your credit card, it's important to recognise what you get. The Millennium Map has a resolution of 250mm per pixel with higher resolutions in some city centres. The High in the Sky images are reduced to just 5m per pixel. Many other mapping packages have sophisticated tools for superimposing routes on a photo or using an elevation model to give a full 3D view. The High in the Sky viewer is rather basic by comparison.

You can search by place name, pan in one of eight directions and zoom through three levels. The only other features are a distance-measuring tool and a copy function to allow photos to be pasted into other applications.

If you love maps you'll undoubtedly find High in the Sky fascinating. However, given its limited functionality, £72 seems a lot to pay.

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