Putting Google Earth Coords into Mapsource

[Invicta Moto]

What I thought was a great idea was to put the Google Earth co-ords read off the bottom left of the screen into Mapsource... Patted myself on the back for finding the place I wanted the cor-ords for....BUT ....

I'm planning a trip to Ypres and need co-ords of some monuments. e.g. the "Plug Street" (Ploegsteert) Monument reads as 50.4417N and 2.52552E on Google Earth, put these into Mapsource and you would end up 60 miles away to the south-west in France....

Why?

Help.

 

[Taff]

My guess is that they are using a different Datum. The one shown in Preferences under my Position tab is the WGS 84 datum, but you can change it to about 50 other ones.

There is a brilliant thread explaining Datums etc HERE.

 

[John Armstrong]

Street" (Ploegsteert) Monument reads as 50.4417N and 2.52552E on Google Earth, put these into Mapsource and you would end up 60 miles away to the south-west in France....

Check the decimal point! You'll also need to check that Mapsource lat / long presentation is the same as Google Earth.

When I'm using Google Earth as you do I try and add a waypoint and then change it's properties ie lat / long to match the Google Earth ones. That way you get an idea if the lat / long is anywhere near you want it to be.

 

[Redboots]

...Monument reads as 50.4417N and 2.52552E on Google Earth, put these into Mapsource and you would end up 60 miles away to the south-west in France....why?

Make sure you are using WGS 84 Datum and then select lat/lon hddd.ddddd not lat/lon hddd.mm.sss in you preferences. That will fix it... but it will throw out any waypoints in the ddmmss format


J

 

[st13phil]

...Monument reads as 50.4417N and 2.52552E on Google Earth, put these into Mapsource and you would end up 60 miles away to the south-west in France....Why?

OK, I'll try to summarise what's been said above, coz there are correct bits in each post, but I don't think one of them has the whole story...

Firstly, Google Earth uses the WGS84 datum, so that's the datum you must use in MapSource too.

Secondly, Google Earth's default setup is to display lat & lon in degress, minutes, seconds and decimal seconds. The coordinates you have given for the memorial are actually 50°44'17.00"N / 2°52'55.20"E which is not the same as 50.4417°N and 2.52552°E in decimal degress. The actual location in decimal degrees is 50.738056°N 2.882000°E.

As John Armstrong said, it's easiest to set both MapSource and Google Earth to the same display format for lat & lon. In MapSource this is on the Edit>Preferences>Position tab. Set "Grid" to Lat/Lon hddd.ddddd° and "Datum" to WGS 84. In Google Earth v4.0.2722, this is on the Tool>Options>3D View tab. Ensure that the "Degrees" radio button is selected in the "Show Lan/Long" group in the centre of the dialog.

Now you can happily use the same coordinates in Google Earth and in MapSource to represent the same place on the globe.

Redboots is quite correct in that if you want to enter any new coordinates to MapSource in ddmmss format then you'll end up in the wrong place if you just type them without first converting them to decimal degrees format. However, none of your existing waypoints stored in MapSource files will move from where they were - it's just that their coordinates will be represented differently.

FWIW, Garmin csv-format POI files are in decimal degrees format so I've found that it's generally easiest to leave MapSource using that format too. That way, if I want to set up a POI that's in a Garmin POI csv file as a Waypoint I can just type the numbers in the Waypoint Properties box.

Hope this helps.

 

[Invicta Moto]

Thanks everyone, I'll give it a go tonight.

 

[Invicta Moto]

Thanks everyone, I'll give it a go tonight.

Mont des cats looks good...

An added question or two about Google Earth:

Has anyone used the Pro version?
Is it always slow moving from one search to the next?