Lakemaster Insight vs 2d – opinions wanted.

i’m looking to upgrade to the newest lakemaster chip for my HDS, and i’m curious what people think about the Insight chips, and if it is worth the extra 50 dollars for the 3D and shading?

PHIGS:

This is a great question!

I deal with mapping, 3D visualization (especially of elevation), and cartographic representation for a living. I’ve spent quite a few years studying maps and contour lines, and when I see contours, my mind’s eye sees shaded relief similar to the Lakemaster insight mapping. The most logical representation of a 3D surface is in 3D, or at least the 3D shaded relief effect like with the Insight.

More than anything, what the Insight does for you is helps to keep the map focused and organized. As anglers, we look at these 3D products and eventually learn to exclude water more than include it. If you’re targeting walleyes on deep edges, your mind has a much easier time focusing on such areas by “mentally-removing” the shallow water from play. That’s much more difficult to do with contours, even colored contour swaths, than it is to do in 3D.

We’ve all done it. Looked at a vast expanse of contours, seen concentric circles and got excited for a mid-lake hump….which of course was really a soft-bottomed featureless hole. Coloring helps with that, but not with subtle bumps and holes, and it really shows up on 3D. Another instance where the 3D excels is for finding feeding troughs and shelves. The first thing we do when looking at a contour map of a piece of structure, is to fish the sharpest, nastiest breaking side of it. Conventional wisdom has it that sharp breaks hold all the fish, and the further spaced contours on the far side of the structure looks like more gradually spaced mediocre ground. Our minds look for sharp/obvious differences with contours, but the shelves show up incredibly well on 3D and are lost in the translation of contour data most often.

If you’re the kind of guy that buys the chip every year or two for the frequent updates, you may or may not want to spent the extra $. If you plan on having this for a few years before you upgrade again, spend the $50 IMO.

Joel