76 Mississippi Sportsman^ | April 2015
One
of the most-difficult aspects of
teaching fishermen and boaters
to interpret conventional sonar
screens has been getting them to understand how a
screen picture is made.
It has long been a universal truth that what’s hap-
pening right now under the boat appears in the
single column of pixels at the left edge of the screen.
It displays echoes from the most-recently processed
ping or pings.As a new column representing each subsequent
ping appears at that edge, the rest of the columns are
shoved over one pixel column to the right. The consec-
utive columns of displayed echoes blend together into
a history of soundings that forms the screen picture.
Many (if not most) students start out with
the impression that a conventional sonar
display works like a television screen.
In fact, veteran sonar instructor Wilson
Frazier is noted for his signature phrase,
“It ain’t TV.”
Now Garmin has just thrown a monkeywrench labeled “Panoptix” into all our hard work
along that line of thinking.
Don’t get me wrong: This is a good thing, and we
haven’t lost the ability to show screen history, but
Panoptix delivers a video-like moving picture that
actually is close to TV.
For instance, the Panoptix LiveVü Forward ( for-
ward-looking) mode provides a near-live video look
that shows fish swimming while moving toward or
away from the boat. There is no one-column-at-a-
time screen picture construction going on here; the
whole screen updates with each ping, much like a TV
picture does.
Videos on (or linked from) the Garmin website
show lures being retrieved and fish reacting to them
in such close to real time that you aren’t likely to
miss a hook set.
Garmin has turned an important corner in sonar
development, and I won’t be surprised to see similar
technology appear on other manufacturers’ recre-
ational and commercial sonar units.
LiveVü Forward doesn’t show objects or the bot-
tom in the photo-like detail that today’s thin-slice,
side- and down-scanning technologies can show in
their screen histories; Panoptix LiveVü screen details
resemble the older, conventional sonar display for-
mat, where colors and target thickness indicate echo
strength.
And, fish and lures leave a “vapor trail” of color
behind them, making their motion easier to follow
and interpret.
Both transom and trolling motor mounts are avail-
able for this transducer, and the trolling motor mount
lets you turn the motor to look in any direction.
Panoptix LiveVü Down mode is just as impressive,
but rather than looking out ahead of your boat (or in
the direction your trolling motor is aimed) this fea-
ture provides moving sonar images of fish, baitfish
and lures directly under and to the right and left of
your hull. On-screen range scales help you pinpointalmost live tV
Garmin’s new Panoptix sonar delivers video-like screen views
ABOVE: The future of
sonar has arrived with
Garmin’s Panoptix, which
provides video-like views
of fish, cover and bottom
contours.marine electronics
Allan Tarvid
Panoptix’s view can be altered to show
depths in colors, making it easy to
determine depth of cover, contours
and fish at a glance.Allan Tarvid has been
writing about recreational
and commercial marine
electronics since the
1970s covering everything
from running lights to
computer integrated vessel
management systems.
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