It is pretty good, but if you really want to see the elevation differences go to terraserver and look at the topo maps of your area.

Definitely get googleearth.
I find it very helpful, used in conjunction with topographic maps.

I use it and it's great.

It really depends what level of detail is available for your area, and there is no obvious method to determining it. I'm lucky, both my hunting areas in NS and in SK, despite being very remote, have the super-zoom level of detail (as my Dad incredulously remarked, "you can count the bales in the field"). This is great. A few miles in away it's not zoomed in like that and next to useless for hunting purposes.

Download it and find out...or better yet go over to a friend's house who has it downloaded and see what level of detail is available for your area.

I down loaded it and it is nice to see kind of an overview of my hunting area, but it don't zoom in close enough to really see much or be a whole lot of good. Cant hardly tell the diff. between hardwood and softwood, just kind of go by lighter being hardwoods and darker being softwoods:](*,) grrrrr..... now what ....lol

I've used it with mixed results.

One area I hunt has good resolution, the other doesn't....don't know why.

It's useful, though, to get a good lay of the land.