Apple Filling Out Flyover City Tours Ahead of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite Launches

MacRumors · Sep 7, 2014

One of the new mapping features included in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite is Flyover city tours, which leverages the existing Flyover imagery to provide users with an automated aerial tour of landmarks in a given city. When the feature first appeared early in the iOS 8 beta testing process, only a handful of cities were supported, and while the number of available tours remains small, Apple has added several dozen more cities over time.

Apple currently documents 90 cities, parks, and landmarks where the standard Flyover feature is available. Of these 90 locations where users can view interactive 3D maps, 40 currently have the automated Flyover tours enabled under iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.

Apple's list of Flyover locations with current Flyover tour cities boxed in green

As with the Flyover feature itself, the list of cities with Flyover tour support is an eclectic one, ranging from major cities such as London, Paris, and New York to smaller areas such as Cheyenne, Wyoming and Linköping, Sweden, home of the C3 Technologies, the company whose technology was leveraged for Flyover after Apple acquired it several years ago.

During the beta testing period for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple has also tweaked the means of identifying locations with Flyover tours enabled, making them easier to find. Initially, cities with the feature available were identifiable only by the text of the city name being in yellow rather than the standard white in Hybrid view. Apple has since tweaked the display to instead identify Flyover tour cities with a small "3D" icon instead of the standard dot used to mark location.

iOS 8 had been expected to see a number of significant mapping improvements, but the service was all but ignored during Apple's overview of the upcoming operating system at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June. Apple's maps team has reportedly been suffering from issues related to internal politics and the departure of a number of key members. The issues appear to have slowed the team's progress, and thus larger mapping improvements originally slated for iOS 8 may instead be pushed back to a later update such as a future iOS 8.1.

Update 3:59 PM: Several of the landmarks with Flyover coverage such as Yosemite National Park do also have support for Flyover tours. The feature is somewhat hidden, however, as users simply panning over to the location must first tap on the landmark's icon and then choose "Flyover Tour" from page that pops up.

Apple is also drawing more attention to the Flyover tour feature with a banner that is displayed when a user specifically searches for a location with tour coverage.

(Thanks, Alec!)

Article Link: Apple Filling Out Flyover City Tours Ahead of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite Launches

X-X · Sep 7, 2014

Great!

More of the most useless feature of any map app ever.

I really don't like Google, but nothing beats Street View.

sputnikv · Sep 7, 2014

X-X said:
I really don't like Google, but nothing beats Streetview.

I could think of a few things better than streetview.

omenatarhuri · Sep 7, 2014

Apple it was cool, but useless. Please stop spending on this.

Planey28 · Sep 7, 2014

Why London and Manchester, but not Birmingham

bushido · Sep 7, 2014

meh google maps is a lot better. i still havent found the button to switch between Walking and Driving on Apple Maps lol usability wise google maps makes a lot more sense to me

byke · Sep 7, 2014

Who ever really uses this service apart from skaters looking for empty swimming pools (Gleaming the cube).

mainstreetmark · Sep 7, 2014

Hey! Where's my important home town city?

springsup · Sep 7, 2014

Apple really do need to do a better job expanding Flyover support. They have places like Gibraltar, Leeds and Birmingham but then miss out major European capitals like Amsterdam, Berne, Brussels, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Prague and Vienna.

Mike Oxard · Sep 7, 2014

Flyover is pretty much pointless, why do they spend time on it? Street view is a far more useful tool.

doelcm82 · Sep 7, 2014

X-X said:
Great!

More of the most useless feature of any map app ever.

I really don't like Google, but nothing beats Street View.

Google's Quicktime VR-style Street View was pretty cool in its day, but it's really starting to seem dated. Imagine trying to use Street View with an Oculus Rift. You really just want to peek around a corner, but you have to jump from one vantage point to another, and you absolutely can't step off the street onto the sidewalk.

It's time for full VR mapping, and a seamless transition from Flyover to Walkthru. Maybe Google's Project Tango will lead us in that direction. Wherever it comes from, it can't come soon enough.

John.B · Sep 7, 2014

Flyover is fine, but Apple really needs to concentrate their efforts on getting their POI data updated and corrected.

lincolntran · Sep 7, 2014

X-X said:
Great!

More of the most useless feature of any map app ever.

I really don't like Google, but nothing beats Street View.

Maybe useless for you but for someone who like to know about this world geographically and can't travel everywhere, like me, this is the next best thing. Or even when I'm able to travel to places I like, this is crucial to know where things are so I can plan my trip much better

I used map for many things, not just getting direction.

John.B · Sep 7, 2014

doelcm82 said:
Google's Quicktime VR-style Street View was pretty cool in its day, but it's really starting to seem dated. Imagine trying to use Street View with an Oculus Rift. You really just want to peek around a corner, but you have to jump from one vantage point to another, and you absolutely can't step off the street onto the sidewalk.

Exactly, the UI for Streetview is horrible. I'll never get that people actually find it acceptable.

captain cadet · Sep 7, 2014

So every country in the UK will have one fly over apart from Wales - Apple since when have you been based in England?

doelcm82 · Sep 7, 2014

captain cadet said:
So every country in the UK will have one fly over apart from Wales - Apple since when have you been based in England?

If it weren't for Wales, Hereford would be a beautiful seaside resort.

avanpelt · Sep 7, 2014

Strange that they don't have Yosemite National Park included in the Flyover tour.

Dekema2 · Sep 7, 2014

I love flying over my Buffalo, but I always scratch my head when cities like Kansas City or St. Louis are not included.

newagemac · Sep 7, 2014

X-X said:
Great!

More of the most useless feature of any map app ever.

I really don't like Google, but nothing beats Street View.

What the heck does Street View have to do with Flyover? They do totally different things. Let's say you are visiting New York City for the first time and you want to get an idea of the layout of the city. You have to be crazy to use Street View and try to tap, tap, tap, your way down miles and miles of the entire city.

It's the same concept for firefighters attempting to get a grasp of a huge forest fire stretching hundreds of miles. They do a flyover in a helicopter or plane to get an overall grasp of the situation. Our team uses Flyover anytime we're visiting clients in a new city so we're comfortable with how it's organized and arranged because every city is different. Flyover helps us get up to speed faster than anything else currently out there.

Street View is nice if you want details on a specific location, but if you want an overview of the city, that's what Flyover is for. And Street View can't hold a candle to Flyover for what it does.

Fortunately, us iPhone users get to enjoy both.

/V\acpower · Sep 7, 2014

X-X said:
Great!

More of the most useless feature of any map app ever.

I really don't like Google, but nothing beats Street View.

I completely disagree.

At first when Apple launched Flyover I thought I was never going to find a use for it. But when I got devices able to use it, I found that it does give me a pretty good spatial representation of a place before I go there, I get a better "feeling" of the place than Street view give me, and Flyover is also way faster and simpler to use. In fact I barely use Street view anymore since it is such a chore to use that I simply don't bother, especially on a portable device.

Roller · Sep 7, 2014

John.B said:
Exactly, the UI for Streetview is horrible. I'll never get that people actually find it acceptable.

I use Street View to preview routes or locations before I go there. Seeing the layout from ground level is helpful, even if I have good turn-by-turn directions with me on the way. But I think that the UI took a step backward in Google's most recent redo of Google Maps.

----------

sputnikv said:
I could think of a few things better than streetview.

Like what?

Traverse · Sep 7, 2014

I could care less about the useless flyover, I just want more accurate maps.

Here in the US it's pretty decent, but I still have to switch to Google Maps for times when Apple Maps doesn't report a business being where I know it is.

Mactendo · Sep 7, 2014

lincolntran said:
Maybe useless for you but for someone who like to know about this world geographically and can't travel everywhere, like me, this is the next best thing. Or even when I'm able to travel to places I like, this is crucial to know where things are so I can plan my trip much better

I used map for many things, not just getting direction.

Exactly! I wish Apple added more large cities over the world to the Flyover and promoted it better. This is the coolest feature to maps (not the app, but general maps) since invention of the maps.

ArtOfWarfare · Sep 7, 2014

I'm really baffled that people say Street View is useful. It's a clunky piece of crap. It's like Google made a FPS where the framerate is under 1 and any time you move you end up with major screen tearing issues. On top of that, you move exclusively by clicking and dragging.

In contrast, Apple's thing is actually useful for previewing a route. I get a bird's eye view of my path through the city (which, lets face it, is vastly more useful than a freaking street level view. You may as well put your phone down, because you can get the same information in a more natural way by just looking at the real world around you.) And if you want to shift your view, it's easy and natural to do so, and there's no screen tearing because it smoothly goes from position to position.

Anyways, focusing on this new feature from Apple - this sounds like it might be useful if you're stuck in an area you're not familiar with and looking for stuff to do. Frequently when I face that situation I go to the town's website and see if they list any attractions... normally the website is a mess and I'm better off just wandering the town at random looking for stuff to do (which is pretty hit or miss). So this new feature sounds like it might be a free and neat replacement for a tour guide or something. Maybe.

groovyd · Sep 7, 2014

John.B said:
Exactly, the UI for Streetview is horrible. I'll never get that people actually find it acceptable.

because streetview is really just a billion photos stitched together... mostly useless without extracting and extrapolating it into 3d models. flyover does this already. it is just a matter of providing a good ui.

Apple Filling Out Flyover City Tours Ahead of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite Launches

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