Apple expands Flyover coverage to new locales in France, Germany, Japan and more
As part of continued effort to build out its in-house mapping service, Apple recently added 3D Flyover assets to a number of cities and landmarks, including multiple locations in France, Italy and Germany.
After flipping the switch on 20 new Flyover-supported areas prior to iOS 9's debut this month, Apple added to the list this week, offering top-down 3D views of major cities and high-traffic destinations.
Flyover support recently added to Apple's official iOS 9 Feature Availability webpage:
In bringing its mapping service in line with the competition, Apple introduced native transit directions with its latest iOS 9 update, a much requested feature for many existing users. While availability is limited to a few cities at launch, support for buses, subways, trains and other public transportation services should roll out to a wider audience in the coming months.
Looking to the future, Apple is currently gathering street-level imaging and positioning data with mapping vans, suggesting the company is working on a competitor to Google Street View. Apple's equipment-laden vans have most recently been spotted tooling around U.S. and UK neighborhoods.
Apple last updated Flyover in August with a buildout of services in Europe, South America and Asia.
After flipping the switch on 20 new Flyover-supported areas prior to iOS 9's debut this month, Apple added to the list this week, offering top-down 3D views of major cities and high-traffic destinations.
Flyover support recently added to Apple's official iOS 9 Feature Availability webpage:
- Angers, France
- Carcassonne, France
- Florence, Italy
- Genoa, Italy
- Gold Coast, Australia
- Lugo, Spain
- Mannheim, Germany
- Mexicali, Mexico
- Murcia, Spain
- Nagasaki, Japan
- Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
- Parma, Italy
- Pavia, Italy
- Sanremo, Italy
- Shizuoka, Japan
- St. Louis, Missouri
- Stuttgart, Germany
- Tijuana, Mexico
In bringing its mapping service in line with the competition, Apple introduced native transit directions with its latest iOS 9 update, a much requested feature for many existing users. While availability is limited to a few cities at launch, support for buses, subways, trains and other public transportation services should roll out to a wider audience in the coming months.
Looking to the future, Apple is currently gathering street-level imaging and positioning data with mapping vans, suggesting the company is working on a competitor to Google Street View. Apple's equipment-laden vans have most recently been spotted tooling around U.S. and UK neighborhoods.
Apple last updated Flyover in August with a buildout of services in Europe, South America and Asia.
Comments
I don't understand what purpose flyover is supposed to serve. Does anyone actually use it? If so could you talk about how it helps?
I use it quiet a bit. I wish it would let you view the horizon though. Do I miss street view? Sure do,but I find I only use street view about 10% of the time now as flyover answers most questions I have that 2D maps can't. Here's hoping Apple combines their own version of street view with flyover for a seamless, intuitive experience.
For me Flyovers is as about as useful as LivePhotos - it looks good on a demo..
No doubt it will cost many more billions to gets Apple maps to an A1 level globally.
We don't mind paying the Apple premium but we expect the experience to be A1 too.
Sure It's great to have a healthy share price but as a non shareholder, I want them to spend more on hiring people on the ground, around the world to enter/collect all the backend data required to make the search in maps and all the location based information fist class. It is slowly getting there though. Unfortunately we've had to get used to maps search databases being second rate. If anyone can through money at a problem, it's Apple.
Do it Apple, spend that money...in the right place.
iOS Is much more popular in England than any of these European places, and yet in the south only London is covered. Even Cardiff and Bristol aren't, and popular tourist destinations like Wells, Bath and Canterbury are "flat" too. A few northern places are done but who the hell goes to Hull?!
I bet somebody from Hull is going to reply now
I completely agree though. I wonder what they do when you go into an AppleStore in Bath, and they go "oh well we have this but... well, not here... or in Bristol... or... well, look let's look at the london eye going around and round... I agree it's utterly ridiculous. I can understand it wasnt overnight but we're now, what 2 years out?
They add flyover to places no one cares about but here in the US they won't add a new road I informed them about 6 months ago.
I have a road Google hasn't fixed in 5 year, told them 3 times and its inside the city... So, hey.
The satellite view has the road too. Total mystery.
When Apple gets their own street view out and Apple fills out all the remaining public transit info of major cities, and its coming soon, no question, Google will be going to near 0% of use on the Iphone, right now it's already getting pretty low.
For me Flyovers is as about as useful as LivePhotos - it looks good on a demo..
Well, good for YOU then.
It can make a real difference helping you visualize an area:
Or it can totally misrepresent an area:
Interesting that the Sidney Harbor Bridge shows the cables that support the roadway -- Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges. not so much.
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/63464/width/350/height/700[/IMG]
They add flyover to places no one cares about but here in the US they won't add a new road I informed them about 6 months ago.
Apple doesn't control the roads. They get their maps from Tom Tom which is where you should be sending map update requests. They will verify the accuracy of your claim and eventually updte the ir database. I'm not sure how often Tom Tom provides new map data to Apple, but eventually, it will show up. You can go to Tom Toms site to make reports.
Drones may creating 3D flyovers easy and cheap for Apple to do.
I'd just be happy if the satellite view of my city wasn't covered with clouds. A resolution high enough so it doesn't resemble a bomber photo from WWII would be nice as well.
I don't understand what purpose flyover is supposed to serve. Does anyone actually use it? If so could you talk about how it helps?
I used it once to check it out. That was the first/last time.
It's plane reliant, Google equivalent service is just as slow from what I understand.
Probably every few years, but yeah, Tom Tom maps, the rest is Apples though.