Flyover (Apple Maps)
Flyover is a feature on Apple Maps that allows users to view certain areas in a 3D setting. Flyover also allows users to take "tours" of these locations through the City Tours feature, showcasing various landmarks in the area. Imagery is provided through the use of drones, which collect fine data on buildings.
| Initial release | September 19, 2012 |
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| Repository |
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| Engine | |
| Platform | iOS<ref name="auto6">"iOS and iPadOS 17 Feature Availability". Apple Support. Retrieved 20 December 2023.</ref> iPadOS<ref name="auto6"/> macOS<ref>Kazmucha, Allyson (13 February 2014). "How to use the Flyover feature in Apple Maps for Mac". iMore. Retrieved 21 December 2023.</ref> |
| Available in | Multiple languages |
Initially founded in 2012, along with Apple Maps itself, Flyover now covers over 300 cities, landmarks, and parks across five of the six inhabited continents through a series of several expansions, notably in 2014, 2015 and 2019. Despite earlier issues, Flyover has been praised for its detail and uniqueness.<ref name="auto5">Bell, Karissa (28 June 2017). "Watch out Google Earth, Apple Maps has a hidden VR-like 'flyover' mode". Mashable. Retrieved 18 November 2023.</ref>
History
2012 - 2015
Flyover was announced along with Apple Maps at the WWDC 2012, and was also released alongside Maps in September 2012.<ref>"Apple Announces New Maps App at WWDC 2012". Local Splash. 11 June 2012. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref> The 10 initial cities that first received Flyover were Chicago, Copenhagen, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and Sydney.<ref>"Here All All The Cities You Can Flyover In iOS 6 Maps". Cult of Mac. 14 June 2012. Retrieved 13 October 2023.</ref> More cities would receive Flyover in later years, with Apple often adding Flyover to multiple cities at a time.<ref>"New Flyover and indoor maps locations now available in Apple Maps". 9to5Mac. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref>"Apple adds 11 more cities to Flyover on its maps". Actualidad iPhone. 28 January 2015. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref> In addition to this initial release, Apple added the feature to other cities later in the year, including Toronto in Canada.<ref>"Toronto Arrives in 3D in Apple's iOS6". Urban Toronto. Retrieved 14 September 2023.</ref>
In 2013, Flyover was added to Paris, as well as smaller cities such as Indianapolis and Baltimore, totalling 16 cities in the United States, Germany, Canada, France and the UK.<ref name="auto1">"Apple expands 3D Flyover coverage in Maps to Cape Town and Helsinki". 9to5Mac. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref>"Apple's Maps being updated often and significantly". The Loop. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref> In addition, Flyover was also added to London, Barcelona, Cologne,<ref>"Apple adds iOS Maps Flyover support, 3D buildings, turn-by-turn navigation in multiple cities". Apple Insider. 13 March 2013. Retrieved 19 October 2023.</ref> Rome, and Madrid,<ref>"Apple adds Flyover and 3D Maps to 15 new cities in Apple Maps". Gadget Helpline. 13 March 2013. Retrieved 14 September 2023.</ref> as well as the city of Vancouver, in Canada the same year.<ref>"Apple Continues To Bring Flyover & 3D Buildings To More Cities In Maps". Cult of Mac. 13 March 2013. Retrieved 7 October 2023.</ref>
Flyover was added to several cities and national parks in New Zealand, France, the United States, South Africa, Sweden and Japan, including Cape Town and two Arizona National Parks in 2014,<ref>"Apple Adds New Flyover Locations to Maps, Siri Movie Showtimes in More Countries". MacRumors. 5 December 2014. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref> with Marseille, the second-largest city in France, receiving Flyover coverage later in the year as well,<ref name="auto1"/> The capital of Japan, Tokyo, also received Flyover that year.<ref>"Tokyo, Zion National Park Added to Apple Maps Flyover Feature". MacRumors. 27 June 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2023.</ref> along with Wellington, New Zealand and Yosemite National Park.<ref>Clover, Juli (19 August 2014). "Yosemite National Park and Wellington, New Zealand Added to Apple Maps Flyover Feature". MacRumors. Retrieved 1 November 2023.</ref> In addition, the City Tours feature, which allows users to tour locations supported by the Flyover feature, was also added around this time.<ref name="auto4">Smith, Chris (20 June 2014). "Here's one way Apple Maps is getting better than Google Maps". Yahoo News. Retrieved 12 November 2023.</ref>
South Africa, the only African nation to have Flyover, also first saw the feature with Cape Town in 2014, with Durban and Johannesburg receiving the feature in later years.<ref name="auto2">"Apple Adds 20 New Flyover Locations Around the World, New Maps Info in Taiwan and Finland". MacRumors. 3 February 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref>
Flyover was added to over 20 cities and locations in 2015 in various cities mostly across the US and Western Europe, including Canberra and Venice.<ref>"Apple Adds 20 New Flyover Locations to Maps". MacRumors. 30 April 2015. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref>"Apple adding 9 new 3D Flyover locations to Maps". 9to5Mac. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref> Flyover was also added to Budapest, in Hungary<ref>"Tour Budapest in 3D with Apple Maps – Flyover Tour". We Love Budapest. 2 January 2015. Retrieved 14 September 2023.</ref> and Prague and Brno in the Czech Republic later in the year.<ref>"Praha začala podporovat FlyOver v Apple Maps!". 24 September 2023. Retrieved 24 September 2023.</ref> In Italy, the cities of Florence and Genoa received Flyover that year as well.<ref>Hunt, Gordon (29 September 2015). "Apple's 3D Flyover maps expand to cities in Italy, Japan and beyond". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 28 October 2023.</ref>
Guadalajara, the largest city in Mexico to have the feature, also received Flyover in 2015.<ref>Kahn, Jordan. "Apple adding 9 new 3D Flyover locations to Maps". 9to5Mac. Retrieved 31 October 2023.</ref> Japan also saw more cities with Flyover, with Nagoya, Osaka and Hiroshima receiving the feature in 2015 as well,<ref>"Apple Adds New Flyover Locations, Expands 'Nearby' Feature to Australia, Canada, France and Germany". MacRumors. 26 October 2015. Retrieved 4 November 2023.</ref> and Mannheim and Stuttgart in Germany also received the feature that year.<ref>"Here are all the amazing new locations you can fly over with Apple Maps". Business Insider. Retrieved 20 October 2023.</ref>
2016 - present
2016 saw Apple add Flyover to around 20 additional cities, including cities such as Adelaide in Australia and the Virgin Islands, with the majority of the new cities being smaller ones, as only two of the cities that received Flyover that year had over a million people.<ref name="auto2"/><ref>Lovejoy, Ben. "Apple Maps adds 5 new U.S. Flyover locations, 15 more international ones". 9to5Mac. Retrieved 9 November 2023.</ref>
Flyover was added to 7 cities in 2018, those being the cities of Karlsruhe and Kiel in Germany, Braga in Portugal, San Juan in Puerto Rico, Cadiz and Jerez de la Frontera in Spain, and Hull in the United Kingdom.<ref>Lee, Cody (24 June 2015). "Apple adds 7 new Flyover locations to Maps". iDownloadBlog. Retrieved 26 October 2023.</ref>
2019 saw Apple's biggest Flyover expansion, with the feature being added to over 30 cities in France, Japan, the United States, and others, as well as the entirety of the nation of Monaco.<ref>"Apple Maps Gains New Indoor Mall Maps and Flyover Locations". MacRumors. 8 January 2019. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref>"New Flyover and indoor maps locations now available in Apple Maps". 9to5mac. Retrieved 6 November 2023.</ref>
After 2019 and during the COVID-19 pandemic, relatively little progress was made with the feature, largely in favor of working on the newer Look Around. However, Apple added some new Flyovers during and since then, expanding to Amsterdam in 2020<ref>"Apple Maps Expands Public Transit Information and 3D View in Portugal and the Netherlands". MacRumors. 3 September 2020. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref>Neely, Amber (3 September 2020). "Apple Maps now has 3D images in Amsterdam, transit information in Portugal". Apple Insider. Retrieved 6 November 2023.</ref> and Vienna in 2023.<ref>"Wien bald in 3D: Apple Maps vermisst Hauptstadt (in German)". oe24. June 2022. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref>
Use
Apple collects the 3D data used for Flyover by using small military-grade<ref name="auto3">Orange, Richard. "Oslo bans Apple's mapping drones". The Local. Retrieved 12 November 2023.</ref> drone-like planes, which fly up close to buildings to create a more detailed map. Since 2013, C3 Technologies, which was acquired by Apple in 2011, has collected the data used for Flyover.<ref>"How Apple Creates 3D Flyover Maps". Apple Gazette. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref>
With Flyover, certain locations – mostly big cities, landmarks and some national parks – can be seen from a birds-eye perspective. The three-dimensional views are photo-realistic, and users can change the vantage point on the map.<ref name="Maps">"Apple: Maps". Retrieved December 30, 2015.</ref>
Flyover imagery has been viewed as similar to that of virtual reality, and could possibly be a precursor to a VR feature on Maps.<ref name="auto5"/><ref>Elliott, Matt. "Take awesome VR tours with Apple Map's Flyover feature". CNET. Retrieved 18 November 2023.</ref>
City Tours
Flyover City Tours were released around 2014, but was inaccessible for a time until the feature was debugged by an Apple Maps developer, making it public.<ref name="auto4"/> City Tours is a feature that allows users to view various landmarks in a given city via a "flying" animation,<ref name="auto5"/> a feature only available to cities that already contain Flyover 3D maps.<ref name="AppleToolBox">"What Is the Flyover Feature in Apple Maps?". AppleToolBox. 29 March 2023. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref> City Tours was added as a feature to Apple Maps on iOS 8 on September 17, 2014, and in OS X Yosemite on October 16, 2014.<ref>Slivka, Eric (7 September 2014). "Apple Filling Out Flyover City Tours Ahead of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite Launches". MacRumors. Retrieved 17 November 2023.</ref>
Most, but not all cities with Flyover allow tours of a given city, where the above virtual tour of various landmarks in the area will be shown.<ref>"Take Flyover tours in Maps on iPhone". Apple Inc. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref name="AppleToolBox"/>
Coverage
Flyovers are available in over 350<ref>"Apple Maps is looking better than ever, but it still has a long way to go". The Verge. 30 September 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2023.</ref> cities and national parks across 28 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, as of 2023.<ref>"iOS and iPadOS 17 Feature Availability". Apple Inc. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref group="lower-alpha">Note that 3D coverage is generally not limited to the cities targeted for Flyover (see below) and often covers surrounding towns and communities in the area. For example, Cologne and Düsseldorf both have Flyover, and in addition to their coverage, all areas between the two cities, such as Solingen and Leverkusen, also have Flyover.</ref>
Controversy
Errors
Similar to Maps itself, Flyover saw many visual issues upon release, a notable one containing a massive glitch on the Brooklyn and Anzac Bridges, showing "plunges" on both structures.<ref>"Apple Maps' Six Most Epic Fails". Forbes. Retrieved 19 October 2023.</ref> This was part of a larger series of technical issues with Apple Maps, most of which have since been fixed.
Security concerns
In 2013, the Norwegian government denied a request by Apple to add Flyover to Oslo, the Norwegian capital, citing security concerns arising from the amount of detail given to buildings, information which could potentially be used to facilitate and carry out terrorist attacks.<ref name="auto">Dewey, Caitlin. "Why Norway is blocking Apple Maps from taking 3D images of Oslo". The Washington Post. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref name="auto7">Gates, Sara (12 August 2013). "Norway Blocks Apple From 3D Mapping Oslo For Maps App Flyover View". Huff Post. Retrieved 12 September 2023.</ref><ref name="auto3"/> The decision was met with criticism from Fabian Stang, then mayor of Oslo, who called for the Norwegian government to allow Apple to add the feature, citing the possibility of increased tourism from the addition.<ref name="auto7"/><ref>Grothaus, Michael (12 August 2013). "Norwegian government bans Apple from capturing 3D Flyover Maps data in Oslo". Yahoo News. Retrieved 23 December 2023.</ref> A spokesperson for the National Security Authority of Norway stated that obtaining the needed imagery from a "Norwegian supplier" or from the Norwegian Mapping Authority could potentially assist Apple in adding the feature.<ref>Kleinman, Zoe (12 August 2013). "Apple aerial map photos blocked over Oslo in Norway". BBC News. Retrieved 23 December 2023.</ref> Similar security concerns may be preventing Apple from adding Flyover to other potentially sensitive areas, including Washington D.C., among others.<ref name="auto"/>
