Yosemite National Park and Wellington, New Zealand Added to Apple Maps Flyover Feature

[szw-mapple fan]

I wish it was nice for that! Those signs are too rarely legible.

I originally though Street View was great for figuring out super-local details like which driveway goes with which building, or which doorway goes into which business. And I thought Flyover was just a super-cool gimmick that I'd play with and forget.

In reality--since my city DOES have flyover (and I appreciate that that doesn't help everyone) I use it all the time, and it does what street view used to do, only MUCH BETTER.

Street view: your view is directly at the familiar street level perspective, and will look just the way you expect when you're there in person. Nice!

But...

- Your view is often in the wrong lane, taking the "familiar" advantage away.

- It's often blurred and smeared beyond recognition, noisy, poor contrast, and obscured by lens flares, so you can't read most of the signs you need anyway. I was just trying to use it again this morning and gave up in disgust. What a mess (not always but FAR too often).

And...

Flyover view is WAY FASTER and WAY EASIER TO NAVIGATE.

Street View is such an awful experience (including terrible desktop navigation controls). Turn... turn some more... adjust... click to move forward... wait for loading... look around... oops, went down the wrong way... turn around again... turn some more... tap back where you came from... loading delay... turn again... click again... loading delay... can't quite see what I want... try a little farther ahead... loading delay... wish I could back up just a little... but I can't, I'm stuck with nodes 40 feet apart... give up.

Compare to Flyover: you can navigate instantly and smoothly using the SAME panning/zooming controls as 2D maps. It's not a separatre, awkward mode. It just works.

And you can easlly see the lay of the land, the driveways, etc. that Street View could show you. Not perfectly, but not worse either--just different. It turns out that the human brain actually has no trouble recognizing a place from an angle 50 feet in the air.

Try this experiment: find a square block of your city, and pretend you know a restaurant is in that area, and you know what it looks like but you don't remember the name. Now take a "walk" around that block, all the way around and back, four turns, in Street View. Now try it in Flyover.

No contest. You can spot the place in a few seconds in Flyover. With Street View you will spend minutes, and that's not counting the time you need to go get a shot of whisky to survive the hassle.

I hope Apple keeps bringing Flyover to more and more urban areas. For a landmark, it’s a gimmick. For a neighborhood, it’s awesome.

You do realise that google maps has a flyover feature as well?

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/place/%E3%82%BF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%A0%E3%82%BA%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AF%E3%82%A8%E3%82%A2/@40.7537189,-73.9862264,1407a,20y,41.37t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x89c25855c6480299:0x55194ec5a1ae072e?hl=ja

 

[0098386]

Not true. I use Flyover extensively to plan my cityscapes photoshoot.

That sounds useful to all the cityscape photographers out there.

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I'm sorry but:
Street View - very useful
Flyover - gimmicky.

Absolutely. Flyover is fun to see if your area has it, was surprised mine did (rural UK) but has been of no value for me. Street View on the other hand - invaluable. When Apple Maps and Google Maps have been wrong on locations I can rely on Streetview for corrections, checking phone numbers and getting a much better view of the area I'll be in.

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You do realise that google maps has a flyover feature as well?

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/place/%E3%82%BF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%A0%E3%82%BA%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AF%E3%82%A8%E3%82%A2/@40.7537189,-73.9862264,1407a,20y,41.37t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x89c25855c6480299:0x55194ec5a1ae072e?hl=ja

I didn't know that, thanks for linking it!

 

[Gasu E.]

I didn't really understand that either. it doesn't matter what mode of transport you're using, what matters is exactly what information you need.

If you need to see a particular address, say a house or office, so you'll recognise it when you arrive, then Street view is great.

But if you want to find parking spaces, or back alley shortcuts for pedestrians or cycles, or you want to plan an itinerary visiting landmarks, or you want to find a place you once visited but don't remember the address, Flyover is much, much quicker.

Flyover is great for trip planning. I use Street view as well, but it seems to me redundant for recognizing your destination-- the voice confirmation from the mapping app does the trick. I find Street view most useful for getting an early look at complicated traffic patterns, such as turns and cross-overs.

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and still no Washington DC...

It's there. It's just blacked out for security reasons.

 

[Gasu E.]

You do realise that google maps has a flyover feature as well?

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/place/%E3%82%BF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%A0%E3%82%BA%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AF%E3%82%A8%E3%82%A2/@40.7537189,-73.9862264,1407a,20y,41.37t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x89c25855c6480299:0x55194ec5a1ae072e?hl=ja

It's kind of weak, though, compared to the Apple version. In your link, there are fixed viewpoints, whereas in Apple Maps, I can have the viewpoint move freely. When I look at my house in the Boston suburbs, the house looks like a house and the trees look like the actual individual trees; while Google maps shows the house as being about three feet tall and the trees look like a real-time 3-D cartoon rendering.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

It's kind of weak, though, compared to the Apple version. In your link, there are fixed viewpoints, whereas in Apple Maps, I can have the viewpoint move freely. When I look at my house in the Boston suburbs, the house looks like a house and the trees look like the actual individual trees; while Google maps shows the house as being about three feet tall and the trees look like a real-time 3-D cartoon rendering.

True. But the fact remains that google's version is nearly worldwide while Apple's is limited to a few cities. Can't wait for Apple to reach my hometown.

 

[nagromme]

I am talking about the tilt view in Google Maps which give you something similar to Flyover for the entire globe, with usually more recent imagery.
Flyover does indeed offer greater 3D details (most of the time) but it's only available in a few cities around major landmarks, while Google Maps offer it everywhere.

Yes--that kind of tilt terrain view is available for 100% of the globe in Apple Maps. I have not seen "something similar to Flyover" in any city I've looked at in Google--although I know Google has been working on it. I have (in the separate Google Earth app) seen some really poor crowd-sourced 3D-modeled buildings glued onto satellite photos, but they are an absolute mess and only a vague representation of the city. THEY are a gimmick, while Flyover is frequently useful. I haven't seen any of that in their mobile app or desktop web site.

(I have seen "abstract" outlined 3D buildings in both Apple Maps and Google Maps--a generic effect that's worth something, but not much compared to real Flyover.)

As for "more recent" images, I haven't seen data (have you?) but would be interested in your sources. It wouldn't surprise me if Google has more recent photos on average; nor would it surprise me if that fact actually varies widely by region. In my city (US), there's no clear winner in terms of recent photography. Both are pretty up-to-date, yet both sometimes fail to show new construction for a while.

But I will not argue against Street View's wide coverage. That's terrific (even if Street View so often isn't) and where Flyover's not available, it's occasionally nice that iOS has Google Maps with Street View to fall back on.

You do realise that google maps has a flyover feature as well?

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/place/%E3%82%BF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%A0%E3%82%BA%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AF%E3%82%A8%E3%82%A2/@40.7537189,-73.9862264,1407a,20y,41.37t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x89c25855c6480299:0x55194ec5a1ae072e?hl=ja

That's not even remotely the same thing, and doesn't meet the real-world everyday needs I explained in the post you quoted. That's the same glitchy mess with no freedom of browsing that Street View is.

 

[Padmini]

I'm sorry but:
Street View - very useful
Flyover - gimmicky.

I'm sorry but

Street View - silly gimmick. a bunch of nauseating panoramas
Flyover - impressive beyond belief.
When my parents moved to a new city, i used Flyover in Maps with them to see the area....it yields hours of looking at everything and them using it to explain everything they could see from where they lived, finding other place around them (visually!).

Flyover is tremendous. Street View I never have any need of again.

 

[sentiblue]

It'd only make sense to add FlyOver for Yosemite park since we're naming the next OSX after the park

 

[fawlty]

It'd only make sense to add FlyOver for Yosemite park since we're naming the next OSX after the park

Have they in fact added flyover to Yosemite National Park? All I can see is the satellite image draped over the terrain model, same as it always has been...

 

[tdale]

I can see my back deck.

41.25361s 174.76555e

Sweet! They need a flyover for us in Christchurch. Yes, we have some buildings left....

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At least you can see the cake tin in flyover though! That's what's important, right?

LOL, Aussies might not like the Cake Tin. For the foreigners, the cake tin is a stadium, thats looks like, well a cake tin. Nationally known for rugby matches that have our mates across the ditch, losing.... Like the upcoming Saturday night big match in Auckland!!

 

[Nevaborn]

Yeah, these stories aren't really necessary. Coverage maps are available from the mapping suppliers showing how recent their imagery is. Here's one of the UK, where you can see, unsurprisingly, they don't scan the entire country in the space of a year. You just have to wait until your turn comes around again. If it ever does.

http://www1.getmapping.com/Support/Aerial-Photography-Coverage

They're necessary because while Apple messes around with a flyover gimmick, the map data they continue to use is hopelessly outdated and it is not even just one street is an entire city infrastructure.

How is a flyover of a mountain be more important than that?

and like I said it is atleast 7 years not 1 year as you point out. Apple needs to open up their maps to community additions and really shake up their data supplier.

 

[attila]

If you zoom in far enough with FlyOver you get a much better understanding of the area your looking and it is easier to look at.

StreetView is only nice for seeing the name of stores/numbers etc.

Which is really important, thus Street View is better.

 

[fawlty]

Sweet! They need a flyover for us in Christchurch. Yes, we have some buildings left....

Christchurch and Auckland already have flyover...

 

[Mikey7c8]

Look this is great and all, but until they fix search it doesn't really mean much.

 

[malachiman]

Wow some Apple love to us New Zealanders. We miss out so much on content from apple.

Dunedin, New Zealand Map info has improved too. Our Airport is no longer in the CBD haha.

 

[ReanimationN]

LOL, Aussies might not like the Cake Tin. For the foreigners, the cake tin is a stadium, thats looks like, well a cake tin. Nationally known for rugby matches that have our mates across the ditch, losing.... Like the upcoming Saturday night big match in Auckland!!

I'm not much of a Union fan these days, but I did watch the test on the weekend- the Wallabies may as well not bother showing up anymore!