Linkoping, Sweden
At least three new 3D cities have been added to Flyover mode in Apple Maps. How many more are to come?
Linkoping, Sweden (pictured above). Vancouver, Canada. Tulsa, Oklahoma (U.S.). Apple recently flipped the 3D switch on these three cities in its proprietary Maps app. And though Minneapolis and St. Paul were on the list, Apple inexplicably switched them back to 2D mode for a while. But I can confirm that both cities are back on the list.
Speaking of the list, here’s our complete, comprehensive collection of 60+ 3D Flyover cities in Apple Maps.
We continue to wait for the inclusion of some noteworthy absences, including Washington D.C., Paris, Venice, Prague, Tokyo, and others. No doubt Apple simply doesn’t have permission to create 3D representations of some of the missing cities (one could see certain security risks in including D.C.), but others we know are already available in 3D, yet Apple simply isn’t including them. Why is that? It bugs me!
Special thanks to all our readers who helped find these new 3D cities. We’re always searching, but please let us know if you find anymore.
Linköping was there for months. I’ve seen it in the beginning of February myself. I just recently bothered to add it to http://flyovercities.com and now everyone seems to think that it is a new city.
Linköping is a little city in Sweden, well known for it’s University. C3 Technologies was swedish company and I assume that some employees get their degree at that Linköping’s University, and they decided to work on that small city as their 20% time project (I don’t really know if Apple has it).
And by the way, no other maps application have so good 3D cities as iOS Maps. Google has 3D cities too, but only few that are made by aircrafts that flew over cities and took many images and put them together with an algorithm (Just as iOS Flyovers are). Others are made with Sketch-up and look cartoonish and not so real. So when you see this list http://support.google.com/gmm/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1100948 , its less than half are ‘real’ flyovers.
Other maps that have ‘flyovers’ is Nokia’s Ovi Maps. And it is a bit ironic that all Nokia’s ‘flyovers’ are actually made by C3 Technologies which now Apple owns. If you compare Ovi ‘flyovers’ ( http://heremaps.cn/3d-cities ) with Apple’s then you’ll see that Apple’s are more polished, they have less shadows, colors are more pleasant, timeframe is newer and buildings looks better.
C3 was founded in the city of Linköping by the defence company SAAB. Don’t know if they still are situated there or if Apple moved the whole company to the states.
Seems like they moved it to US, based on that they employ people that work on Flyover in US: https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?#specs&ss=flyover&t=0&so=&pN=0
Here’s a comparison chart of Google & Apple’s 3D building products: http://cubecities.blogspot.ca/2013/03/comparing-google-apples-3d-building.html