Flyover is a feature on Apple Maps that allows users to view certain cities in a 3D setting. Flyover also allows users to take "tours" of these cities, showcasing various landmarks in the area. Imagery is provided through the use of drones, which collect fine data on buildings.
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. Despite earlier innacuraccies, Flyover has been praised for its detail and uniqueness.
History
2012 - 2015
Flyover was announced along with Apple Maps at the WWDC 2012. The 10 initial cities that first received Flyover were Chicago, Copenhagen, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and Sydney. Other cities would receive Flyover in later years, with Apple often adding Flyover to multiple cities at a time.
In Canada, Toronto first received Flyover in 2012, followed by Vancouver a year later.
In 2013, Flyover was added to Paris, as well as smaller cities such as Indianapolis and Baltimore. In addition, Flyover was also added to London, Barcelona, Rome, and Madrid in 2013.
Cologne, in Germany, received Flyover in 2013, along with Mannheim and Stuttgart in 2015.
Flyover was added to around 10 cities, including Cape Town and two Arizona National Parks in 2014, with Marseille, the second-largest city in France, receiving Flyover coverage later in the year as well. The capital of Japan, Tokyo, also received Flyover that year.
Flyover for Wellington, New Zealand and Yosemite National Park was also added in 2014.
South Africa, the only African nation to have Flyover, first saw the feature with Cape Town in 2014, with Durban and Johannesburg receiving the feature in later years.
Flyover was added to over 20 cities and locations in 2015, including Canberra and Venice. Flyover was also added to Budapest, in Hungary in 2015 and Prague and Brno in the Czech Republic later in the year. In Italy, the cities of Florence and Genoa received Flyover that year as well.
Guadalajara, the largest city in Mexico to have the feature, also received Flyover in 2015.
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 cities that received Flyover that year had over a million people.
Flyover was added to another several locations in 2018, including San Juan in Puerto Rico and Karlsruhe in Germany.
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.
After 2019, Apple largely stopped adding Flyovers, largely in favor of working on the newer Look Around feature. However, Apple has recently added some new Flyovers, expanding to Amsterdam in 2020 and Vienna in 2023.
Use
Apple collects the 3D data used for Flyover by using small 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.
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 perspective. Most, but not all cities with Flyover allow 3D tours of the given city, where a quick virtual tour of various landmarks in the city will be shown.
Coverage
Flyovers are available in various cities and national parks across 28 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
3D coverage is generally not limited to the cities targeted for Flyover (see above) 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.
Controversy
Errors
Similar to Maps itself, Flyover saw many visual issues upon release, a notable one showing a massive glitch on the Brooklyn and Anzac Bridges, showing "plunges" on both structures. This was part of a larger series of technical issues with Apple Maps, most of which have since been fixed.