Ovi Maps 3D – a whole lotta wow
You remember that 3D mapping stuff we saw examples of WAY, back showing off some pretty cool implications for the future of maps under Nokia and Navteq’s tutelage?? Well Nokia have made good on that promise, announcing their Ovi Maps 3D beta for browsers everywhere. Imagine Google maps 3D on steroids and you should have a pretty idea of what the entire furor is about.
Only a few cities are available right now (London, New York, Miami, Wein, Barcelona, Venice and a few others) but the idea of this running on a smartphone or tablet that I carry with me is exceptionally exciting. Of course, they’ll have to topple Google’s current stranglehold on mapping and search services but this is where the partnership with Microsoft will become invariably handy.
The 3D view isn’t overly high-resolution but the addition of a street view is much appreciated. Now to get this on to some high-powered hardware Nokia?
Hit the link below to install the plugin and get to browsing through one of these cities right now.
Update from Jay:
Crickey, I’m impressed. I hope to be this astonished when Nokia release their high end devices. When I saw the screenshot in this post, I was wondering why we had a photo of London and not the supposed 3D. With the 3D cities available, it’s a joy to explore. I also love how I fell into streetview. My browser viewed it in really widescreen panorama – this is just a short snippet, crudely destroyed by jpeg.
The little blue bubbles/circles is where your mouse is and where you can jump/fall into streetview
Interface on PC
Update from LLAADD:
Note: there are a couple of places where it looks like the screen has gone blank and the panning “stutters”, but this is not the Ovi Maps 3D, it’s my graphics card playing up, so hopefully when you try your self it works a lot better!
Category: Nokia
Doesn’t work on our new Linux computers at work
That’s some really cool stuff. A little bit of competition for Google Maps on the descktop.
Andre wrote “…Of course, they’ll have to topple Google’s current stranglehold on mapping and search services but this is where the partnership with Microsoft will become invariably handy.”
That partnership apparently doesn’t extend for example to the Bing app which is available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone and even BBOS but not Symbian.
Now I understand why a helicopter was flying around our suburb in Helsinki for days last summer. Great job Nokia!
Is it just me who has problems with getting ovi maps 3D mode working at all?. I have the latest browsers (ie, firefox) and none of them seems to co-operate with 3D version. IE 9 is stuck with world view. Clicking links to different cities doesn’t do noting. Firefox 4 gives warning from unresponsive javascript and page is so sloooow.
try checking you have the latest version of Java installed: http://www.java.com/en/
You can also see minimum and recommended System requirements and some FAQ’s here:
http://maps.ovi.com/3d/help.html
[...] Ovi Maps have just launched the beta for Ovi Maps 3D and I think it is safe to say that Jay from My Nokia Blog is [...]
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A nice toy, but what does it really give us? I’m still trying to work out why on earth Ovi Maps exists on the desktop as I fail to find anyone who has use for it given the massive use of Google and very lesser extent Bing.
Curious also the comment about Microsoft partnership benefits, given they scrapped Bing 3D.
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