Apple Maps 3d is insanely impressive now (see video below) Google on the other hand decided to build an insanely clunky solution to display 3d maps to avoid using mobile GPUs: A Google server streams (!) a live video of its 3d rendered map to you, the result is... a disastrous: a super laggy and clunky 3d view full of video compression artefacts with a response time of 2-3 seconds for every movement And I know WHY they built that, someone felt it was not inclusive to only have 3d maps that are high performing on iOS because Apple's GPUs are insanely fast and can deal with it (as you can see below in Apple Maps) but they wanted to support inferior phones, I get it But then they also decided to worsen the experience for iOS users who could easily run 3d natively on its GPU It's just an insane product decision, there's no way to cut it: they could have super smooth 3d like Apple Maps but neutered it with a clunky live stream Even more insane because Google does have native 3d on iOS in a completely different app that nobody uses: Google Earth Is 3d important? Not rly for nav no but it shows again something about Google's engineering decisions, like the redesign of the Google OAuth Login screen that made zero sense Nobody is speaking up against bad ideas in Google meetings, everyone's too scared of HR maybe, it's the opposite of a meritocracy and it's just super visible from using Google products right nowshow more

that's cool and all but the only use for this 3d map is showing off in twitter how apple maps is supposedly better than google maps!

@joaofernandesys I agree there isn't much functionality to 3d maps yet But you can imagine adding functionality to that like see your seating in a 3d stadium etc It's just a sign of stagnation

What do you mean by live streamed? The 3D maps are rendered on device in Android (at least on Google Maps on a Samsung Galaxy S22 I can confirm it is) The map "tiles" are images for satellite maps and vectors for others. But there is no "livestreaming" and the GPU is used

I started using @OrganicMapsApp for that reason. It slowly starts to be competitive. I use it for driving, walking and even for public transport recently. They have no fear of competition either. Just as with duckduckgo it's easy to leave the app for another one.

I would rather they just fix their real time public transport / traffic updates than give me the world in 3D, which serves (almost) no purpose. I wouldn’t call that a good product decision, quite the opposite. In fact, Google Maps is still far more useful to the general public.

This has to be so incredibly expensive… it kicked me off after time of inactivity lol

I mentioned my vehicle is a truck in google map and it still takes me through lanes that even bicycles won’t fit lol. I don’t care about 3D but the direction algo is significantly worse than it used to be years ago

Apple Maps has been way better than Google Maps since like year 2, but no one gives it any credit due to the initial bad publicity

I saw the battery drop from 17% to 15% here. Jokes aside, I think this is impressive for the places it supports, though the list is still quite small and restricted to certain regions or cities. I believe this is a good additional option, but not necessarily a must-have feature.

FALSE, there's no 2-3 seconds delay you also don't have this asset loading issue