https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ0UiebO1OY
A few days ago, 9to5Mac published some details about the elusive City Tours feature of iOS 8 found hidden in secret debug menus. It was thought that this was the only way to see the feature. However, reader Stefan Kuijt has now discovered that the feature is actually exposed publicly in the iOS 8 UI, albeit extremely hidden. This means anyone with the iOS 8 beta can try City Tours without any modification. The video above shows the current public user-interface in action, touring a selection of France’s famous landmarks.
To begin a City Tour, find a city with a yellow label in Hybrid view. Tap precisely on the city name and select City Tour. Obviously, it only works in a subset of cities including New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Glasgow (UK), Barcelona, Rome and Paris. Cities that have a tour are indicated by a yellow label, in contrast to the usual white labels. Subsequently, the option has been spotted in Yosemite’s Maps app. Unsurprisingly, it functions the same as the iOS app.
It seems that City Tours can currently only be accessed from the ‘Hybrid’ view. Screenshots from our previous article show that Apple has at least experimented with labels in the detail views, so perhaps these interactions will appear in the future. The fact that nobody discovered this until today is probably a good indication that more work is needed in future betas to make the process clearer.
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You can access flyover tours in Yosemite too. Same method, same places.
That’s really cool – and works great on iPhone. Can’t see how to get it to work on Yosemite Maps though – I don’t see any yellow names for cities in hybrid view?
I can’t find it, either.
Works fine in Yosemite as well. From satellite view, use Show labels, find a 3D city and select the Tour icon next to the label.
This is a breakthrough!
The Flyover Tour in Rome feels a lot like an Animus scene from Assassin’s Creed 2, especially with the grid-loading animations.
They’re going to want to put a menu or UI button in Maps to highlight the existence of these tours, as they’re not evident by a long shot through normal use.
That’s pretty impressive, especially being able to see through and under structures like the Eiffel Tower. Now add live traffic and we’re done.
This would be 10 times better if it was narrated with information about the specific landmark being shown by Siri omg so awesome