A hidden iOS 8 feature that Apple barely mentioned onstage during its WWDC 2014 keynote – flyover city tours – has been discovered in iOS 8 beta 2 by a developer who managed to access it using hidden debug menus, with Mac4Ever demoing this new Apple Maps feature in a short video.
This new feature relies on the flyover function in Apple Maps to offer users a virtual tour of certain landmarks in a location. In the video, a short tour of Paris is demoed, with the program automatically flying over two tourist attractions that are shown from various angles without any user interaction, including the Pantheon and the Notre Dame cathedral.
It’s not clear whether the feature will ultimately be available in all locations where the Apple Maps flyover feature is supported, but flyover city tours will be restricted, at least initially, to only a few cities including Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Stockholm, New York, Glasgow, Cape Town, Perth, Bordeaux and San Francisco.
While Apple Maps has seen its fair share of criticism since being launched, it looks like Apple is looking to offer users more interesting features, such as this flyover city tour functionality, in order to better compete with Google Maps, the “weapon” of choice for many Internet users looking for directions.
A video showing the brief Paris flyover city tour follows below.
