Late last night I stumbled across a Reddit entry that highlighted the differences between Apple’s 3D Maps and Google’s new 3D Google Earth offerings. Across the board, the poster found that Apple’s 3D Maps offerings very much outperformed Google’s offerings (you can see it on Imgur). I was pretty skeptical, considering the images are all from the same block in San Francisco.
The results with similar lighting is a closer tale than I would have guessed.
San Francisco : AT&T Park (Apple Left, Google Right)
Results
It’s pretty obvious that our side-by-side, compared to those on Reddit, reveals that lighting plays a large part in the quality of both maps. The images from Candlestick AT&T Park were a lot closer to being similar, and it’s pretty obvious that Apple’s 3D map has more detail, as evidenced by the light stands on the stadium. But, I wouldn’t exactly run out and tell everyone that Apple’s maps are superior based on the findings either. The field in the Google Earth entry (right) is a lot crisper.
3D maps are great, but at this point it’s pretty obvious that both Apple and Google have a lot of work to do when it comes to providing quality imaging in the 3D maps environment.
Update: Wow, did we screw that one up. Apparently London, and NYC aren’t part of Apple’s 3D Flyover’s yet. We removed it from the post since it’s unfair to use them as examples and points of comparison. Deep apologies.
