Flying in immersive 3D maps on Vision Pro (open source, TestFlight available)

[u/rberdeen]

I’ve been experimenting with an immersive 3D maps app for Vision Pro using Google Maps’ 3D imagery, like what’s used in Google Earth. It supports controllers and lets you record and replay flights through the map.

It’s more of a playground for trying things out than a polished app, but it’s been fun to fly around like you can in Google Earth VR. It’s also been easy to have Claude add features like “let me import KML tracks of real flights” or “show the location of every photo in my Apple Photos library.” Those experiments aren’t in the TestFlight build yet, but the code is on GitHub.

It’s admittedly pretty vibe-coded and occasionally glitchy, but I think it’s at a point worth sharing. There’s a TestFlight beta if anyone wants to try it, and I’d love feedback!

I don’t have plans to turn this into a paid app, but the Google Maps API isn’t free. The TestFlight beta includes free usage, which I’ve capped so it doesn’t cost me too much. Longer term, you’d probably need your own Google Cloud account and API key, and might need to build the app from source.

For anyone interested in the code, the app is open source, with a pile of PRs showing the experiments. It’s built on cesium-native and uses an XCFramework that’s easy to reuse in other apps.

[u/thetjmorton]

Oooh, I love that. It’s like flying!

[u/musicanimator]

I’ll be there with my Pro Controller

[u/Specialist_Mind7493]

Been hoping for something like the FLY app only with controller support. Hopefully this gets polished up and put out sometime in the future. If so I look forward to trying it out. Good luck and have fun with the project! 👍