Dual Maps Goes 3D

Dual Maps, an old Maps Mania favorite, has undergone a bit of a makeover this week. As you may have heard, Google recently removed its classic 45° bird's-eye aerial imagery from the Maps JavaScript API. This oblique aerial perspective was one of the core synchronized views offered by Dual Maps. The removal of the bird's-eye view has therefore prompted Map Channels to undertake a ground-up revamp of its popular synchronized multi-panel app. 

Dual Maps is a free web mapping utility that generates an interactive, embeddable control syncing Google Maps, Google Street View, and aerial/satellite photography into a single viewport. When you interact with one panel - such as dragging the map or rotating the Street View pegman - the other panels instantly pan, zoom, and rotate to stay perfectly synchronized.  

Maintaining traditional oblique aerial photography is incredibly resource-intensive, requiring specialized, low-flying aircraft to capture four separate angles of urban areas on a regular basis. This high overhead is  why Google (and competitors like Microsoft) has shifted toward algorithmically generated 3D mesh models built from global satellite data and high-altitude imagery.

While legacy Dual Maps embeds will now simply revert to a standard top-down satellite mode, Map Channels hasn't stopped there. Instead, they have rebuilt the whole project from scratch and released the code completely open-source on GitHub under the MIT license. In fact, Map Channels has launched two brand-new versions of its synchronized mapping platform:

• Dual Maps 3D
• Dual Free Map

Dual Maps 3D 

The new Dual Maps 3D integrates a traditional road map and Google Street View with an immersive, photorealistic 3D Earth view powered by Google’s modern 3D tiles. This setup allows you to tilt, orbit, and glide over any location on the planet - from ground level up to a fully dynamic 3D bird's-eye perspective - with all three viewports seamlessly tracking your movements in real time. 

Dual Free Maps 

Alongside the 3D version, Map Channels has also released Dual Free Maps, a brilliant alternative designed for developers who want synchronized views without relying on Google's ecosystem or managing paid API keys. This project features a completely open-source mapping stack, utilizing MapLibre GL alongside OpenStreetMap data for road views, Esri for satellite photography, and Mapillary for street-level imagery. 

By making the source code for both new tools freely available on GitHub, Map Channels has given cartography bloggers and developers total freedom to inspect the code, self-host the apps, or contribute to their ongoing development.