Air Tours of the World

TripGeo's new Air Tours app is an engaging and immersive way to virtually explore cities around the world. This interactive web application combines Google Maps' 3D imagery, Street View, and aerial perspectives to provide you with four different perspectives of some of the world's most iconic locations. Whether you're a travel enthusiast, an urban explorer, or simply someone looking to get a new perspective on global destinations, Air Tours delivers an exciting way to navigate the world's major cities.

A Multi-Layered View of Iconic Cities

Air Tours allows users to virtually visit renowned cities such as London, Paris, and San Francisco, among many others. By combining multiple mapping technologies, Air Tours gives you a number of different perspectives of each featured location. You can fly over city skylines, orbit around landmarks, or dive down to street level for a more detailed view of urban landscapes. The smooth transitions between aerial and ground perspectives create a fluid and natural navigation experience that enhances the sense of immersion.

Famous Landmarks

The numbered buttons at the top of each city's Air Tour allow you to easily navigate between some of the most iconic locations in each city. Hover over these buttons to view labels for each destination. Click a button and the four map views will automatically pan to your chosen location, which you can then explore in 3D from the air, or from the ground using Google Maps Street View.

Fly Free

One of the standout features of Air Tours is its 'Fly' mode. This flight-sim mode allows you to take control and explore your city from the air. The ability to switch seamlessly between different perspectives - whether an expansive bird's-eye view or an up-close Street View experience - sets Air Tours apart from conventional mapping applications.

Air Tours is an innovative and exciting way to experience cities from multiple perspectives. Whether you're preparing for an upcoming trip, reminiscing about past travels, or simply indulging your wanderlust from home, this application provides a captivating way to interact with the world's urban landscapes. 

Air Tours is best suited for desktop users. The level of detail and the fluidity of navigation are best experienced on a larger screen. If you're looking for a new way to see the world, Air Tours is well worth exploring.

Travel Cat

If you enjoy the Flight mode in Air Tours then you will probably love Travel Cat, TripGeo's playful flight-sim exploration game. Travel Cat allows you to explore over 11,000 cities worldwide from the comfort of a feline piloted golden monoplane.

A Bird's Eye View into the Past

Glasgow

In the 1860s, The Illustrated London News published a series of bird’s-eye panoramic maps of famous cities. These maps were created by architectural draftsman Thomas Sulman with the help of engraver Robert Loudan. Legend has it that Sulman used hot air balloons to capture his aerial perspectives of these prominent urban centers.

The Glasgow City Heritage Trust has created an impressive interactive map of Sulman’s 1864 Bird’s Eye View of Glasgow. Their Gallus Glasgow presentation allows users to explore this aerial depiction of mid-19th-century Glasgow and compare it with a panoramic bird’s-eye view of the city as captured at the beginning of the 21st century.

This interactive version of the historical map includes several optional overlays. These feature markers indicating the locations of buildings that have survived since the map’s creation, structures that have been lost over time, and an option to display Glasgow’s street names superimposed on Sulman’s map. The map even incorporates a series of videos that dive into the details, offering a more immersive, first-person perspective of life in 19th-century Glasgow.

New York

You can view Sulman's 1876 bird's eye view of New York, New York From Bergen Hill, on the Library of Congress website. This panoramic view of New York was published as an extra supplement to the Illustrated London News on August 18, 1876. The Library of Congress copy of the map is a little poor in quality. A higher resolution copy can be viewed on Digital Commonwealth.

London

The Charles Dickens Page allows you to view a number of bird's eye views of London neighborhoods, as captured by Thomas Sulman in the 1880's. These maps were originally published in 1886, in a London guidebook by Herbert Fry.

The maps on the Charles Dickens page include some interactive place-name labels, which can be clicked on to learn more about the most important buildings and streets displayed. Some of the maps have also been digitally altered to enhance certain features and to 'align the images with Dickens' lifetime'.

The Future of Urban Mobility

This impressive animated data visualization shows the average levels of traffic on Dubai roads over the course of one day. It is one of a series of mapped visualizations in Moving forward: What drives the future of urban transport, a data-driven exploration of urban mobility in Dubai.

Dubai city has one of the highest car ownership rates in the world, with one vehicle for every two residents, contributing to 9.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually. In 'Moving Forward', the geo-intelligence platform Urbi Atlas explores how adopting electric vehicles and expanding public transportation can contribute to reducing air pollution in the city.

By 2030, 25% of Dubai’s cars could be electric, supported by government incentives like tax breaks, free charging stations, and a growing EV infrastructure. However, challenges such as battery range limitations due to extreme temperatures and the need for expanded charging networks remain key concerns. Urbi Atlas visualizes the already growing presence of electric vehicles on Dubai's roads with an impressive interactive timeline map (shown below).

Beyond EV adoption, cities in the Middle East are investing heavily in public transit and urban design. Urbi Atlas shows the expansion of Dubai’s public transit network in another time series map. This map visualizes the doubling of the transport network since 2018.

Urbi Atlas’s data visualizations provide valuable insights into Dubai’s urban mobility challenges, and show how moving forward electric vehicles and public transit can play a crucial role in further reducing congestion and emissions in the city.

Switzerland’s Landscape - Reimagined

Switzerland in 2075 will look very different from today. The effects of global heating will transform the landscape, resulting in melting glaciers and raising snow lines on the country's mountains. With less snowmelt, river water levels will drop, making some rivers unnavigable. In agriculture, staple crops will need to be replaced with more heat-resistant varieties. As a result, Switzerland’s once-familiar alpine scenery will be dramatically altered, reshaping both its environment and way of life.

The impact of climate change on Switzerland's landscape will be so dramatic that it is very hard to picture. That is why NZZ has visualized it for you. In Switzerland in 2075 NZZ has created a photo-realistic 3D model which allows readers to experience the country's altered terrain firsthand. This interactive satellite map illustrates Switzerland’s transformed scenery of melted glaciers, shifting forests, higher snow lines, and changed agricultural landscapes.

Accompanying this impressive 3D visualization is detailed text explaining how and why Switzerland’s landscape will be affected by climate change. It also explores the impact on the Swiss way of life and outlines how the country can adapt and take decisive action to navigate this climate changed future.

ViewPoint 3000

UpToWhere allows you to discover what you can see from any position on Earth. You can think of it as a 3D version of HeyWhatsThat. 

For the past 15 years, HeyWhatsThat has provided panoramic sketches and the names of visible peaks for nearly any location in the world. Simply click on any spot in HeyWhatsThat, and it generates a diagram of your viewpoint, marking all visible peaks.

UpToWhere offers a similar service but with a key enhancement—it visualizes the view range of any location on Earth as a fully interactive 3D map. Just click anywhere on the UpToWhere map, and it uses NASA's SRTM Digital Elevation 30m data to generate a realistic 3D simulation of what you can see from that spot. The shaded blue areas on the map represent the regions visible from your selected location.

Today, I've been using UpToWhere to check out the views from several houses in Italy that I’m considering renting for my summer vacation. This tool is also incredibly useful for anyone interested in hiking, mountaineering, skiing, or simply exploring different viewpoints.

One notable feature of HeyWhatsThat that is currently missing in UpToWhere is the identification of visible landmarks. HeyWhatsThat provides the names of significant peaks within your view, currently UpToWhere does not have this feature. However, you can partly work around this by switching from satellite view to map view. In map view, you can navigate to locations within your line of sight and read the place-name labels on the map (where available).

The Republic of Climate Change Deniers

The United States is currently undertaking the biggest act of climate change denial in history.

One striking example is what is happening at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Over 200 FEMA employees have been fired by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Those who remain have been ordered to remove all language related to climate change from FEMA websites and publications. Staff have also been instructed to report any colleagues who continue working on climate change-related projects.

This purge of climate-related information means that many of FEMA’s most useful tools have been censored by the Trump administration and can no longer be accessed by the public.

FEMA's Flood Map Service - Censored 

FEMA’s Flood Map Service once provided an essential tool for American citizens, allowing them to assess flood risks for any property in the country. Under the new regime, this information is no longer available. Whether you already own a home or are considering purchasing one, you are now banned from knowing the flood risks associated with your property.

FEMA's National Risk Index Map - Censored

Before Trump, FEMA’s National Risk Index Map allowed users to assess their vulnerability to 18 different natural hazards. This interactive tool visually represented areas most at risk from disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes. Now, in the Republic of Trump, that information has been erased. Americans are no longer permitted to understand the environmental risks they face.

FEMA's Future Risk Map - Censored

This FEMA tool helped communities prepare for climate change by projecting the potential economic losses from environmental hazards such as coastal flooding, extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, and drought. The National Risk Index was a free resource that allowed Americans to explore how climate change might impact their neighborhoods. Now, that data has been wiped from public view.

The US Future Risk Map - Reclaimed and Resurrected

Thankfully, not all Americans are willing to bury their heads in the sand. After the Trump administration removed FEMA’s interactive Future Risk Map, independent researchers acted swiftly to preserve the data. Software engineers Jeremy Herzog and Rajan Desai salvaged screenshots and downloaded critical information before the administration erased it.

Using this data, they successfully rebuilt the interactive Future Risk Map. Their version, hosted independently, allows the public to continue accessing vital information about the risks of wildfires, hurricanes, extreme heat, drought, and coastal flooding.

Scrambled Vintage Maps

Vintage Scrambled Maps

There's a new Scrambled Maps game in town. If you have been enjoying Tripgeo's popular Scrambled Maps game then you will also love Vintage Scrambled Maps!

If you are a fan of maps and enjoy a good puzzle challenge, then Vintage Scrambled Maps is the perfect game for you! This unique and engaging game transforms historical maps into an interactive jigsaw-style experience, allowing players to piece together beautiful antique maps of New York and London. Whether you’re a map enthusiast, a history buff, or just someone who enjoys a brain-teasing game, Vintage Scrambled Maps is sure to captivate you.

How It Works

The game features a collection of gorgeous vintage maps sourced from the Library of Congress and the David Rumsey Map Collection. Players start by selecting a map from a set of thumbnail images. Once chosen, the map appears scrambled into multiple tiles - and your challenge begins!

To complete the puzzle, you must drag and swap the tiles to restore the original map. The goal? Solve the scrambled map in the fewest moves possible! 

Vintage Scrambled Maps is just the latest addition to Tripgeo's growing collection of interactive map games. As well as the original Scrambled Maps game, you might also enjoy GeoTripper (find the shortest route between random locations) and Jumbled World (correctly name every country in the world).

The Dot Map of America

One of my all-time favorite interactive maps was created by Dustin Cable at the University of Virginia. Unfortunately, the Racial Dot Map of America was removed in 2022. This map used data from the 2010 Census to place a colored dot on a map for every American - all 308,745,538 of them. As the name suggests, the color of each dot was determined by race.

The UVA map, based on 2010 Census data, was taken down after the 2020 Census because it was no longer considered to provide an accurate depiction of the nation's population distribution and changing racial composition.

Saddened by the loss of the Racial Dot Map of America, Luke Loreti took it upon himself to create a new version using data from the 2020 Census. His Census Dots follows the exact same methodology as the original, using colored dots to visualize the racial composition of the USA.

By using over 330 million colored dots, the map effectively illustrates the often stark racial divides in many communities. For example, in St. Louis, MO, a clear north-south divide emerges, with a dense white population in the south and a strong Black American presence in the north. The so-called Delmar Divide -named after Delmar Boulevard - is particularly evident on the Census Dots map.

Another great feature of the map is its dynamic URL, allowing users to link directly to specific locations, such as the Delmar Divide. This also makes it easy to share direct links to other interesting places discovered on the map.

Other U.S. racial dot map are also available. These include CNN's Race and ethnicity across the nation and All of US, which incorporates data from both the 2010 & 2020 Censuses.

Urban Growth in Motion

The City Population Bubble Chart with Proportional Text & Total Population is an animated bubble chart organized into a geographical map that visualizes population changes in cities worldwide from 1950 to 2035. The animation presents the populations of global cities over time, offering an overview of where urban populations are rising and falling.

The map uses data from the 2018 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects report, which outlines key urbanization trends and future projections. Crucially for this visualization, the report tracks population sizes and growth rates of cities worldwide and forecasts how these populations are expected to change up to 2050.

The changing sizes of the circles on the map effectively highlight global trends in urban populations. According to the UN report, many of the fastest-growing urban agglomerations are in Asia and Africa, a trend that becomes especially apparent on the map after 2010. Currently, Tokyo is the world’s largest city, with an agglomeration of 37 million inhabitants. However, the map illustrates how Delhi is projected to become the most populous city around 2028.

A significant limitation of mapping total population rather than population density is the issue of how city borders are defined. The map displays "urban agglomerations with 300,000 inhabitants or more in 2018," which may explain why London is absent—despite its metropolitan population of around 9 million, the City of London itself has only about 9,000 residents. However, my biggest complaint about the map is the lack of interactivity: the timeline cannot be paused or adjusted to select individual years. This restriction makes it impossible to examine the data in any detail.

Wiki Explore

Wiki Explore is a new application that overlays Wikipedia articles onto an interactive map, allowing users to discover information about the world around them. Each point on the map represents a location with an associated Wikipedia article, providing users with quick access into insights about their surroundings.

Why Use Wiki Explore?

For history enthusiasts, travelers, or curious minds, Wiki Explore offers a unique and engaging way to learn about the local area. Instead of manually searching Wikipedia for local knowledge and history, users can simply navigate the map to uncover interesting stories and locations near them. 

How It Works

Wiki Explore utilizes Mapbox as its base mapping platform, enhanced with a custom historical cartography-inspired design. Users can click on a location to view Wikipedia article excerpts and images. In areas with multiple points of interest, clustering is used to maintain readability, and a dropdown menu allows users to browse all articles in that location.

Alternatives to Wiki Explore

Wiki Explore is a well-executed example of a wiki-based map. However, I can't help but ask: why? There are already several excellent interactive maps that allow users to discover nearby points of interest through geolocated Wikipedia articles. While there may be room for another, Wiki Explore doesn’t offer much that isn’t already available on:

• NearbyWiki
• Wikimap
• Geopedia

Another alternative is the long-running Wikimapia, the 19-year-old collaborative mapping project that blends wiki-style content with interactive maps. On Wikimapia users can tag places, add descriptions, and categorize locations into various types, such as landmarks, businesses, and residential areas. Many tagged locations not only feature user-contributed content but also include links to relevant Wikipedia articles.