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Imagine a world that’s not completely and totally explored yet — sort of like in Warcraft where the unexplored terrain is dark because your character never went there. It exists in real life too. It’s the own world you live in. You haven’t seen everything or been everywhere so this app, Fog of World, makes the places you’ve already been completely clear and the unexplored places, foggy. As you go to new places, the map gets clearer. It looks so fun.
Not only does it motivate you to travel more (which is always a good thing) and see more and do more, it can also act as a great resource to keep track of the places you’ve been too. I haven’t been this excited about an app since, I don’t even know. If the battery drain isn’t horrible, I’m definitely going to use this. £3 [iTunes via Fog of World]
Not so fun when you can’t tell if the fog you’re seeing is from the app or from Apple maps.
Would be funny though, when you’re riding the tube and your phone registers a free wifi connection in a station. The app clears a bit of the fog where Apple maps thinks the station is and you end up with dots of cleared fog in the Thames or a public ladies toilet or something
Aw, no Android version. For once I’m legitimately disappointed.
Indeed. I wish Google would make Latitude more fun
I’d love to see this as a layer on Google Maps!
I wish I could like a post more than once
There’s a Fog of War map too where neo-cons get to see where they haven’t caused misery and suffering yet. Huzzah!
Pardon my ignorance but who or what are neo-cons?
Here you go DeadPixel
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=neo-con
Zing!
Thank you for the description.
Serious question with no agenda. Here is this app getting it’s mapping data?
According to the iTunes description:
“- Apple Maps is used in iOS 6 and later.”
Feel free to now adopt an agenda.
I was hoping it’d get it’s visited location data from your secret iPhone ‘where have I been’ cache that got exposed a year or two ago. Doubt it actually will though. If someone can figure out how to convert that into GPX data, then you can import it into the app. Think I might give this a play.
no agenda here, genuine curiosity, since this is the first iOS map based App I’ve seen since iOS 6. Next question of course is do App devs have to pay for access to this data?
No – unless you count the £69pa developer programme. The map kit api is open to all developers. If an app that used maps in ios5 isn’t upgraded for ios6 it doesn’t matter. The maps will automatically be shifted from Google to Apple without the need to update the app.
Dunno. Doubt it.
iOS apps very often use the native mapping system. Nike+, Runkeeper, etc all do. I think the iOS SDK makes it easy to include mapping abilities with the inbuilt system so it is unusual when a map uses different mapping data. I think they generally only go to the trouble of doing that when they specifically want to avoid using the inbuilt mapping system, perhaps to provide functionality that Apple or Google wouldn’t let them like map caching (Motion GPX allows caching of Bing Maps), or turn by turn (early Tom Tom and Garmin apps had this).
I wonder if more people will go to the trouble of avoiding the native mapping system now because it is so high-profile jobbies.
Such a cool app idea!
You’d need to have GPS turned on all the time for it to be accurate and your phone outside of your pocket though, which would be pretty annoying
Ducktape phone to shirt. Problem solved