Apple bought a Swedish startup called C3 and their became 3D part of Apple Maps. That startup was a spin-off from Saab Aerospace, who had developed a vision system for terrain-following missiles. Saab ran a project with the municipal innovation agency in Linköping and the result was that they decided this tech should be possible to find civilian use cases for. C3 decided to fly small Cessnas in grids across a few major cities and also Hoover Dam, and built a ton of code on top of the already extremely solid foundation from Saab. The timing was impeccable (now many years ago) and they managed to get Microsoft, Apple and Samsung into a bidding war which drove up the price. But it was worth it for Apple to have solid 3D in Apple Maps and the tech has stood the test of time.
I remember seeing a Nokia or Here demo around that time that looked like similar or the same tech. Do you know anything published about it with technical details? Seems like enough time has passed that it would be more accessible. I would love to learn more about it.
