The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 50 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's granted patent for a "virtual camera for 3D maps." Back in December 2013 Apple had bombarded the U.S. Patent Office with 28 new mapping inventions and today's granted patent was one of the highlighted inventions. Apple's invention provides novel methods for generating and presenting immersive and non-immersive 3D map presentations for browsing and navigation. The patent covers Apple's turn-by-turn navigation and Flyover mapping features.

Apple notes that these 3D presentations are provided by an integrated mapping application that provides several useful modalities, such as location browsing, map searching, route identifying, and route navigation operations.

In order to display immersive and non-immersive 3D map presentations, some embodiments have to generate a variety of tiles for client devices to render to generate roads, building, and surrounding scenery. In some embodiments, examples of such tiles include road and building tiles used for non-immersive 3D presentations, and navigation and building tiles used for immersive 3D presentations.

Apple's granted patent FIG. 3 presents a simplified example to illustrate the concept of a virtual camera.

Along with 108 patent figures supporting this invention, some of the topics discussed in the patent cover the following: Navigation User Interface; 2D and 3D Navigation; Virtual Camera; User Adjustment of Camera Height; Client Side Generation of 3D Presentations; Automated Virtual Camera Movement; Virtual Camera Movement During Route Navigation; Virtual Camera Movement Around Intersections; Virtual Camera Movement when Panning; Virtual Camera Movement During Perspective Adjustments; Virtual Camera Movement During Zooming; and Virtual Camera Movement During Rotation.

Apple's granted patent 9,269,178 was originally filed in Q3 2012 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

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