The most detailed mapping app to be a complete guide to the outdoors
OS Maps, a new multiplatform application, has been announced by Ordnance Survey. The app gives casual walkers, ramblers, runners, cyclists, mountaineers and other outdoor adventurers in Britain a single digital source to plan and discover the country.
The website and free smartphone app includes Ordnance Survey’s standard and aerial mapping to plot routes on, but with an annual subscription users can unlock a wide range of extra features. Users can also use their subscription on all devices including desktop, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.
The extra features within a subscription include digital versions of all 607 of Ordnance Survey’s Explorer and Landranger paper map titles. This total coverage of Great Britain represents a massive saving to the end user, plus the Explorer and Landranger maps are also available offline.
Users do not need a phone signal to use Ordnance Survey Maps to pinpoint their exact location, because the app uses GPS.
The subscription package also contains off-road routing that covers all 15 of Britain’s National Parks, and can be used to create a safe route focused around the footpath network in just two clicks. OS Maps also has more than 500,000 preloaded routes to aid discovery.
Last May Ordnance Survey released OS Maps into Beta testing, and since then it has been trialled by three quarters of a million people who were invited to feedback thoughts and improvements. Many of the suggestions from customers have been incorporated into the official OS Maps release.
Nick Giles, managing director at Ordnance Survey Leisure, said: “Over the past decade we’ve seen digital mapping in general come a long way, but as soon as you venture away from urban spaces the detail is lacking. That lack of detail limits possibilities and also presents a safety problem to anyone that solely uses digital mapping to navigate their way through the countryside.
“With OS Maps we wanted to create a digital map that has the same high standards in detail and design as our paper maps. The aim has always been to make the great outdoors enjoyable, accessible and safe, and I think OS Maps achieves this and will help more people get outside and get more from their adventures in this fabulous country.”
