Infinite possibilities with iOS annotation views

Justin Miller
Thu, 01 Sep 2016 10:00:00 -0400

We recently released our iOS SDK 3.3 with the powerful new functionality of the MGLAnnotationView class, letting developers bring in anything they can create—or have created already—in native iOS views as markers on the map. It’s as easy as assigning a geographic coordinate; the SDK handles the rest.

This feature allows for creative visualizations. Here, we vary the point size, hue, and opacity based on how close to the map center it is. There is also a mode toggle which (with a little assist from OLImageView) can let us use animated GIFs as markers!

You could do similar visualizations using movie files, custom animations, or even a live feed of the device camera.

Check out the code to the above demo, as well as our annotation view example. Then, give the SDK a test drive for your next game, social app, or data visualization.

While you’re looking, check out our new 3.4.0-alpha.3 prerelease, which improves on performance and squashes a few bugs, among other improvements.

Happy hacking!