Timed for the start of the GetOutside season, and offering stunning views of the country, Aerial 3D has been purposely designed to help outdoor enthusiasts stay safe, view routes as never before and discover new places to visit.

Cheddar Gorge in Somerset in 3D

Aerial 3D image of Cheddar Gorge in Somerset

Ordnance Survey’s (OS) award-winning app contains over 750,000 publicly shared routes, including thousands of professional routes published by walking, cycling and mountaineering publications and organisations. Users can either follow one of these published routes or create their own.

In Aerial 3D, the routes can be easily viewed from all heights and angles, and the effect is spectacular. You can look at Ben Nevis, Snowdonia and other mountainous peaks in fine detail from all possible positions while sitting at your desktop. And it’s the same with Britain’s rugged and varied coastline, which users can travel, taking in its impressive cliffs and pathways along the way.

Ultimately though, what this visualisation does is give explorers planning their journey a better perspective of a route’s difficulty and its potential risks and dangers.

Nick Giles, Ordnance Survey Leisure Managing Director, says: “The introduction of the Aerial 3D viewing tool is another major step in making the outside enjoyable, accessible and safe for all. The new feature is perfect for anyone thinking of hiking, biking or climbing in Britain. It helps them to plan in accordance with their skills and experience. And importantly, being able to see routes clearly in this way should help people get inspired to do more in the great outdoors and at the same time keep safe.

“There’s nothing else like it available, and this is the first of a number of exciting new features we shall be introducing over the coming months.”

In terms of safety, where OS Maps comes into its own, is that not only can routes be viewed and judged in Aerial 3D, but they can also be viewed in either OS Maps standard mapping, OS Landranger (1:50k) or OS Explorer (1:25k) and printed off and taken with you. Though OS advises that for greater safety, users print the wider area and not just the route itself, or take the corresponding paper map of the area being visited.

Subscribers to OS Maps will be able to start using Aerial 3D right away, but if you’d like to explore Great Britain in Aerial 3D, you can do so with a no-commitment 7-day free trial of OS Maps: www.getoutside.co.uk/3d.

With the free trial, you’re also given full coverage of Great Britain in the form of digital versions of all 607 of OS’s Explorer and Landranger paper map titles, which for subscribers represents a massive saving. Also included in the trial is National Parks Pathways, which covers all 15 of Britain’s National Parks, and can be used to create a safe route in just two clicks.