As technology has increased through the years, the number and type of maps that are regularly available for an individual to purchase has also increased. There are many more types of maps today than there were a hundred years ago and even the types that are still around have been improved greatly on their past forms.
One of the specific types of maps that have come about just recently in terms of public distribution is the aerial map. Aerial maps are maps that are taken as photographs stitched together in order to make a map, either through aerial photography or alternatively through satellite imagery. It used to be that aerial photography was the primary way of making that work, but nowadays satellite imagery and remote sensing have really replaced aerial photography in the production of aerial maps.
Aerial maps have a number of advantages inherent to them, the first one immediately being a question of accuracy. While even the most sophisticated computer-drawn map can have mistakes if the algorithms and models governing its drawing are programmed incorrectly, it is really impossible for aerial maps to have mistakes. When the pictures were being taken through aerial photography, then there was the problem of keeping a consistent distance and therefore a consistent scale over the course of the whole map, but satellite imagery has all but eliminated that problem, so aerial maps are inherently going to be more accurate than their hand-drawn or computer-generated counterparts.
In addition to that, aerial maps are also more realistic than their hand-drawn counterparts. This realism stems primarily from the fact that aerial maps are created from pictures; either aerial photographs or satellite imagery and therefore what you are going to see on the map itself is not actually a drawn map along the lines of what you would normally see, but rather a map that is created from photographs. Instead of road lines there are going to be overhead pictures of actual roads and instead of green colored squares, there are going to be actual parks photographed. This realism aspect is something that a lot of people like about aerial maps and is one of the reasons they are so popular.
Finally, aerial maps are also more fun to deal with. They are a novel way of approaching an age-old need and in addition to that they also look nicer because of the use of actual photographs in the map-making process. Expect them to gain popularity as time goes by because the technology used to create them will begin to get cheaper and cheaper and therefore the maps themselves will be less expensive to purchase.
