Off 2 v2.4 — a globe four times sharper, still fully offline

Off 2 2.4 is about what you see when you zoom in. The globe has always been painted with NASA Blue Marble imagery by day and Black Marble city lights by night — bundled with the app so it works with no connection at all. That bundled imagery has a limit, though, and if you zoom past it the world goes soft. Version 2.4 lets you lift that limit.

Off 2 NASA Blue Marble globe with the live day/night terminator on iPad

Turn on the high-resolution globe and the world becomes about four times sharper as you zoom: coastlines, islands, terrain, and the night side’s city lights all hold together far closer in. It is an optional download — roughly 423 MB, 565 MB once installed — hosted by Apple and fetched once. After that it behaves like the rest of the app: entirely offline, over the ocean, in airplane mode, with no connection to lose. It comes with Pilot Mode, and you can remove it again at any time to reclaim the space.

The second change is one of those things you only notice when it is missing. Airport details, sunrise and sunset times, and moonrise and moonset times now grow as you zoom in close. Zoomed right in on an airfield, the labels are legible without you having to raise the font size everywhere else in the app — which previously made the rest of the interface awkwardly large just to read the globe.

Underneath, the globe itself is steadier. There was a fault where it could settle on blurred imagery and stay there — after zooming, after panning, or after leaving the app and coming back — and never sharpen up again until you restarted. That is fixed, along with a related problem that could leave part of the map rendering from a much coarser layer than the one it had already loaded. Detail also fills in faster after you move.

One smaller change worth mentioning: locked Pilot Mode features now appear in Settings rather than being hidden entirely. If you have not unlocked it, you can at least see what is in there before deciding.

Full details on the Off 2 app page. Get the update on the App Store — a free update for existing owners.