As you may know, the Windows UWP Map control that uses Bing Maps will be retired with the Bing Maps platform. Azure Maps does not have a UWP map SDK, and unlikely ever will, however there several ways to use Azure Maps in a UWP app. First off, there are several open-source native map controls available where Azure Maps can be tied in as the data source for the maps. Here are a few:
- Maps UI – Fairly popular open source Native Map SDK.
- MapLibre Native – MapLibre is the underlying rendering engine of the Azure Maps Web SDK and also the recommended control to use for iOS and Android so this is a good option to consider. Until recently there wasn’t much work around Windows but it looks like this has changed. Microsoft is a sponsor of the MapLibre community.
- XAML Map Control – I just came across this one and it appears to have some API interface alignment with the UWP map control. I don’t know much about it, but worth a look.
- GreatMaps – An older open source project focused on WPF and WinForm apps.
Another option is to use the Azure Maps Web SDK via a WebView. The Azure Maps Web SDK will likely always get new features ahead of any other Azure Maps UI control as it’s generally easier to built and test out things via a web SDK, and that is where the bulk of the user traffic flows through in most map platforms. I have done this many times in Windows apps with good success. I even made a wrapper a few years back for the whole Azure Maps Web SDK API interface that worked in UWP and WPF apps. I might dig that up and see about migrating this to .NET Maui or WinUI. Now that I think about it, perhaps I should see how much of the UWP Map SDK capabilities I could recreate via a wrapper, although I rarely used that SDK as it didn’t have all the features I needed for my apps, so that might not be the best use of my time. I have been helping out on an enhanced WebView control for .NET Maui that would make it possible for more advanced scenarios when wrapping the Azure Maps Web SDK, like the ability to run offline and reference local tile layers. So that might help address some of the concerns developers have around wrapping a web SDK. Note that the Web SDK uses WebGL for rendering (native) and from a performance perspective I’ve always found the Web SDK to be faster than any native Maps SDK I’ve come across, so that shouldn’t be an issue.
All this said, the FatMan app you are referring to appears to require a 3D map experience, and all of the above provide 2D maps. For 3D maps, a very common option is to use Cesium. All of their map controls are open source and Azure Maps can be used as a data source for the base maps. They have unreal and unity controls that could be used if you want a native code experience, but their web SDK could also be used via a WebView. I'm actually building a cross-platform 3D game on top of the Ceisum JS map control, and wrapping with a WebView in a Maui app that works in Windows, iOS, and Android.
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