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okay, do they mean vectors, or tiles, because that's like saying "serving PNG JPEGs" or "serving JPEG PNGs". Some servers chuck back /a picture/, some servers c

• chipsa 1y ago
  They mean vector tiles. It’s tiles of vectorized images, usually of a map (or other geographic data). They’re so named because they are a vectorized replacement for raster tiles, which were PNGs. If the server chucks back a picture, it’s not a vector tile server.
• andrewljohnson 1y ago
  In GIS world, a vector tile is a chunk of geographic data (the vectors) limited to a geographic region (the tile boundaries which fit into the projected checkerboard of your map). You use a vector tile instead of a png or jpeg tile because you don’t want an image representation of the data, you want the raw “vector” data so you can style it, search it, and do other things with it on client devices.