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Vector Tiles for MapBox Streets
- ygmpkk 13y agoNice
- acanby 13y ago> Now with hundreds of millions of map views across thousands of subscribers, the stability and scalability wins are clear I'd also be interested to see a write up on these aspects, what are the gains here... 10%? 10x? 100x?
- unwind 13y agoI wondered, too. Luckily, there's some hard data further down in the post: [...] highly optimized, slim enough to fit the entire world onto a single USB stick. Now that the exact size is known (1 world/stick), it's easy to get a feel for how this new format is better than the old alternatives, right? Grumble.
- sakai 13y agoAs always, very beautiful work. Congratulations and thank you for contributing this back to the OSGEO community.
- nodesocket 13y agoGood god, their design is amazing. Visually it is just beautiful to look at and ascetically pleasing. Is it based on any framework or library? http://mapbox.com http://mapbox.com And the tour: http://mapbox.com/tour/ http://mapbox.com/tour/
- ManAboutCouch 13y agoTheir MapBox.js library is a plugin for the increasingly popular Leaflet.js mapping library: http://mapbox.com/mapbox.js/api/v1.0.2/ http://mapbox.com/mapbox.js/api/v1.0.2/ As an aside, MapBox (via funding from the Knight Foundation) is also behind the shiny new iD Editor for OpenStreetMap: http://ideditor.com/ http://ideditor.com/
- TheAnimus 13y agoI love the style and yet how customisable it is. I've sent this to a friend of mine who's colour blind, one of his favourite hobbies has been ranting about how goolge/bing/here maps don't take into account his disability (in fairness, his is pretty rare).
- tmcw 13y ago> Is it based on any framework or library? Nope. We have started to use a common set of base styles ( https://github.com/samanpwbb/fresh-start https://github.com/samanpwbb/fresh-start ) but those are basically a reset.css + columns, etc.
- pbo 13y agohttp://maps.stamen.com http://maps.stamen.com shows the same kind of map transformations and is also based on OpenStreetMap. The Watercolor style is especially gorgeous in my opinion.
- richard_ted 13y agoGiven the spat at OGC with regard to Geoservices REST API, its high time that we ditch OGC and start a clean standardization body. We need futuristic standards and that can take the geospatial industry forward, not as in ESRI. I see that the team at Mapbox is ideal for that and lets hope that can take the lead
- Demiurge 13y agoWhere can I find more info about this "spat"?
- ManAboutCouch 13y agoThe 'spat' broke out on the OGC Mailing list, here's the May Archive: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2013-May/ http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2013-May/ There are about 100 messages about it on there. There's also this Open Letter: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Geoservices_REST_API#Open_Letter_to_OGC_and_voting_members http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Geoservices_REST_API#Open_Letter_... And James Fee's view on the whole thing: http://spatiallyadjusted.com/2013/05/09/esri-and-an-ogc-standard/ http://spatiallyadjusted.com/2013/05/09/esri-and-an-ogc-stan...
- lostpixel 13y agoVery nice, pricing seems pretty good too imho
- chii 13y agoThis is pretty cool.
- hayksaakian 13y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, Their unique value proposition is a platform for styling maps?
- ewolfe 13y agoStyling maps is just an added feature. Their main uvp is simply "maps". Competitor and alternative to Google Maps, Mapquest, etc.
- buro9 13y agoAnd there is also CloudMade as a choice for those seeking not to use Google Maps, Mapquest, Bing, etc. http://cloudmade.com/ http://cloudmade.com/ Both Cloudmade and MapBox use OpenStreetMap data. Leaflet ( http://leafletjs.com/ http://leafletjs.com/ ) was created by Cloudmade and is the JavaScript lib for putting tiled maps on the web. Mapbox have their own version of Leaflet, but it's essentially much the same if all you want to do it drop pins, work with layers, choose a tile set. Both are comparable, and both are strong in the same space: Custom styled, tiled maps. And both are weak in the same place: routing. Not to say that they don't do routing, but it's certainly not their forte. Thankfully the majority use-case for most sites and applications using maps is simply "show a map, drop a few pins here and there". So having this map look and feel like the site is actually a good selling point.
- Sprint 13y agoI expect routing to become more prevalent in the OSM world thanks to the fantastic http://project-osrm.org/ http://project-osrm.org/ project.
- buro9 13y agoThat's surprisingly good. As in; for a complex route across London and factoring in one-way streets it produces something that looks realistic. Only allowed me to pick car as a mode of transport, and unrealistically suggested I could get across 14KM of central London in 14 mins, but ignoring those things this is very nice. Would love to see the path output of this added to Leaflet and a standard form of API emerge for Mapbox, Cloudmade, Google Maps, etc.
- terhechte 13y agoDoes somebody know if there's a way to use these with one's own OSM server?
- dbaupp 13y agoThere is code on GitHub[1], although it emphasises "experimental" and "unsupported". [1]: https://github.com/mapbox/tm2 https://github.com/mapbox/tm2
- dwightgunning 13y agoTileMill is the desktop app for designing/styling maps. It'll export to various formats, but primarily geared for upload to Mapbox's hosted map service (free and paid plans that are well worth it imo - just a happy customer). For std image files, Mapbox make source available for their TileStream server (https://github.com/mapbox/tilestream https://github.com/mapbox/tilestream). Not sure if/when it'll get support for the raster images.
- BaconHunter 13y agoI'm confused. Are the tiles meant to be delivered in a vector format? Their demo was using pngs...
- fpp 13y agoYes, would be great to see a live example of client rendered tiles. I believe their ProtoBuffer approach sounds promising and their position in the mapping / OSM community is strong enough to get this to some kind of standard. Have seen a few client vector-based approaches before. 2 of the better ones: https://github.com/jywarren/cartagen https://github.com/jywarren/cartagen MapDroyd - was a product of OneStepAhead - now seemingly part of Cloudmade ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MapDroyd http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MapDroyd - still in Google Play with screenshots etc search for MapDroyd )
- aw3c2 13y agoDon't forget OruxMaps and OSMAnd (capitalisation as you like it). Both are Android apps that support vector data as well. Also KothicJS, a JS renderer.
- aw3c2 13y agoConfusing indeed. No, the vector tiles are "just" small extracts of global data that then get rendered to standard png files again. Vector means vector geodata here.
- vidarh 13y agoNot so far, though this means they can experiment with that. Part of the challenge of rendering maps quickly is simplifying features, clipping and filtering the data. E.g. you might have a layer containing really high resolution national boundaries. Most tiles won't even contain any part of it, and those who do will either contain a small subsection or a vastly simplified version. If you were to try client side rendering based on that, you're potentially looking at gigabytes of data to transfer to the client. What they're doing is essentially doing all the steps apart from the final rasterisation, and then storing that vector data on a per tile basis, so that they can process only the relevant vector data - whether to serve it up as is, or rasterise it. One major advantage is that things like styles (line widths, colours) can be modified without having to re-render the entire map data set. Instead you just have to on-the-fly rasterise the already prepared tiles, which you can do without totally killing performance.
- bliker 13y agostill waiting for the reverse geocoder
- yellowbkpk 13y agoUse Nominatim. Reverse geocode: http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse?format=json&lat=48.976344&lon=9.6533239 http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse?format=json&l... Forward geocode: http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/?format=json&q=1600%20pennsylvania%20washington%20dc http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/?format=json&q=1600%2...
- untog 13y agoThis looks phenomenal. Anyone that's interested in online maps and hasn't taken a look at TileMill owes it to themselves to take a look.
- micro_cam 13y agoVery cool and I' definitely going to dig into this. For my use (topographic maps) the ability to combine this on the client side with tiled raster data for thing where that makes sense (ie grey scale elevation, their satellite layers etc) would make this a killer platform. I already have code to do slope angle overlays client side by applying an image transformation to elevation data in a canvass [1] which could be used for hill shading etc but the only available web services are slow, query (instead of tile) base, and use poorly defined encodings. [1] The "Custom Slope Analysis" tool for identifying avalanche prone slopes on hillmap.com
- joelcarranza 13y agoVery nice work. I look forward to seeing where they go with this. I am curious as to how they handle polygons that span multiple tiles. If they take the rather straightforward approach of taking any polygon and splitting it up to fit in each respective tile, that has all sorts of implications for styling. Imagine you want to draw a building as a solid color and then draw the outline in some secondary color. What happens if the building falls on a tile boundary?
- vidarh 13y agoWithout having looked at this implementation (but I know a startup doing something similar for an internal system): You add a suitably sized "buffer". So e.g. if your maximum stroke width is 20, you clip the polygon with an accordingly large margin. There are still potential caveats, e.g. if you want to allow changing automated label placement based on shapes etc., but the potential win is still massive even if you have to put some minor restrictions on what type of restyling can be done without having to "re-render" into vector tiles - this way at least most typical restyling such as changing colours or stroke widths can be done trivially.