Vector tiles

Vector tiles are a way to deliver geographic data in small chunks to a browser or other client application. Vector tiles are similar to raster tiles, but instead of raster images, the data returned is a vector representation of the features in the tile. Some vector tile sources are clipped so that all geometry is bounded in the tiles, potentially chopping features in half. Other vector tile sources serve unclipped geometry so that a whole lake may be returned even if only a small part of it intersects the tile.

Mapbox Vector Tiles

The Mapbox Vector Tile Specification defines a file format commonly used for serving vector data (2.5D, incl. OpenStreetMap).

Providers

Mapbox provides the Mapbox Vector Tiles API
MapTiler provides a vector tile API
Stadia Maps provides a vector tile API

See Tile servers for a list of servers that can generate vector tiles from various sources.

Note that the Operations Working Group is also working on hosting vector tiles on OSMF servers.

Generators

Tilemaker - Command line tool to generate vector tiles directly from .osm.pbf files
Planetiler - Flexible tool to build planet-scale vector tilesets from OpenStreetMap data in a few hours
Sequentially-generate-planet-mbtiles - Generate planet-scale vector tilesets on low memory / low cpu count devices
OpenMapTiles Tools - Generate vector tiles from OSM data

Servers

See Tile servers for a list of vector tile servers.

History

2016-01-19: Mapbox Vector Tile Specification 2.1 is released
2014-04-13: Mapbox Vector Tile Specification 1.0.0 is released
2010-11-29: TileStache can serve clipped GeoJSON tiles to Polymaps

Examples

Some examples of OSM-based maps using vector tiles are:

Mapbox styles
The OSM Editing API can also return tiled OSM XML data via bounding box queries; the iD editor uses this mechanism to access OSM source data. Note however that as per the API Usage policy the API should only be used for editing, and explicitly not for read-only purposes or projects.
/Links — a page with many links about vector tiles
mapbox/awesome-vector-tiles on GitHub

This article is issued from Openstreetmap. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.