Support for HD maps

Ivan Vanyushkin shared this idea 8 years ago
Gathering feedback

I want to discuss HD maps in Locus Pro.

Today most of smartphones have high-DPI screens (400-500 DPI - dots per inch). Computer monitors or laptops are low DPI (150-200 DPI). Most online maps were designed to look good on low-DPI screens, before smartphone era. But in smartphones they are too small to read.

Here how map looks like, text is hardly readable:

OSM%201

You can go and set: Settings → Map - advanced → Resolution of maps: 2.00x.

This will take small tiles and enlarge them twice, loosing details and sharpness (text is still hard to read):

OSM%202

Most of large map providers already have HD tiles. SD tiles are 256×256 pixels, HD tiles are 512×512 pixels or larger. Locus Map should understand HD tiles and display 1 HD tile instead of 4 SD tiles. Tiles will not be resized, and text will be pixel-perfect.

Compare SD tiles vs SD tiles with "Resolution of maps: 2.00x" vs HD tiles:

G1

G2

G3

Same from another provider:

Ya1

Ya2

Ya3

You can see that third example (HD tiles) is perfectly readable.

But what if provider doesn't have HD tiles? They can be easily emulated.

Say you want a single HD tile at zoom level "400 m". You need to go down to zoom level "200 m", download four SD tiles, and put them in place of one HD tile:

Grid

So, my suggestion is:

1. Add a parameter to map description XML file with a size of tile (256, 512, 768, 1024 px etc), per map. This will allow to use HD tiles for providers that have them, or use personal rendered tiles using OSM scripts.

2. Add a parameter to map description XML file with scale level (2, 3, 4 etc), per map. Say, scale ×2 will mean that instead of one tile on current zoom level, four tiles from the next zoom level will be downloaded. This will perfectly simulate HD tiles for providers that doesn't have them.

Our eyes will thank you!

Cross-post on forum.

Replies (1)

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2

Emulated HD tiles are useless. Result is same as map in other zoom level.


[CZ]: HD dlaždice (512x512 px) poskytoval posledních pár dnů cykloatlas - byly opravdu pěkné, ale bohužel s tím zase přestal a vrátil zpět dlaždice 256x256 px. Nevím, zda to bylo nedopatření, nějaký test, ... a zda tam HD dlaždice zase vrátí.


Locus si s nimi nějak poradil, ale nebylo to úplně ono. Při zoomu 100 % dlaždice zmenšoval na polovinu, takže nebyl poznat rozdíl oproti "SD" dlaždicím. Kromě rychlosti., která výrazně klesla. Při zoomu 200 % vyrendroval dlaždice 1:1, takže to vypadalo celkem parádně. Ale bylo trochu nepraktické ovládání zoomu apod.

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1

You are right, I'm sorry. We can't emulate a correct 512px tile from four 256px tiles.

True, 512px tiles will improve speed, because for the same screen size there will be four times less requests to online/offline storage, and four times less items on a screen.

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