Usage of raster maps instead of vector one for low zoom levels.

Note that OSMAnd has such a hybrid raster/vector approach already implemented as an option.

I know that well ...

Its only two maps. The idea is to use a vector map as base map and a sqlite map from mobac as overlay at 100% opacity. At lower zooms, the overlay map will hide the vector map completely. But since the most detailed zoom level of the overlay map is fully transparent, at this level (and anything closer), the vector map will show.

This works nicely and smoothely together with Locus auto vector map switching... ie you can zoom out of Germany, move around in the sqlite overview map, zoom back into Spain and Locus will have the Spain vector map loaded automatically.

One drawback is that Locus will waste time and battery to render the vector maps at lower zooms, even though they will be completely covered by the overlay.

The other drawback is that creating that special kind of overlay map in Mobac is a bit "complicated". You have to define a Mobac custom map source for "All Transparent" (with a special empty png that you prepared) and then, in Mobac, add layers accordingly. For example:

Zoom 0-5: Googlemap (nice world map)

Zoom 6-9: Kompass Hike (<- quite pretty)

Zoom 10: AllTransparent

Thank you joeloc. MOBAC I understand and have used so far. Incl. using SQLITE locally.

Could you pls. just drop the few lines for this mapsource XML into this thread, please ?

TXs and cheers

Michael

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<customMapSource>

<name>_transparent</name>

<minZoom>0</minZoom>

<maxZoom>18</maxZoom>

<tileType>PNG</tileType>

<url>http://www.nonexistantdummy.de/TransparentTile-256x256.png</url>

<backgroundColor>#ffffff00</backgroundColor>

<ignoreErrors>true</ignoreErrors>

</customMapSource>

That might do the trick. I used my own local http server instead of nonexistantdummy. AFAIK Mobac will use the specified background color (in this case white with alpha set at 0) in case of errors, so it should work without having to put up some transparent png somewhere.

Btw... a variation of this method would be to use semi-transparent hillshade tiles instead of the completely transparent dummy for the last zoom layer. Very nice hillshading is for example available from uni heidelberg. Here's the mobac custom mapsource:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<customMapSource>

<name>_unihd-Hillshade</name>

<minZoom>0</minZoom>

<maxZoom>12</maxZoom>

<tileType>PNG</tileType>

<url><![CDATA[http://korona.geog.uni-heidelberg.de/tiles/asterh/?x={$x}&y={$y}&z={$z}]]></url>

</customMapSource>

So you would use whatever overview map you like for mobac 0...9 and then this hillshade layer for 10. In Locus, you will then get automatic hillshading for your vector maps at zooms >= 10. Way faster than Locus builtin hillshading and no extra battery usage. Little problem: The hillshading is too dark. We would have to find a way to reduce the alpha in the uni-hd png tiles to 50% of its original value. Maybe that could be accomplished with a clever mobac multilayer map source... havent really looked into that yet.

Thank you joelec.

This is what I troied, but failed:

<customMapSource>

<name>transparent2</name>

<minZoom>0</minZoom>

<maxZoom>18</maxZoom>

<tileType>PNG</tileType>

<url>file:///N:/Geo-Maps/MOBAC/mapsources/TransparentTile-256x256.png</url>

<backgroundColor>#ffffff00</backgroundColor>

<ignoreErrors>true</ignoreErrors>

</customMapSource>

MOBAC log shows: Download of tile z5_x16_y10 failed

Hmmm, any idea ?

Good luck... auto map switching by zoom level has been on several wish lists since... i dont even remember anymore... 4 years :-)? And now menion is kind of fixated on this world vector map thingy, so chances have gotten even slimmer.

Slows down scrolling? Funny. It's almost instant here with unihd, hardly any difference to scrolling without overlay map. On the contrary... it "feels" faster because the overlay hillshade appears right away, way before the vector data. No blank screen visible.

Oh well, that might depend a lot on the phone... there's plenty differences out there. Some are stronger on single threading (fewer cores with higher frequency), some on multi. I can make my Note 4 use about 70% CPU when scrolling intensively and 90% when zooming (with overlay). Iirc it has 8 cores, so Locus algorithms seem to multithread quite nicely meanwhile. Cheers, menion :).

Last night I managed to create a map with a local transparent file finally (just put one file in the right subfolder structure) . But there the effect comes, too. In the moment Overlays are activated, Locus slows down like crazy, in particular at high zoom levels, for which there are no files, of course.

Vector map alone: fast. Overlay map alone (12800 zoom, but that is not an issue for comparison here): fast. Both together: disaster.

I hope, Menion's Logging facility that I read about somewhere else will come soon. Should immediately show the smoking gun.

How did your xml and the dir structure with the trans file look like in the end?

This structure calmed down MOBAC:

N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM\1\0\1.png

N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM\2\0\3.png

N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM\3\0\7.png

N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM\4\0\15.png

N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM\5\0\31.png

N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM\6\0\63.png

N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM\10\0\1023.png

N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM\11\0\2047.png

using this XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<localTileFiles>

<name>transparent</name>

<sourceType>DIR_ZOOM_X_Y</sourceType>

<sourceFolder>N:\Geo-Maps\MOBAC\mapsources\ZOOM</sourceFolder>

<invertYCoordinate>true</invertYCoordinate> <!-- optional -->

<backgroundColor>#ffffff00</backgroundColor>

</localTileFiles>

However, Locus is not happy with the result, as you may have seen in my error report.

Could you do me a favor pls ? Create an SQLITE with only transparent tiles, whole planet, level 10, and another one level 11.

I hope those would be massively compressed ...

I cannot make your local tile layout work. It gives me red Xs for every missing tile file obviously. Cant seem to find a way around one file per tile with this mobac xml syntax. I also cannot create a world map using http:// tiles because mobac has a 500.000 tile limit. I only used smaller regions for testing so far.

Anyway... I suppose Locus would totally crash and burn if you confront it with a sqlite map that has 2^11 tiles or some such (world in zoom 11). Even if a single tile has only a very tiny png image data, Locus probably tries to build up an internal tile index list, eating away all the memory, crawl and/or crash.

You could try TwoNav/RMAP as format (extention .rmap). Locus supports that and maybe handles it differently.

For level 10, taking only the continents will be below 500k tiles (80k Americas, 180k EMEASIA). And Locus goes for the bounding box, not for inventory.

For level 11, each single continent will fly (factor 4).

But I can try RMAP in parallel tonight.

Were just chatting...

RMAP does not work.

Could you pls. try the level 9 transparent file ? Box -60 .. 75, -179.999 .. 179.999 degrees

Only 139740 tiles

That would be great!

BTW: for a world map, the Heidelberg Hillshades mean more than 4 GB - on level 9 :-)

But the 140k empty tiles should be a piece of cake ...

Further tests reveal that Mobac seems to create broken maps with

a) your local tiles trick

b) my non-existing-url and ignorerrors trick

I just set up a local web server (use eg https://sourceforge.net/projects/miniweb/ for windows) and used the following mapsource:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<customMapSource>

<name>_transparent-localhost</name>

<minZoom>0</minZoom>

<maxZoom>18</maxZoom>

<tileType>PNG</tileType>

<url>http://localhost:8000/TransparentTile-256x256.png</url>;

</customMapSource>

The resulting map (tested middle europe area with googlemaps 0..9 and transparent 10, around 70MB) behaves nicely when used in Locus as overlay. No slowdown.

Do you mind sharing the miniweb config to make this customMapSource fly, please ?

Theres nothing to config really... just unpack miniweb, copy the png to the htdocs folder and run the exe.

works like a charm. TXs a lot.

For MOBAC friends: here is the link to a map file with transparent zoom level 10 tiles for all continents (except Amerika high north and except Antarctica). It is about 85 MB big.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hzp3q3lt1rq07gp/AACfw_sAapz5x_qsSj2pQNmra?dl=0

Glad to hear... now if only petr and menion would realize how *wrong* vector maps are for lower zooms... :)

Falk Roadmap: useful town names, properly sized, important mountains, even in the two official languages spoken in south tirol.

vector map: mostly useless bullshit. you cant even realize where you are.

Geoportail overview map at zoom 12 vs utter vector bullshit. No comment necessary.

Only two things needed from Menion now:

- obsolete your trick re. transparent additional zoom layer - it only eats tiles count. How: by not zooming the overlay map, once its max zoom level is reached.

- as long as overlay map is visible at 100% opacity level, do not draw the vector map.

Both minimal surgery additional "IFs", I suppose.

Then we can live with the overlay trick for a while, right ... :-)

The beauty of this "trick" is that it works without menion already... no more waiting for another five years :-).

The all transparent max zoom level in the overlay map is required, how else could Locus show the vector data on a 100% opaque overlay? Obviously, Locus could consider overlay maps as "empty & transparent" automatically when zoomed beyond their max, but that is not useful for all overlays... only for these "trick maps". But imagine for example a hill shade overlay at zoom 11. You would obviously want Locus to bitmapzoom it to 12, 13, 14...

The "invisible" vector tile rendering really only eats battery... it doesnt slow down things visibly. At least not here. And it is really invisible. Basically, it feels totally like I imagine an auto-map-switch would feel.

Yes... we do have a tile count problem for the last level... seeing that I would want sqlite maps up to zoom 12... this magic might only work continent-wide... not world wide. maybe not even that.

You are right re. different scenarios beyond zoom max in overlays. For that it would be best to have a switch to control behavior when selecting the overlay.

Even better would be a choice up to which zoom level to use, potentially scale the overlay, before dropping the overlay completely from displaying - selectable also in the overlay selection screen.

Another dream :-)