Vector maps are hot right now, with Google and Apple deployments in the news. On the web side, HTML5 and WebGL make vector maps workable and fast, respectively, and on the mobile side, we have the two above examples to show us it works. So what do we do for OpenStreetMap?
mousebird consulting makes an open source toolkit called WhirlyGlobe-Maply - WhirlyGlobe for the 3D interactive globe and Maply for the 2D map. Both are based on OpenGL ES, and both are very fast for iOS (iPad, iPhone) and (soon) Android. The openstreetmap.us server is returning vector based tiles for several levels. This gives us a nice, semi-official platform to try out high performance vector map display on iOS. This session will present a simple experiment in that area. It will take a lot of work to match the quality (Apple jokes aside) of the commercial vector maps. Our hope is that a nice framework for fetching and displaying vector tiles can nudge us further along that path.
State of the Map US - San Francisco 2013
stateofthemap.us/saturday.html#schedule/saturday/vectors-openstreetmap-and-mobile
