[HN Gopher] VersaTiles - a complete FLOSS map stack
___________________________________________________________________
VersaTiles - a complete FLOSS map stack
Author : moooo99
Score : 88 points
Date : 2024-10-20 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (versatiles.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (versatiles.org)
| cpach wrote:
| Anyone tried this?
| hawski wrote:
| I am only getting to the space, but if I understand correctly the
| overview it is a tile server speaking HTTP, but it is not working
| like Protomaps, which do not need a separate tile server, just a
| regular HTTP server with range requests support.
| cldellow wrote:
| It's a bit complicated, because I think the versatiles brand is
| used to describe multiple things:
|
| - the schema of the map: what objects are available in each
| tile at different zoom levels. It sounds like versatiles uses
| the shortbread schema (contrast vs OpenMapTiles, protomaps)
|
| - a container format: a way to pack multiple tiles into a
| single file. It sounds like they created their own format here
| (contrast vs mbtiles, pmtiles).
|
| - the scripts/tooling to build everything
|
| - the overall finished map product itself (contrast vs Google
| Maps, Stadio Maps, protomaps, OpenMapTiles, etc)
|
| The versatile container format seems to require a custom HTTP
| server. But if you want, you could produce the versatiles map
| and store it in a pmtiles container. Or you could stick a
| caching proxy in front of their publicly available tile server
| at https://tiles.versatiles.org/tiles/osm/{z}/{x}/{y}
|
| It would be interesting to hear them describe why they decided
| to create their own container format. The text that I have
| found seems to be contrasting it to RDBMS containers, but is
| silent about mbtiles/pmtiles.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Just a small clarification: mbtiles is built on a RDBMS
| (sqlite).
| moooo99 wrote:
| As far as my understanding goes, mbtiles is based on SQLite,
| so it would be a RDBMS container based format.
|
| There was a YouTube talk published 4 weeks ago showcasing
| this project, which was where I discovered it in the first
| place. The (German) video can be found here
| https://youtu.be/8A51WkJ5S8I
| cldellow wrote:
| Thanks, that's a handy video! Yes, mbtiles is based on
| SQLite, I was imprecise in my language.
|
| When I said RDBMS, I meant those that have a client/server
| model. The versatiles docs talk about the complexity and
| surface area of database systems as a motivator for
| creating their own container format. From this I inferred
| they were referring to Postgres and PostGIS, which are used
| in the canonical OpenMapTiles implementation.
|
| Watching that video, they do mention not liking the
| traditional Postgres/PostGIS approach due to its heavy
| weight. But they also say they disliked mbtiles due to its
| SQLite dependency, and that the versatiles format is
| inspired on/based on pmtiles. (Apologies if I'm missing
| nuance here, I was watching auto translated auto generated
| captions.)
|
| I found https://github.com/versatiles-org/versatiles-
| rs/issues/24 which contrasts the versatiles format vs the
| pmtiles format. After reading it, I'm not personally
| convinced of the benefits of versatiles vs just throwing a
| CDN in front of a clustered pmtiles file, but perhaps I'm
| missing something.
| thybag wrote:
| I'd be interested to understand how this compares with a solution
| like openfreemap's
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41635592) which was posted
| a few weeks ago.
|
| What is it that sets this apart from other similar solutions?
| mhuffman wrote:
| There really seems to be a lot of movement in the map space
| these days!
| moooo99 wrote:
| Functionally they are rather similar in what they're aiming
| for. Architecturally there are some differences.
|
| OpenFreeMap uses the MapTiles format [1] which is an open
| source format for vector tiles that does require the
| attribution of the OpenMapTiles page for every map generated
| from it (CC-BY license). Versatiles uses the Shortbread format
| instead [2] which is published under a CC0 license. Instead of
| the SQLite based mbtiles format they developed their own
| container format (and a converter).
|
| I've only started tinkering with this project a little bit
| cause I found it interesting after watching a CCC talk with it
| [3]
|
| [1] https://openmaptiles.org/
|
| [2] https://shortbread-tiles.org/
|
| [3] German: https://youtu.be/8A51WkJ5S8I
| guwop wrote:
| cool beans! lots of stuff happening with OSS mapping rn!
| szvsw wrote:
| Only mildly related, but has any one else been using Martin [0]
| for tile serving from Postgres/PostGis? It's been a huge benefit
| to me and probably my favorite open source map tool right now.
| Martin + Deck.GL is such an awesome combo.
|
| [0] https://maplibre.org/martin/introduction.html
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-20 23:00 UTC)