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Comment by aw3c2 | Hacker News Reader

This is raster tiles, not vector.

It seems not to be 100% clear from the website, but MapTiler is a family of products.

One of them is called MapTiler Cloud [0], which is based on our own open-source project OpenMapTiles and data from OpenStreetMap and offers base maps in vectors and rasters.

Apart from it, there is a MapTiler Desktop [1] (and Engine [2]), which is a desktop software producing raster tiles (the support for vector tiles is work-in-progress).

[0] https://www.maptiler.com/cloud/ [1] https://www.maptiler.com/desktop/ *[2] https://www.maptiler.com/engine/

Both are available, see https://www.maptiler.com/maps/

The software Maptiler is for raster output. Not sure what that map page is supposed to demo.

It says "Continue to MapTiler Cloud" in the bottom right corner. https://www.maptiler.com/cloud/

Looks like it's an online map editor/map viewer that supports both vector an raster images.

The page demonstrates our worldwide map service - it is an alternative to Google Maps API - for a fraction of the price. You can use the maps in Leaflet, OpenLayers, in the mobile apps, etc.

There is a toggle on the demo page that flips to vector.

I also found that if I hold ctrl I can rotate at random and even go "3d" and see some of the building's heights (in London anyway).

I've got no interest or relation in this (apart from being a OSM contributor years ago), but this is one of the most convincing alternatives to google maps I've seen. The free-rotate on the vector tiles really makes a difference.

> apart from being a OSM contributor years ago

Could I asked why you stopped contributing? I kind of feel like the userbase is struggling a bit, and I wonder if it's just Google's (using Android's) influence, or if it is something else.

There seem to be a "vector <-> raster" switch hidden in the map view of the ... product demo or whatever that is.

Alas, I couldn't find what this has to do with OSM anywhere, so I don't get why it's mentioned in the submission title.

> Alas, I couldn't find what this has to do with OSM anywhere,

The software generates map tiles out of OSM data, based on a few sample points I looked at.

That's what I thought originally - similar to Mapnik. But I've downloaded it and can't see any way to work from raw osm data.

The base is Openmaptiles (https://openmaptiles.org), to build from osm data you'd need to spin the infrastructure from docker. I posted the link to maptiler because in other threads people were looking for a simpler cloud instance (I'm at the sotm conference and they presented it)

Thanks! Openmaptiles looks like it might be exactly what I'm looking for at work. Enjoy the conference. I didn't know it existed but hopefully I can get my company to send me next year.

Next year is in Heidelberg from 21 to 23 September!

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