Drawing unity 3D Map based on real world map - unity3d

I'm using mapbox SDK for unity. I'm trying to build a 3D map based on a real world map.
mapbox have some really nice features but all areas are not implemented yet, such as deserts in Saudi Arabia.
Does anyone have an idea about how can I elevate the desert into beautiful 3D map using mapbox?
Or do you know any other SDK for unity that can help me with this?
Please note that I need to use real world coordinates (Longitude,
Latitude) in my game, Pins will be inserted on map based on real world
coordinates.

Elevation Data Sources
There are multiple sources that provide elevation data. Bing Maps, Mapbox and ArgGIS (ESRI) are the most well-known services in that area. In rare cases like deserts some of them cover areas whereas the others do not. In your case if MapBox does not cover the Saudi-Arabian desert you can try out one of those other sources.
Mixed Data Sources
In order so solve your problem within MapBox you have to first extract data from a viable source and provide it to MapBox. Fortunately MapBox supports third-party data: MapBox: how to use custom data
There are also many third-party tools that you can use or learn from.
Have a look at this Asset from the Unity Asset Store for example: Online Maps v3
This asset allows you to keep your MapBox style, cache the tiles locally to save cost, use multiple elevation sources, create 3D-buildings in cities and fill in relevant data from the google api.
Missing Data
In order to have a globally working game you have to check multiple sources and use the one that has the elevation data that you want. Unfortunately, in some cases you won't find any data at all as it has not been mapped yet at all. In this case you have to exclude it from your game.

Related

Customizing OSM map style with TileMill

I want to use custom styled Map using TileMill. Found a very good style (http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/aj.Sketchy2/page.html#6/34.044/10.942) in which I want to some changes, host it and use it. (Already found its style).
I've before used mapbox and Tilemill for creating mbtiles for building level, which usually creates mbtiles of less then 10 MB, later I used to upload it to Mapbox free account and use. But this Time I need to work on world level map with Few Layers like country boundaries, city boundaries with roads for few cities (OSM Data).
I've already done changes to the style using TileMill software. Now I am not sure How and where I can host these map as if I export this world map it will be a huge.
What is the most feasible way to export customized world map from TileMill and where I can host it?
Yes, exporting such a world map at a high range of zoom levels is incredibly large. Mapbox isn't really optimized for that sort of map size, which is also why our OSM-based maps aren't available for MBTiles download -- it's not the format they are designed in.
For background, the way this works is OSM is baked down to vector tiles which are consumed by front-end servers which apply styling and render them much like TileMill does out into tiles directly that are served.
One way we're tackling this problem is with TileMill 2, which is still in development. It consumes these vector tiles from the backend server directly, allowing you to style the whole world of OSM in TileMill directly without setting up up any OSM data configurations. Then, you upload the style info to Mapbox to reproduce this on our servers.
Please contact support#mapbox.com about getting setup to upload TM2 styles, since again this isn't in full release yet. You can start playing with TM2 styling right away, though.
You can use TileStream or TileStache + Gunicorn + nginx. Here is good manual.
If you don't expect a much load you can try Amazon EC2 server with free tier for one year.

Symbolizing OpenStreetMap layers in MapBox

Newbie post here, so forgive me if there's a better place for this, or if my question has been answered already.
I am trying to develop an interactive trail map for my town. I have added all of the trails into the OSM database, with good topology and tags for technical difficulty, quality etc:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/49.0843/-117.7981
I am looking to develop the map using MapBox and Tilemill. My question is: If my main goal is to symbolize the OSM highway=cycleway features based on their difficulty tags, can I skip the whole tile creation process? If so, how would I go about symbolizing the various trails based on difficulty?
If I'm not interested in a custom basemap, is there any other advantage to using MBTiles? Here is my current working MapBox map, which is using a single MBTile:
http://www.kootenaymaps.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/MapBoxEXAMPLE.html
Thanks in advance for any guidance here...
Barry
I have no experience with Tilemill but AFAIK it is designed to create webmabs on tile base only. So you might use another desktop renderer as Maperitive for example. Please also keep in mind, that there are already various approaches to create hiking maps online, for GPS and printing ;).

Mapping Indoor Floor Plan into OSM-XML for Use in iPhone App

I am currently working on a project at my home university to create an infrastructure-less indoor navigation iPhone application. I have a couple of questions regarding IndoorOSM and hope that experts here can steer me towards the right direction.
Given an indoor floor plan, how can I make use of JOSM to map it into OSM-XML format? I understand that the floor plan will be represented as nodes, ways, tags and relations with each node having a lat-lon value. As the indoor space I would like to map is located in Singapore where there is little existing mapping work done, I am not sure where to accurately place the floor plan in JOSM before modelling (the buildings are non-existent). The thing is, if I start modelling on a wrong location, the lat-lon values generated in the OSM-XML file will be way off from the lat-lon values in actual real world space, right? In that case I don't think I will be able to make use of the magnetometer to identify where the user is currently at on the map...
In the OSM wiki, it was mentioned that nodes represent a geospatial point and ways are simply a collection of 2-2000 nodes and can be used to represent an area. Pardon my ignorance, but how can I know what's the physical size/area of this "point" or node?
Other than IndoorOSM, is there an easier way to convert an indoor floor plan into something that my application can understand and use easily to allow navigation? I seen a project known as roodin on youtube but I'm not sure how they did the mapping (link).
I'm also working on app with similar functionalities. What I understand is:
1 - When mapping a building you should mapping with correct lat/long. It shouldn't be difficult to get building coordinates if you can go there and check coordinates with a smartphone with GPS. With you can't go there, it's more difficult. Maybe ask someone to do that helps you. But, to start drawing your floor plan, you don't need coordinates. you can do that after finish your drawing
2 - When use JOSM to drawing, it show (in status bar) the length of your way
3 - Currently, I'm sticking with IndoorOSM. I liked the way they reuse nodes, ways and relations to draw a floor plan. That's my recommendation

Indoor map creator

I have designed and developed couple of navigation apps using google API and osmdroid API for android powered devices. Now I am looking to create an Indoor navigation system using osmdroid API. But, in order to do so I need to create tiles similar to regular map tiles from an simple PNG file with naming convention similar to OpenStreetMap.
Please suggest me how to do this?
Cheers,
Susheel
You could design your indoor map using JOSM. Save it to a .osm file. Don't upload the data to OpenStreetMap unless it is a appropriate to do so (OpenStreetMap has some basic some indoor features, e.g. a highway=footway running through a shopping mall, but generally a lot of very detailed indoor stuff will be inappropriate for OSM) But...
With a .osm file you could then use one of the OpenStreetMap rendering tools to create a raster map, and chop it into tiles. For quick satisfaction I'd recommend Maperative, although I'm not sure how easy the last tile chopping step is. I've never done this with Maperative. Mapnik has a nice generate_tiles.py output, which will give you the tileset you want, but it's a bit tricky to set up in the first place.
Actually the last step is the main thing you're asking about. You can chop up any image into tiles. It may or may not be important to you that the tiles are geo-positioned in some meaningful way. For an old project I did a quick fudge solution using google tile cutter script, which is actually a wrapper around GDAL tools.
Have a look at the gdal library, and in particular gdal2tiles. This is a library designed to create maps from raster images, and serves exactly your purpose.
You can decide on a projection and what the bounds of your source image(s) are. The library allows you to reproject your image to the correct coordinate space.
It can also generate tiles at various zoom levels using gdal2tiles, either with or without reprojection.
Now you can check indoor rendering by drag and dropping OSM geojson data into https://app.openindoor.io web page.

Can I use my own tiles in MapKit, instead of Google's?

I'm currently trying to decide wether to accept a client's proposal or not. Basically, I'm asked to create a MapView that displays markers at several locations on a map, with the additional requirement that the client's own map tiles are used instead of Google Maps'.
I do not know yet how the client stores their own map tiles, but I was assured that I'd be able to convert them into any format I'd need.
Is it possible to use different map tiles in MapKit's MapView?
Do you have good online literature about this? Links please?
If this is possible, I'd propably have to create a server that sends the files to the device.
How hard is it to create such a server? Is it just "setup apache, done." or is there more to it?
How hard, or time-consuming would both these things be, in relation to just setting up a normal MapView?
Thanks for your answers.
You can't use custom tiles with MapKit. You're limited to using the ones provided by Google.
It could be easier to create a "Google Maps-ish" web app that uses the custom titles and can be viewed on the iPhone through UIWebView?
Have you looked at alternate map frameworks on the iPhone? I know there is at least one open source map engine, also with tiles (that are not as good as the Google tiles, but hey).
A decent set of them is here:
Creating an IPhone Map application
The "easiest" way to do this within the Google Map framework is simply to map the client's map as a texture on top of the "ground." You can create textures at different resolutions, for different zoom factors. Then you won't need to do any special coding at all --- everything will just work.
The way you do this is with a KML region that maps to ground level.
See: http://earth.google.com/outreach/tutorial_region.html