Symbolizing OpenStreetMap layers in MapBox - openstreetmap

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 ;).

Related

Partial update of mapbox tileset

I have a mapbox tileset with lots of small data points and I regularly need to update one data point at a time. Is it possible to programmatically update a mapbox tileset in a partial way? These instructions from the mapbox docs and this stack overflow question explain how to overwrite a tileset file. This is useful but seems like overkill if I just want to update 1 point out of thousands.
I think what you're after is Mapbox's tippecanoe.
No. But probably the better way to update a source is using the tiling service API: https://docs.mapbox.com/api/maps/mapbox-tiling-service/#replace-a-tileset-source

Mapbox Basics: How do I use one style, multiple shapefiles, for multiple webpages

This should be easy, as it's surely a fundamental function of this service, but I'm stumped.
I have 60 shapefiles. The outcome that I want is that I have 60 different webpages, each showing a different map, but all using one consistent style.
I have the style built in Mapbox, and I can add the shapefiles to the "style" in mapbox - but that is arguing with my understanding of separating style from content. It seems like the shapefiles should live in some data repository, and the style should live somewhere else, and that the API would mash the two together as required. As far as I can tell, it doesn't work that way. I'm hoping some experienced user can simplify this for me, because I'm surely just missing some basic understanding of the general workflow for the service.
When you upload your shapefiles to Mapbox studio, you create a source for your data on the Mapbox server.
You can then style your data further interactively on the run time using filter property and expressions. Can you tell me why you want to make 60 different maps? It might be worth looking into some examples to like create one map and filter it within the map view.

Drawing unity 3D Map based on real world map

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.

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