Skip to content

Comment on How Google Maps splits the world in 2^20 256x256 tiles (2006)parent

Comments

Plus, the tiles are rendered once, no need for heavy calculations on-demand.

Well, there is still reprojection done on-the-fly. For instance, when you overlay a set of points or a polygon on a Google Map, these points have to be reprojected to be overlaid. This is done in JavaScript on the client side.

Not with the Google Maps Data API : http://code.google.com/intl/us/apis/maps/documentation/mapsd... Other overlay apps/mashups are using datasets for the most incomparably smaller than the base map data.

There are two things going on here. Raster images that are overlaid must be in Google's Mercator Projection, correct. However, when you provide shape data (polygons, points, etc) to Google's API to be rendered on the client, the JavaScript code transforms the points to the screen projection before being overlaid.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.