![]() With Google Maps Navigation (Beta), you’ll also see the benefits of additional caching with offline rerouting. We’re continuing to work on these algorithms, so you’ll see improvements over time. Further away, you’ll have less detail but will typically have towns and highways labeled for miles. Near your frequent places, you’ll get detailed vector tiles for city-sized regions so you can see every road labeled. ![]() Then when you’re plugged in and connected over WiFi, caching happens automatically. With this first version, Maps proactively caches map data for the places you use Maps the most-where you’re actively using it as well as places for which you search or get directions. ![]() Because each vector tile works across multiple zoom levels, it requires more than 100 times less data to view maps across all zoom levels than before, allowing Maps to cache much larger areas of the map on your device. Vector graphics also enable another significant new feature: the ability to continue viewing maps even when you have poor-or no-network connections. ![]() Previously, map features like labels and traffic could conflict (left) instead of blend seamlessly (right). You’ll notice labels fade in and out as you interact with the map so that the most useful ones appear and the map never gets too cluttered. Maps also “chooses” the best labels to show you based on several factors. Just like other map features, labels are dynamically drawn so they continue to face you and stay legible if you rotate the rest of the map or use compass mode. And with tilt and rotate, you can see them from a variety of different angles. For example, in the 100+ cities where we have 3D building data, each building is drawn in 3D using a polygonal building footprint and heights for different parts of the building. We can also display entirely new levels of detail that weren’t possible with flat image tiles. Just like with zooming, Maps uses the same vector data to draw the map from any angle or direction as you tilt or rotate. This same technique powers the new 3D map interactions: tilt, rotate and compass mode. So when you zoom, the map stops when your fingers stop, and roads and labels always stay crisp. One vector tile has the underlying vector data (or blueprints) to draw the map at many different levels of scale. With vector graphics, you no longer need to “round” to the nearest zoom level and then download all the tiles for that level. But a combination of modern device hardware and innovative engineering allow us to stream vector tiles efficiently and render them smoothly, while maintaining the speed and readability we require in Google Maps. Google Maps isn’t the first mobile app to use vector graphics-in fact, Google Earth and our Navigation (Beta) feature do already. Because you only need to download the blueprints, the amount of data needed to draw maps from vector tiles is drastically less than when downloading pre-rendered image tiles. You can think of them as the blueprints needed to draw a map, instead of static map images. Maps will download “vector tiles” that describe the underlying geometry of the map. Now, we use vector graphics to dynamically draw the map. It takes more than 360 billion tiles to cover the whole world at 20 zoom levels! Google Maps would download each tile as you needed it and then stitch sets together to form the map you see. Previously, Google Maps downloaded the map as sets of individual 256x256 pixel “image tiles.” Each pre-rendered image tile was downloaded with its own section of map imagery, roads, labels and other features baked right in. So we wanted to give you a closer look under the hood at the technology driving the next generation of mobile maps.īefore diving into how Maps uses vector graphics, it may be helpful to understand how maps were created before. Building a vector graphics engine capable of achieving the visual quality and performance level you expect from Google Maps was a major technical challenge and enables all sorts of future possibilities. In order to create these features, we rebuilt Maps using vector graphics to dynamically draw the map as you use it. Yesterday we introduced Google Maps 5.0 for Android with two significant new features: 3D interaction and offline reliability.
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