OpenStreetMap

Vector Map Bundles

Posted by bdon on 28 December 2020 in English. Last updated on 29 December 2020.

Vector Map Bundles are the follow up to Minutely Extracts which I posted about previously.

map bundle create

You can download map bundles for up to 500,000 nodes at protomaps.com/bundles.

Self-Contained, Batteries Included

Map Bundles are cartographic basemap tile pyramids built from a minutely-updated snapshot of OpenStreetMap. That means within sixty seconds of uploading your changeset, you can download a new Map Bundle and have a self-hostable or offline-friendly zoomable map with those changes.

A Map Bundle includes example HTML and JavaScript code to serve and render the vector tiles in the browser - just run python3 demo.py after you’ve unzipped the ZIP archive. You can even interact with individual elements on the map to view their tags or OSM identifiers.

map bundle create

Fresh Data

Note that this is different from a “minutely-updated” tileset, in which changes from OSM appear without intervention. The goal of Map Bundles is to shorten the feedback loop for creating interactive maps from OSM.

Consider Wikipedia as a point of comparison. Editing an article via the Wikimedia editor appears on the Wikipedia site for all users quite quickly. For OSM, mappers use editors like iD or JOSM to upload changes; but a primary way to consume OSM is via slippy maps. OSM Carto can take a long time to reflect changes, especially if caches are being accessed. Other tile providers may take weeks or months to incorporate changes! Map Bundles hopefully enable a Wikipedia-like experience for vector cartography.

Details

Map Bundles are built off the OSM Express database format, and downloaded MBTiles or files remain ODbL-licensed. Be sure to attribute OpenStreetMap contributors in your slippy maps - and a link back to protomaps.com/bundles is also appreciated!

Location: Station Front, Taipei, 10018, Taiwan

Discussion

Comment from typebrook on 29 December 2020 at 06:48

Amazing feature! BTW, wrong href for “protomaps.com/bundles”

Comment from bdon on 29 December 2020 at 06:59

Thanks, I fixed the link.

Comment from Dzertanoj on 1 January 2021 at 21:44

… and of course, some Russian-speakers showed up to add a transliteration for the name.

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