VersaTiles – a complete FLOSS map stack

by moooo99 • 2 years ago

182 21 2 years ago

cpach• 2 years ago

Anyone tried this?

hawski• 2 years ago

I am only getting to the space, but if I understand correctly the overview it is a tile server speaking HTTP, but it is not working like Protomaps, which do not need a separate tile server, just a regular HTTP server with range requests support.

cldellow2• 2 years ago

It's a bit complicated, because I think the versatiles brand is used to describe multiple things:

- the schema of the map: what objects are available in each tile at different zoom levels. It sounds like versatiles uses the shortbread schema (contrast vs OpenMapTiles, protomaps)

- a container format: a way to pack multiple tiles into a single file. It sounds like they created their own format here (contrast vs mbtiles, pmtiles).

- the scripts/tooling to build everything

- the overall finished map product itself (contrast vs Google Maps, Stadio Maps, protomaps, OpenMapTiles, etc)

The versatile container format seems to require a custom HTTP server. But if you want, you could produce the versatiles map and store it in a pmtiles container. Or you could stick a caching proxy in front of their publicly available tile server at https://tiles.versatiles.org/tiles/osm/{z}/{x}/{y}

It would be interesting to hear them describe why they decided to create their own container format. The text that I have found seems to be contrasting it to RDBMS containers, but is silent about mbtiles/pmtiles.

SahAssar• 2 years ago

Just a small clarification: mbtiles is built on a RDBMS (sqlite).

moooo993• 2 years ago

As far as my understanding goes, mbtiles is based on SQLite, so it would be a RDBMS container based format.

There was a YouTube talk published 4 weeks ago showcasing this project, which was where I discovered it in the first place. The (German) video can be found here https://youtu.be/8A51WkJ5S8I

thybag• 2 years ago

I'd be interested to understand how this compares with a solution like openfreemap's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41635592) which was posted a few weeks ago.

What is it that sets this apart from other similar solutions?

mhuffman• 2 years ago

There really seems to be a lot of movement in the map space these days!

moooo993• 2 years ago

Functionally they are rather similar in what they're aiming for. Architecturally there are some differences.

OpenFreeMap uses the MapTiles format [1] which is an open source format for vector tiles that does require the attribution of the OpenMapTiles page for every map generated from it (CC-BY license). Versatiles uses the Shortbread format instead [2] which is published under a CC0 license. Instead of the SQLite based mbtiles format they developed their own container format (and a converter).

I've only started tinkering with this project a little bit cause I found it interesting after watching a CCC talk with it [3]

[1] https://openmaptiles.org/

[2] https://shortbread-tiles.org/

[3] German: https://youtu.be/8A51WkJ5S8I

guwop• 2 years ago

cool beans! lots of stuff happening with OSS mapping rn!

szvsw• 2 years ago

Only mildly related, but has any one else been using Martin [0] for tile serving from Postgres/PostGis? It’s been a huge benefit to me and probably my favorite open source map tool right now. Martin + Deck.GL is such an awesome combo.

[0] https://maplibre.org/martin/introduction.html

twelvechairs• 2 years ago

Yeah Martin is amazing. And deckgl too. It's a pity as such a tiny tool it doesn't get the publicity of things like this and mbiles and pmtiles.

Tile generation on the fly should really be default for most uses.

qchris• 2 years ago

I'm using Martin on my personal site for serving MBTiles onto MapLibre. With the exception of some quality-of-life updates like hot-reloads/watching the file directory for changes (which I think they're working on), it's been rock-solid and lovely to use.

hokkos• 2 years ago

Yes I use Martin and DeckGL, great way to serve postgis data as fast viz.

srj• 2 years ago

Versatile was the name of the vector maps team in google, wonder if this is from a former team member?

cyberax2• 2 years ago

I'm trying to self-host everything I need for my needs, and the map layer has been an interesting problem. So I want to download the entire world for photo geotagging and keep it current. But as far as I understand, right now it's impossible to do without having 200GB RAM?

ryantgtg• 2 years ago

That doesn’t sound right. Where do you see 200gb ram?

Building a tileset can often require a lot of ram, but hosting usually does not.

cyberax2• 2 years ago

I want to import the raw incremental data feed from OSM, and build geocoding and tiles from it. I understand that there are no incremental tileset databases?

youngtaff• 2 years ago

Unless it's just me, it doesn't seem to work in Safari

rofrol• 2 years ago

works for me in safari

VersaTiles – a complete FLOSS map stack

Related Stories