

Show HN – Get Your Own Maps – Pixel Perfect - TapaJob
https://getyourmap.com/
GLMap is a framework for iOS developers with a simple mechanism for integrating detailed
and lightweight offline maps into any application.
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Doctor_Fegg
This looks really promising, particularly the ability to switch styles on the
fly. It could perhaps work as an onramp to get an app out there before
switching to something custom-built as traffic builds. I'm tempted.

(Declaration of interest: I invented MapCSS, the styling language which this
uses.)

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molind
Glad, you like it. And thanks for MapCSS. ;)

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Doctor_Fegg
Out of interest, what sort of storage are you using for the vector data? Is it
OSM PBF, MapBox vector tiles, or something custom?

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molind
It's custom msgpack based tile format + sqlite.

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vijayaggarwal
Particularly interesting for game developers who can use it deeply customize
maps to fit well into their gaming experience. I am tempted to build a
monopoly-like game with the _real world_ up for sale and purchase. And one
like Need for Speed with real-world traffic. Even one for amateur marathon
runs on countryside terrains.

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justinpaulson
You mean like this?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_City_Streets](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_City_Streets)

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vijayaggarwal
Oh yes, I also used to make casual games in flash for social platforms like
facebook back in 2009. These days it's OpenGL and mobile. The market size is
bigger and user experience better. Btw, 5m accounts in three months despite so
many launch issues is not bad.

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jamornh
I am currently working on a location-based game for iOS and have been using
Google Maps SDK and I'm extremely interested in this.

Google Maps has refused to respond to all requests for custom styled maps on
iOS despite being the most requested feature.[1]

I've also tried MapBox but both have been giving very bad performance on
iPhone 4... this could be just my code, however as a game I really need to
perform a lot of animation on the map itself and these 2 options perform quite
poorly in my experience.

Another issue with map SDKs is that there's usually no way to turn off road
names. I just need the road vectors to be rendered (like Ingress) so players
get a baring of where they are relative to their roads, but not necessarily
the name of the roads. I imagine that it would be more performant if I could
turn that off. Neither Google nor Mapbox allows this unfortunately.

Might give this a go to see how well it works with all the things we're
throwing at our map functionality. Thanks!

[1] - [https://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-
issues/issues/detail?id=...](https://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-
issues/issues/detail?id=4968&q=apitype%3AIosSDK&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Introduced%20Fixed%20Summary%20Internal%20Stars)

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taigeair
How does this differ from MapBox? I was going to use MapBox, but just learned
about this one.

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jamornh
Looking at their getting started page, it seems to be much simpler to
integrate in terms of getting the barebones map up and running.

I haven't had time to dive into it yet so don't take my word for it but I
suspect it would be similar in feature and performance.

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ntaso
Looks nice, but since it's completely unclear who's behind this, I personally
wouldn't buy. People, add an imprint at least, better an "About us" page.

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TapaJob
The person behind this is a good friend and a great developer who has other
great products including:

[http://wirelessdjapp.com/](http://wirelessdjapp.com/)

He is called Evgen Bodunov and here is his profile on linkedin:

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/molind](https://www.linkedin.com/in/molind)

A link to a lecture he gave on Map Rendering using OpenGL ES 2.0:

[http://vimeo.com/73200653](http://vimeo.com/73200653)

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ntaso
Good for him. Tell him to put that information on the web page.

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molind
I'll add it.

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Timmmmbob
Also worth considering:
[https://code.google.com/p/mapsforge/](https://code.google.com/p/mapsforge/)

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lucb1e
Always cool to see more uses of openstreetmap. Gives me even more motivation
to work on it.

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zackmorris
Looks cool, but does it do affine/perspective rendering? I'm looking for a map
service that allows me to project the map but still render labels in 2D. Or
preferably, to get the various layers on their own framebuffers to be rendered
arbitrarily. Elevation data would be a plus also.

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chris11
GDAL is a pretty cool opensource library that will do affine transformations.
And it looks like you can use it with IOS projects. So you might want to check
that out. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12643898/incorporating-
gd...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12643898/incorporating-gdal-ogr-
into-an-ios-project-a-quick-guide)

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owenversteeg
Looks great, but I'm not an iOS developer so I can't use it :(

Are you thinking of expanding to other platforms other than iOS?

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molind
Yes, we'll add Android support later this year.

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cheeaun
How about the web platform?

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molind
GLMap.framework made for offline maps on mobile devices. Most of it written in
C++11, and we can't port it to JavaScript + WebGL.

As far I know Mapbox works on WebGL map rendering solution.

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d135_1r43
Are you based in Karlsruhe (which is displayed on your front page)? I
graduated from the KIT there…

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molind
We're based in Minsk, Belarus. I was in Karlsruhe on SotM-EU'14 recently, and
I like shape of the city centre. It's looks beautiful on map. :)

