Programatically moving around a map is jittery - javascript

In my mapbox/leaflet app I'm using the following code in a loop to follow a route a round a map
map.setView(microLineArray[microIteration], zoom);
microLineArray is the array of lat longs that the route follows.
It plays very odd though because of the tiles loading in.
As I am only using a couple of zoom levels and only covering the USA for the route playing is it possible to pre-load the tiles at all. If so how would I go about doing this.

There is some discussion happening about this on the google group # https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/leaflet-js/nWk2k0FySRo. Sounds like some people are making phantom/hidden/offset map containers that contain more tiles than the user's map viewport.
So if you know where your routes are "generally" going to be...create another map container and use setView to get it moving & requesting tiles that you need prior to the user's map container.
Additionally, there is an old plugin called Leaflet.TileBuffer that sounds like it does exactly what you want - however compatibility with latest versions appears unknown.
You will probably also want to consider forcing unloadInvisibleTiles to false.

Related

Leaflet - Allow dragging outside of map

I recently set up a non geographical map with leaflet using an image layer. This obviously is a stupid decision working with 'bigger' maps due to high memory usage and the need to load the big image file so I decided to use a tile layer instead.
Working mostly as expected aside from one thing: I can't seem to be able to drag outside of the map, it just jumps back so the map covers the screen. I'm not sure what causes that as I read that this behaviour usually needs to be set manually using maxBounds. Tried setting that to null, doesn't change. The only new thing introduced is Leaflet Rastercoords (https://github.com/commenthol/leaflet-rastercoords) which I'm unsure if that's causing the problems.
Any way to resolve that? Not sure where to look next.Thank you!
I achieved the behaviour you want using the following work around:
map.setMaxBounds(null); //map being the leaflet map.
This need to be called after the initialization of the map and of the raster coords layer.

How to rotate a map in Javascript(Meteor/famo.us)

In my Meteor/Cordova/famo.us App I need a map that can be rotated with two fingers, zoomed in and out and (ideally) the names (street, city etc.) should stay horizontally aligned.
The reason is that I haven't found a (free) map like leaflet.js, Google Maps etc. that can rotate in JS. Google Maps SDK for Android and iOS respectively can do this, but the corresponding plugin (plugin.google.maps) led to trouble with famo.us.
The rotation could be done with a famo.us Surface, and I've been told that in leaflet one could pull separately the map tiles and the names (vector/jpeg?).
I apprechiate your help.
Map rotation isn't possible in Leaflet. Read this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22938733/2019281. However, it is possible in openlayers but it would also rotate the labels since they are embedded in the maptiles. See this example: http://openlayers.org/en/master/examples/rotation.html. You could use a tilelayer without labels and add create your own separate layer with vectorlabels and counterrotate those. This would be a very complex solution and i guess will put an enormous strain on your performance since you're talking about a mobile solution. I would rethink the concept.

Resize embedded google map

I tried asking question at super user first at https://superuser.com/questions/763734/how-to-get-larger-map-on-iss-live-stream, with no luck. I am just an observer watching the live Internation Space Station (ISS) stream whenever I get a chance. I don't own/can not modify at the source, the pages I am visiting. I just want to use firebug to enlarge element on the screen that's already there.
Site http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/HDEV/ streams pictures from camera's on International Space Station. On right hand side there a flash window that shows trajectory and underneath it is a google map. On my monitor the current position with red dot is always lost as map size is very small and I don't get any options like centre here. Ctrl+ keys makes things little bigger, but problem essentially persists.
If I go to http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/International_Space_Station/Where_is_the_International_Space_Station, I get same screen, but maps area is more usable, but I loose ability to watch live stream.
Is there any way I can set height of google maps using firebug or similar so that map is more usable and I can relate the actual location? I tried inspecting elements and changing various values, but could not figure out how height is managed.
Resize the maps origin element (most likely a DIV) and then run google.maps.event.trigger(map, "resize"); in the JS console of your preferred browser (assumes that 'map' is a global var set to the map object - you have have to hunt for this).

OpenLayers as a large (changing and growing) image viewer

Basically, what I'm trying to do is use a map viewer as an image viewer with the same sort of efficient tile-loading, zoom/pan awesomeness without having to build it myself.
Specifically, I need an image viewer that will allow the image to grow and change while not altering the coordinates of any older (unchanged) tiles. This means that the center point (0,0), where the image started growing from, must always remain (0,0). So I'm looking for a library that will allow me to use a very basic Cartesian coordinate system (no map projection!), which will ask for tiles infinitely in all directions with no repetition (as opposed to how map libraries just ignore y-axis above and below the map, but the x axis repeats).
There's another catch. I need zoom level 0 to be zoomed in all the way. Since the image is constantly growing, there's no way to tell what the max zoom level will be, and the coordinates need to be based on the base image layer tiles so that every tile in zoom level z contains 2^z base layer tiles.
I am wondering if this is possible with OpenLayers and how to do it. If it's not, any suggestions of other (open-source javascript) libraries that can do this would be very appreciated! I've tried playing around with Polymaps, but the documentation is lacking too much for me to be able to tell if it will work. So far no luck.
Please let me know if none of this made sense, and I'll try to include some images or better explanations. Thanks!
I ended up using Polymaps after all, since I like it more than OpenLayers, because it's faster and has much smoother scrolling and panning. I wasn't able to do exactly what I wanted, but what I did was close enough.
I ended up writing my own layer (based on the po.image() layer), which disabled infinite horizontal looping of the map. I then wrote my own version of po.url() that modified the requests going to the server for tiles so that zooming was reversed (I just arbitrarily picked a 'max' zoom of 20, then when making a request subtract the zoom level from 20) and the x and y coordinates were converted to cartesian coordinates from the standard row, column coordinates Polymaps uses, based on the zoom level and the map centered at (0,0).
If anyone is interested in the code I can post it here. Let me know!
EDIT: I've posted the code on github at https://github.com/camupod/polymaps
The relevant files are src/Backwards* and examples/backwards (though it actually doesn't work, you might be able to clean some information about how it should work).

Placing markers for 6000+ locations using Google Maps (or some other web & mobile platform)

The closest example of what I'm trying to accomplish is a store locator. I have 6,000+ locations that need to be plotted onto a map of Canada.
My original plan was to use Google maps to place markers on each location, but it doesn't make sense to plot them all every time someone attempts to view the map, or various parts of the map.
How does one only put markers on the locations in view? Do I have to send the geo data of all 6000 locations to the client each time they load the map?
Is this doable with maps? (I'm sure it's got to be) Or is there a better service for this kind of thing?
Definitely do not draw all the locations at the same time if they are not all visible. Consider using MarkerManager (article here) or MarkerLight (code: http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/manymarkers/, demo: http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/manymarkers/randommarkers.html). If your initial map and data is such that all the markers would be visible initially, this is definitely the way to go.
You can also use the GEvent object (docs) to detect a "move" event, then check the current display coordinates, draw any that are in bounds. This is the best route if your initial map is too zoomed or small, and/or your marker set is too large to fit on the map's initial view. Your user will be moving the map around, so you can react to that movement and only draw the relevant markers. Take a look at http://econym.org.uk/gmap/gevent.htm for a list of other GEvent events (couldn't find an official list on the API), you might also want to watch "zoom" events.
The two methods can also be combined.
You can use getBounds() to determine the viewable portion of the map. I'd use this data to request from the server all locations within those bounds. Use the bounds_changed event to monitor changes to the viewport and request additional locations as necessary. You'll probably want to set either a minimum zoom level, or maximum number of results to avoid displaying too many locations than is reasonable. Eg, when the map is zoomed out to display all of Canada in a single view.

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