Generating and serving tiles in a digital mapping system
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A system for generating map tiles for a tile-based digital mapping system comprising:
- a map painter module for generating digital map images;
a tile maker for generating map tiles from the digital map images, wherein the tile maker operates according to a configuration file that defines areas and zoom levels for map tiles to be generated and the tile maker uses the map painter module to generate the digital map images for areas defined in the configuration file; and
a tile storage for storing map tiles generated by the tile maker.
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Abstract
Digital tile-based mapping techniques are disclosed that enable efficient online serving of aesthetically pleasing maps. In one particular embodiment, an image tile-based digital mapping system is configured for generating map tiles during an offline session, and serving selected sets of those tiles to a client when requested. Also provided are solutions for handling map labels and other such features in a tile-based mapping system, such as when a map label crosses map tile boundaries. Various processing environments (e.g., servers or other computing devices) can be employed in the system.
217 Citations
43 Claims
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1. A system for generating map tiles for a tile-based digital mapping system comprising:
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a map painter module for generating digital map images; a tile maker for generating map tiles from the digital map images, wherein the tile maker operates according to a configuration file that defines areas and zoom levels for map tiles to be generated and the tile maker uses the map painter module to generate the digital map images for areas defined in the configuration file; and a tile storage for storing map tiles generated by the tile maker. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. A map tile serving system configured to serve map tiles in response to map requests from a user, comprising:
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a plurality of front end tile servers for serving one or more map tiles requested by a user; a request distributor for distributing requests for map tiles between the plurality of front end tile servers; and a plurality of back end tile servers communicatively coupled with the plurality of front end tile servers, each back end tile server having access to the map tiles, and configured to provide requested map tiles to a corresponding front end tile server; wherein at least one of the front end tile servers can identify one or more uni-colored map tiles, and is configured to serve the uni-colored map tiles, without having to request those uni-colored map tiles from one of the back end tile servers. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
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25. A tile-based digital mapping method, comprising:
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generating map tiles from digital map images; storing the map tiles; and serving one or more of the map tiles, in response to a user map request, wherein the serving further comprises identifying uni-color map tiles that are locally available to a computing device of the user, and causing the computing device to use uni-color map tiles that are locally available to the computing device, so that such tiles do not have to be sewed. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34)
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35. A method for generating digital map tiles from digital map data comprising:
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identifying areas to be drawn, and various zoom levels at which each area needs to be drawn; dividing the areas into sub-areas as needed at the different zoom levels, such that each sub-area can be pre-rendered in an available memory; pre-rendering each sub-area at a given zoom level; dividing each pre-rendered sub-area into rendering areas, such that each rendering area can be rendered in the available memory; rendering the rendering areas to produce an image; and dividing the image into map tiles. - View Dependent Claims (36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43)
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Specification