Smoother Map Zooming. Maybe Use Vector Tiles Instead of Raster?

[radh21301]

I noticed that zooming the map in GeoPulse feels choppy. It zooms in steps rather than smoothly. In comparison, Immich’s map zooming feels really smooth. So, I did a bit of high-level reading on this.

From what I could gather, Immich uses vector tiles, while GeoPulse likely uses raster tiles. And Vector tiles redraw the map dynamically, which allows for smooth zooming and panning.

Seems like using vector tiles could also open the door to some exciting possibilities in the future?:

• Interactive globe or 3D map views
• Visualizing hikes or drives in 3D, including elevation. That would be super cool!

This isn’t essential by any means, but it would be great to have a smoother map experience and potentially enable some really fun features down the line.

Geopulse.maps.mov

Immich.maps.mp4

[tess1o]

Hello,

Elevation (altitude) is collected from GPS points when it's available, so technically we have this data in the system (at least for OwnTracks I can tell for sure).

I will try to check what can be done here. I suspect zooming is not smooth because it tries to load many small files (tiles) from OSM and it could be slow.

It's a big change and requires careful review before we introduce it.

[radh21301]

Totally understand that switching to vector tiles would be a big architectural change. This was more of a nice-to-have / future idea from a user experience perspective, not something required by any means.

Really appreciate you taking the time to look into what might be possible here.

P.S. For inspiration, this is something an app called AllTrails (used for hiking) does. You can preview hikes in 3D like this. It’s pretty awesome 🙂

[tess1o]

I found that OSM tile cache didn't work properly - fixed this in release 1.5.0. Also did some additional changes in Leaflet itself. Please check if it improved performance in your use cases.

[radh21301]

Hey. That seems to have definitely improved things. Thanks.

From what I could see, immich definitely feels little smoother..But I guess that is expected due to the different tech behind the maps. But what we have now is certainly good.

Do you want leave this discussion open in case you consider vector in the future? Maybe for the other possibilities it could offer? Else, we can close this.

[tess1o]

I'm ok to keep it open and I will try to do some research on it later.