Vector tiles

I am looking at what it will take to set up a stack to use vector tiles.

About Mapbox vector tiles

The obvious approach

After it was already picking up speed, ESRI jumped in and added tile support. I have no idea (yet) if there is any compatibility.

• ESRI ArcGis Pro - generate tiles
• ESRI ArcGis Enterprise - serve tiles
• ESRI ArcGIS API for Javascript - browser support

In this blog post ESRI says they based their API on mapbox-gl.js. Amusingly ESRI doesn't seem to index this page, if you search for mapbox, only some unrelated article comes up.

The ESRI basemaps seem to be all raster based only at this time, though I have this link: http://basemapsbeta.arcgis.com/preview/app/index.html

Tile generation

1. Install ArcGIS Pro
2. Create a map
3. Create Vector Tile Package
   1. Create a map and add your standard data
   2. Reproject data into Web Mercator
   3. Create an vector index
   4. Create a vector tile package
   5. Use "Add Data" in AGP to preview at the results.
   6. Publish

About the tile package

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/sharing/overview/vector-tile-package.htm

The generated file is a ZIP archive with a vtpk extension. It contains

• tilemap/root.json Styles are here.
• An esriinfo folder containing item.pkinfo, iteminfo.xml, and thumbnail/thumbnail.png
• about a hundred PBF files = "protocol buffer" that look like font data ("Tahoma Regular")?!?
• tile/??/*.bundle files, about 2 dozen.
• a medley of other supporting files; looks like there are sprites. They use sprites for things like textures.

Learn how to tweak styles, fonts, picture markers: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/mapping/working-with-fonts-and-sprites-being-creative-with-esri-vector-tiles/

The open source option

A lot is happening in this space. Instead of putting many links here, just look at this firehose of open source vector tile resources: https://github.com/mapbox/awesome-vector-tiles

My choices

I have to start somewhere.

Browser client: I want to try mapbox-gl but since I already have familiarity with Openlayers, I will try it first.

Tile sources:

• I put a taxlot layer up on ArcGIS Online
• There are ESRI basemaps in vector format
• I will also try Mapbox since I already set up an account there.

That's all I need to set up a test! I have added it to map46 in Github in vectortiles/ folder.

Vector base maps

These are generally free services at the levels I will be using them.

• https://openmaptiles.org/
• http://mapbox.com
• https://www.mapcat.com/
• https://thunderforest.com/