Hi,
https://aprs.fi is experimenting with Leaflet & OSM mapping starting
tonight. A small percentage of visitors will get Leaflet & OSM, and I'll
keep an eye on whether the tile server explodes or not. If it doesn't,
I'll increase the percentage tomorrow. There's no way to opt out from the
experiment at this time, other than changing your IP address.
It’ll be drawing the maps a bit slowly in the beginning and some features
are missing. PHG circles are not being drawn, for one. There's no
satellite/aerial views, and no Street View. I can implement PHG a bit
later, Street View cannot be done, some satellite imagery might be
possible but it won't be as good as with Google Maps.
I’ll have to do this to avoid a recurrence of a Noticeably Large bill I
got for Google Maps usage in December (think "one new nice HF rig every
month" large, or "one VERY nice HF rig every two months"). Google has had
a very large and generous free quota for use of Google Maps on
aprs.fi,
but it's been a bit unstable and sometimes a bit too small after all, and
I need a backup plan in case it goes away.
The plan consists of three main bits:
* Leaflet (
https://leafletjs.com/) is the JavaScript library responsible
for implementing the slippy map. It runs in your web browser, loads map
image tiles from a tile server, lets you pan & zoom around, and provides
aprs.fi with the necessary bits to draw station symbols and lines and
other overlays on top of the map.
* OpenStreetMaps (OSM) is the map data set I download (some 73 GB of it
currently) and push in a database running on my Tile Server.
* A Tile Server, which I now run, which produces square PNG images from
the OSM vector map data, which your browser downloads and displays. I
suspect it'll be a noticeable pain to keep it running smoothly.
I have had Leaflet mostly implemented for some time, it just has not been
enabled before now. There's probably a few bugs here and there which need
to be ironed out - please let me know when you find one. Just reply to
this post. Thanks!
I have a fairly nice 16-CPU 128 GB RAM dual-SSD-drive server running the
map tile server, but it's still a bit laggy until it has cached enough
tiles.
To make it run fast enough, buildings, amenities, lamp posts and similar
less important items are not loaded in the map database. Country borders
are accidentally missing, I'll add them in the next rebuild after figuring
out what else is missing.
- Hessu