How To Understand Vector and Tile (Raster) Maps

There are two common ways to electronically store map data, "Tile maps" (often also called "Raster maps") and "Vector maps". * Tile maps are like pictures, they are created, painted ("rendered") on a server and then downloaded as tiles (squares of 256x256 pixels) to your device. If you zoom in too much you see the different pixels (blurring). On the Internet, OSM maps are most of the time represented as tile maps.

• Vector Maps are different. For example, a line like a highway, only the coordinates (position and shape) of the line and its meaning ("national highway") are stored in a database. Then on your device these objects are painted ("rendered") on the fly, you can see the objects being drawn. Your device software can also determines the paint styles like line thickness or colors to be used. OsmAnd is one of the very few Android applications which supports vector maps. The unique selling points of vector maps are
  • They are very compact: You do not need gigabytes of map tiles on your phone or Android device. This is why you can conveniently download country map files before a trip or holiday for offline use.
  • You can use customized rendering-templates on the same data (as is used in our automated day/night view switching, or check out e.g. the "Touring view" or "Winter+ski" Map styles in OsmAnd).
  • You can zoom in and do not lose any detail by blurring
  • You can search vector maps for addresses contained, Points of Interets (POI), etc.