hi i am interested, but where does the map data come from?
would be nice to have video / tutoral from start to end showing how to do it. the 1m video is not enough and does not show how you set it up…
is it like you put some longitude/latitude or zipcode and it gets the data from free web repository where this data resides and generates the gizmo
is the data for free? do you explain how to get it. i mean in screen shot i see map and x,y. and open street map api url, but that is sort of truncated so its not clear exactly how it works.
i guess what exactly does this mean. “Download the map data for your current location on mobile devices, or use a previously saved file.”
also, what about topographical data. could you please add that and sort of generate a model/terrain and put gizmo overlay on it. that would be most amazing.
No idea where the author is… but I can answer some of the questions. It’s data from OpenStreeMaps which is a free map data service. Essentially, OSM provides some basic services and copies of the databases that you can self-host and keep updated if you want to build your own services around them. We’re talking huge database though.
So with that being said, there are some third parties (like MapQuest for example) that provide Open Street Maps APIs. I mentioned MapQuest because I’ve used their OSM API for web projects. There are tons of things you can do but we used it for Geocoding by zip code which gave us the Lat/Long coordinates. OSM differs from using services like Google Maps because OSM is a completely open provider and they allow you to save the data for future use.
With that out of the way… it appears that this asset is aimed at mobile and uses location services to get your current Lat/Long and then gets the nearby location data from an open street maps provider. I haven’t used the asset, and know nothing about it… but at least I could fill you in on OSM.
my biggest concerns jumps to the author not being present to support his own asset that he has just released.
still interested but i would need to see it has real value like it could scale the images beyond what can be done with an image which is what the google maps for unity asset does.
so it would be nice if i could blow up a map of lets say new york to be the size of what a large map someone would be working on in unity. even a section a city or an area.
Thanks to Dustin who explained quite well that Map-ity uses Open Street Map Data.
So to answer your questions:
I’d be more than happy to create a video tutorial on how to use Map-ity. I should have time tonight ( Family permitting ).
Currently you provide a position ( Longitude Latitude ) in the inspector. The X Y element you see in the screen shot ( I will hopefully write a custom editor inspector to display more meaningful names ) or you can use location services on a mobile device.
Map-ity then does a web request for the data from a third party OpenStreetMap Data host, which is free. We don’t query OpenStreetMap directly because it should only be used for editing the data.
Map-ity then parses the data and generates some useful data structures for you to use the data. E.g. Lists of all the roads, waterways or buildings.
It also renders the data in a gizmo to help you see what it should look like.
We also support saving the downloaded file, so during development you can use a local copy, so you don’t need to always download the data. We then parse the local file and create the useful data structures from that instead.
We are currently implementing topographical data, which we have working as demonstrated by the video. There are some points to note. OpenStreetMap doesn’t have consistent topographical data so we have to use another web service for that. This is free but does require an account. It provides one for demo use though. The second issue is topographical requests are limited to 20 at a time for free users which means it is a bit slower to gather the data as we need to do multiple requests, unlike the OpenStreetMap data which is just one. The video above shows this, as it is requesting topographical data for 20 points at a time, then doing a web request.
Unfortunately as it’s open source data we can’t really control errors. You could correct the data in OpenStreetMap yourself. If there are any particular errors we could pick up we’d loved to handle those situations. Can you give any examples?
In terms of topographical data errors we will probably just enter a height of zero. Perhaps we could look at the previous points and just use that value instead.
Generally we’re hoping to get feedback on specific issues and fix those for people as they appear.
I checked out the free Google Maps Unity asset before I started developing Map-ity and essentially it just downloads an image. It contains no real map information at all.
Regarding your concern to me not being present. I assure you I am here and will continue to be here to support my asset and anybody who purchases my asset. I’m developing this in my free time between work and family. I personally think a response within 24hrs ain’t bad. Map-ity also release over a week ago now, it was the recent Unity Blog post about promoting assets which lead me to create this thread. Which seems to be working
Map-ity can render New York, but New York contains a huge amount of map data!
Are there any examples I could perhaps produce for you to help you see it’s potential?
if so that is not a problem. then i would get my own 20 request at a time…
so when will topographical support be released?
could you name the service that you are using for topographical data. is it standard format. i have account with govt topographical data sources in various forums.
so if the asset came with complete source code it may not be difficult to plug it in to another source…
plus i could also download raw topographical data from public sources.
re: new york
i just threw that out as an example since its as large and complex a city as i could think of…
The topographical service is www.geonames.org and yes you can set up a free account with them.
I’m currently hoping to have it done by the end of the week and I find updates take almost a week to go through Unity QA, provided there are no issues.
So at the earliest I would say 1 1/2 weeks but best to take that as 2 weeks
ok thanks ill keep an eye out for it… i guess in the meantime you will be working on some tutorial or something so customers can more easily get started…
I’ve been looking at a change for grabbing openstreetmap data for absolutely ages, so this is great, how quickly does it grab the data and could it, were you to traverse one particular road for instance continually update fast enough to not run out of road, given a broadband connection
Just this whole thing is a videogame waiting to happen in itself i like this and will be following it, in fact it has just solved a problem for me, if it can supply the information fast enough - get thee asset store hence!
Hi lazygunn, the download speed depends of the users connection speed so I can’t comment on that. I added some timers to Map-ity and the London data above ( which is 10mb ) took 3.525158 seconds to parse and process into Map-ity data structures.
Smaller amounts of data are very quick.
At the moment I don’t have a streaming system in place for Map-ity, it just takes an area and downloads that. If it’s a requested feature then I guess I’ll be adding it
i would think download is better than repeatedly steaming the stuff cause they will eventually get upset with all the players hitting them
and some of it could be quite large and the services may not be all that reliable at which points players cant play…
also i would think you would need to take the raw data and remove stuff you dont need so it could be reduced in size.
anyways i dont know details. personally downloading is not a problem. well so long as i can like in inspector put longitude/latitude and it goes out and gets it for me. perhaps even have login stuff i could put in. i only plan to use it in editor to help me shape map and where to put things
but most likely i wont be putting alt he stuff, just scaled down version else like in real city, even a small one very quickly it will overwhelm the game engine i would think.
Well openstreetmap’s data is all categorised anyways, would you not be able to query one known category and receive that information quite quickly?
Given the amount of traffic openstreetmap gets i cant see streaming a problem but might be worth talking to them about it
I’d be using the data in a standalone to create extruded and patterned shapes to create a constantly streaming cyberspace that one can put objectives within. Dont go stealing my idea
there is aleady some asset that does that… check out asset store… they have that for textures too, there is like post in forums for that. and google / others have done for google map data… still have fun…
but as you posted you giving out the complete source code
so anyone could add their favorite tags
still its nice to hear that you will work to get it to show up correctly.
i have software to generate roads, rivers, buildings etc
what i would like is like terrain / model of terrain from topographical data and like above overlay so i know where to put / generate the stuff.
that way it would sort of be recognizable to players and like easier to me instead of looking at some image / photo and try to go back and forth between perspectives to make it look good alone
anways im waiting for the upcoming release you posted about
would you consider fully making available the said release of asset early with asset store invoice via lets say email?
With documentation hosted on our website.