We have a raft of improvements in our software for hosting your own map tiles. Highlights of MapTiler Server 4.4 include:
- Personalize static maps with markers and more for your customers
- Better labeling for your own XYZ maps; banish cropped labels at tile margins
- Flexible floating licenses
We are continually updating MapTiler Server so you can offer your users the best map experience. These latest enhancements come as a result of your feedback and our commitment to providing you with the best platform possible.
Personalize your static maps with markers, routes, and even areas or buildings
Highlight buildings, routes, or points of interest on your static maps to make personalized maps for your users. Static maps are a great way to engage people with map content without having to provide an interface for them to utilize it. For example, you could highlight important buildings and their secure zones on static maps generated from your self-hosted server.
Once the locations have been encoded, they can be added to the static maps to provide extra content. You can find out more in the support pages here: Static maps in MapTiler server
Server 4.4 also gives you more options for the layout of your static maps, ensuring they look fantastic wherever you use them. You can now set up things like padding around the map image or the position of the attribution text. There is also a new output format, WebP, so that you can have compact high-resolution map images!
Better map labels: Balancing performance and accuracy
When serving map tiles with your own data, there can be a trade-off between performance and creating a map that is correct and looks good. One case of this is where place name labels cross tile boundaries. These place names become cropped at the boundary, making them misspelled and potentially misleading.
To ensure this doesn’t happen, you need to generate the surrounding tiles at the same time, creating a performance overhead.
We have introduced a Tile Margin feature that lets you alter the margin to incorporate the longest labels on your maps. Being able to adjust how much overlap is required manually allows you to control the balance between accurate labeling and the time it takes to generate the map tiles.
We have produced a support article to help you get the most from this feature: Setting tile margins in MapTiler Server
Floating licences for Docker, Virtual Machines and more
MapTiler Server just got a lot more flexible and scalable by allowing you to share MapTiler Server licenses from a central pool. This is a critical development for allowing you to easily license multiple Server instances created with Docker or on Virtual Machines.
There is also flexibility for users who can now access the software from any device connected to the network. What’s more, it can be used by multiple people simultaneously as long as the total number of users does not exceed the licensed limit.
You can set up both online and offline floating licenses, just contact us with your requirements.