Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 31/08/2026On Friday I had the pleasure of giving a talk with the title "Mapterhorn Terrain and Imagery" at this year's State of the Map conference in Paris. A big thank-you to the organizers! Slides and recording: oliverwipfli.ch/presentation... 010
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 16/07/2026Blog post about "Finding Cheap Compute": oliverwipfli.ch/finding-chea...oliverwipfli.chFinding Cheap Compute | oliverwipfli.ch 021
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 22/06/2026Blog post "Callback on File System Reads": oliverwipfli.ch/callback-on-...oliverwipfli.chCallback on File System Reads | oliverwipfli.ch 000
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 08/06/2026Tiered local storage: Working with aerial imagery comes with some very enjoyable technical problems around storage. I wrote a small blog post about the storage system of Mapterhorn. Read more here: oliverwipfli.ch/tiered-local... 020
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 14/04/2026I wrote a small blog post about Mapterhorn's current status and the plans on adding aerial imagery: oliverwipfli.ch/mapterhorn-u...oliverwipfli.chMapterhorn Update | oliverwipfli.ch 141
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 24/11/2025oliverwipfli.ch/canvas-multi...oliverwipfli.chCanvas Multiply Blending | oliverwipfli.ch 000
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 05/11/2025MapLibre GL JS can still use server-generated pbf fonts, but it does not have to use them any more thanks to github.com/maplibre/map...github.comRender glyphs locally if glyph PBF is unspecified or unavailable by 1ec5 · Pull Request #4564 · maplibre/maplibre-gl-jsThis implements the GL JS side of “Extended SDF” as proposed in maplibre/maplibre-style-spec#1045 and specified in maplibre/maplibre-style-spec#1068. GL JS no longer refuses to load a stylesheet if... 020
Reposted by Oliver WipfliMapterhorn @mapterhorn.com · 20/10/2025Mapterhorn v0.0.4 ships high-resolution terrain data for Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. Explore the map at mapterhorn.com/viewer/#map=... 031
Reposted by Oliver WipfliMapterhorn @mapterhorn.com · 20/08/2025Mapterhorn v0.0.2 ships smaller tiles that are optimized for size while keeping the same visual quality, missing data in Caucasus and polar regions were added, and you can now use the pmtiles cli tool to make small area extracts. mapterhorn.com 062
Reposted by Oliver WipfliZsolt Ero @hyperknot.com · 11/08/2025This is amazing, a beautiful, global terrain layer in PMTiles format! Thank you for making this Oliver @oliverwipfli.ch! 071
Reposted by Oliver WipfliProtomaps @protomaps.com · 11/08/2025Have you been waiting for "Protomaps Terrain"? It's arriving! @mapterhorn.com is an independent project created by @oliverwipfli.ch - a global elevation model built from multiple sources, distributed as a single PMTiles archive 0247
Reposted by Oliver WipfliMapterhorn @mapterhorn.com · 08/08/2025Mapterhorn v0.0.1 has been released. It is an aggregation of the global Copernicus GLO-30 low-resolution digital elevation model with the Swiss swissALTI3D high-resolution model. mapterhorn.commapterhorn.commapterhornOpen terrain tile sets and data catalog 092
Reposted by Oliver WipfliProtomaps @protomaps.com · 24/03/2025try out a new Rasterio plugin for converting GeoTIFF to PMTiles: pip install rio-pmtiles github.com/protomaps/PM... 091
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 12/03/2025Tilezen railways at zoom 5. Can inspect the map here by selecting only the transit layer: pmtiles.io?url=https%3A... 041
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 28/02/2025I have just upgraded to gigabit internet at home. Can really recommend iWay.ch! Downloading a large file from my hetzner which has also a 1 Gbps line gives this: 100
Reposted by Oliver WipfliJed Sundwall @jed.co · 12/02/2025We're seeking funding to take @source.coop to the next level. 12914
Reposted by Oliver WipfliYasunori Kirimoto @dayjournal.dev · 03/02/2025I have been appointed as the CEO of MIERUNE. I will do my best to contribute to society and clients more than ever by geospatial technology. www.mierune.co.jp?lang=enmierune.co.jp位置情報に関する課題解決 | MIERUNEMIERUNEはQGIS・MapTiler・WebGISに関する豊富な技術や経験をもとに、位置情報に関する課題解決をサポートするソリューションカンパニーです。これまで蓄積された技術力や実績をベースに、クライアント企業様がお持ちの位置データのコンサルティング・システム開発などで課題解決や業務効率化を強力にサポートします。 151
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 03/02/2025ChatGPT guesses correctly in 78 out of 93 test cases if a Burmese string uses Zawgyi or Unicode encoding. Not too bad... Test cases were taken from CLDR github.com/unicode-org/... 000
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 24/01/2025Bretagne is a nice example for bad road network rendering if you select minzooms purely based on semantics like the OpenStreetMap highway tag. Roads alternate here between highway=trunk and highway=primary. If you select now only the highway=trunk roads, you get a lot of gaps... 110
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 18/01/2025I am buying a new computer. Thanks @bdon.org for helping me choosing those parts... 030
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 08/01/2025Small blog post about how country, state, and city labels are placed at low zoom levels on Google Maps: oliverwipfli.ch/positioning-... 010
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 05/01/2025Collapsing carriageways. Points are attracted by 1/distance and cos(angle difference of attached line segments). Feels a bit like Physics... wipfli.github.io/magnetron/bo... 000
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 04/01/2025Something is wrong with the vector tile of the Boston area... 120
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 04/01/2025MapLibre GL JS v5.0.0 has been released and it comes with a nice new globe feature. Congrats everyone who worked on this! maplibre.org/maplibre-gl-... 0123
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 02/01/2025I just remembered that some time ago I vectorized the hand-drawn hillshading of swisstopo and put it on a MapLibre-based map. Demo: wipfli.github.io/swiss-map/ve... 020
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 27/12/2024I'm experimenting with highway generalization for low zoom levels. In this screenshot I made the lines collapse by looking for close by points up to a certain radius, then taking the midpoint of those. Doing this multiple times converges the points and sort of smooths lines... 010
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 26/12/2024I am looking a bit into vertical text layout of Japanese in MapLibre GL JS. Interesting how some characters are displayed with 90 degree rotation in vertical text. For example the string "(東京タワー…)" becomes this 000
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 22/12/2024Selecting which roads to display on a map at a given scale is an interesting problem. One approach is the stroke-mesh method which prunes roads based on local density and length of dead-ends. Have a look at Benz and Weibel 2014 www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/10... 010
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 20/12/2024Monaco is always nice to look at... Data: OpenStreetMap contributor. Made with Planetiler using if (sourceFeature.canBeLine()) and visualized with tileserver-gl/MapLibre GL JS. 100
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 16/12/2024At Thursday's GeoBeer #46 in Rapperswil I will share a poster with the title "Vector Tiles Overview". Looking forward to meet you there if you are around... 030
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 15/12/2024The PMTiles MapLibre GL JS plugin supports now tile pyramids with multiple maxzooms. That's nice when you want to put for example z14 data for Switzerland and z8 data for the rest of the world into one .pmtiles file. Thanks @bdon.org for working on this... github.com/protomaps/PM...github.comjs: maplibre protocol has option to throw on missing tile [#321] by bdon · Pull Request #505 · protomaps/PMTiles 031
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 13/12/2024Fabian Rechsteiner compared the performance of PostGIS-backed tile servers such as Martin, Tegola, BBOX and a few more. It looks like Martin is the fastest out there... unigis.at/files/Master... 110
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 09/12/2024Google Maps seems to show links between motorways at all zoom levels, but links from motorway to primary roads seem to be visible only from zoom 12. Has anyone done something like this with OpenStreetMap data? 000
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 02/12/2024Identifying road importance by routing between 10k buildings in Zürich. Uses OpenStreetMap data and OSRM for routing... 051
Oliver Wipfli @oliverwipfli.ch · 28/11/202410 most frequent localities in the Foursquare OS Places dataset are: null, Москва, London, New York, İstanbul, São Paulo, Jakarta Capital Region, Berlin, Houston, Chicago. For first 1000 see gist.github.com/wipfli/2a2d1...gist.github.comFoursquare OS Places Localities.mdFoursquare OS Places Localities.md. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets. 130
