A better way to display large vector maps (~5 million features) using Google Maps API?

Question

I have a fairly large data set, about 5 million features, that I need to display on the web using Google Maps API. I am currently processing the file in QGis with XYZ Tiles, and using the generated tiles to display on the web.

This method works, and benefits are:

• Super fast load time on the web
• Free to use
• Works with Google Maps API

However, the cons are:

• A lot of overhead in processing time
• A lot of space required for multiple zoom levels (Turns a ~2GB file into ~200GB directory)

For my purposes, only a small portion of the map will need to be displayed at one time (~1km x 1km), but the entire area covers all of Ontario (~1,600km x 1,500km). I also need to regenerate these tiles monthly based on an updated vector file

So my question is, what other options do I have to display this data? I only need to show a small portion of the map at a time, so is there a way to filter the vector file to display only what's needed?

Answer 1

You should look at using vector tiles. I dont know much about Google Maps API but I found this:

https://landtechnologies.github.io/Mapbox-vector-tiles-basic-js-renderer/debug/basic/google

which was mentioned here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27284251/vector-tiles-with-google-maps-v3

Here is something you can use with OpenLayers or Leaflet https://github.com/mapbox/geojson-vt

Answer 2

A library to load vector tiles in Google Maps: https://github.com/techjb/Vector-Tiles-Google-Maps