Question

I am implementing a map into my website and am looking at the different options(Google Maps API, Bing Maps, OpenStreet Maps, MapBox, etc.). I am leaning more towards Google Maps because of their geo-coding and pricing, but definitely willing to change to a different system. After downloading and using iOS 6 maps, the cartography has definitely caught my attention. I really love how Apple uses textures on the maps(grassy textures for parks, paper texture for land). I was wondering if there was any way to overlay similar textures onto any of the aforementioned map systems? Not in just one portion, but across the entire world. I know you can change the colors, just not sure if any support textures. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

I think I know how to do this beyond the APIs but a system built into the API would definitely be beneficial.

Maps Comparison

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iOS 6 Cartography:

Google Maps Cartography:

Answer 1

When you get a map segment from a given map API, you generally download pre-rendered map slices (images). These images rendered only when the map data updated, not all the queries, so you can’t influence the rendering of these pictures.

If you want custom textures you have 2 ways:

• Build your own web service and render own map slices from raw map
  data (ex.: openstreetmap data)
• Render dinamically maps directly on
  the phone from raw data.

Both ways you will need to get raw data to render because google doesn’t provide it.