It means that pages can load more quickly, because the tiles aren't based on bitmapped images, instead the tiles are mathematically drawn vectors that scale up and down gracefully.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Thank you for this explanation. Having dabbled in vector graphics, I guessed that it was something like this after a moment's thought, but my first thought was "this sounds good, but I'm not sure how". Even if I didn't end up needing this explanation personally, I appreciate your helpfulness — it's the kind of thing that makes this place feel like a community
I like the style
Works beautifully!
There are some things the renderer doesn't seem to bother with that make the map feel quite empty right now – addr:housename, hedges, fences, walls, trees, car park areas, buildings under construction, some POIs (though I've not worked out which).
The colors also feel a bit bold and saturated, e.g. the pink of a retail area and the green of a forested area, but the hex values are the same so I'm not sure why I'm getting that effect.
But I'm excited about the fast loading, about being able to zoom enough to distinguish things that are close together, and about the potential for this to allow for map interactivity that's more intuitive than the "query features" function.
So just no one is going to explain WTF "Vector Tiles" are?
@artyom
Raster tiles: A map image is 'cut up' into little squares: one set of image tiles per combination of style, language etc. This is replicated at all the required scales.
Vector tiles: The map data that would be required to display all the styles for that square is extracted from the database, simplified and stuck in an intermediate format. One set of tiles can support multiple styles, languages and angles that would be impractical with rasters.
Cool, thanks
They can be used to trimex a quantum position in space-time.
The article links to an explanatory page in the very first paragraph after the lede.
Vector tiles serve up maps as vectors: points, lines and polygons. They store geographic data (like what makes up OpenStreetMap) in a format that allows for dynamic styling and interactivity. For users, vector tiles will mean a new, modern-looking map style with seamless zoom on openstreetmap.org, the map can be updated more quickly when data changes, and it should perform better for users.
Vector graphics are not the same thing as vector tiles.
What's the distinction you're drawing here? I don't know the implementation details, but my understanding is that it's fundamentally exactly the same thing: the map is rendered by the browser/client using lines and polygons, rather than loading pre-rendered tiled images.
@egrets
I think vector tiles normally have a degree of style independence that normal vector graphic don't?
I think with e.g. SVG the colours, text positioning and font etc. would all be specified when the file was created.