MapForums

When we started to overlay custom tile layer on Virtual Earth we have been using MapCruncher first to create a static, i.e. pre-rendered, tile source. In the following part we became more dynamic and cut static images on the fly. Now we are looking at the 'Web Map Service'. This is a common standard which has been specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium. A lot of geographic information has been made available on the internet through this service and most GIS server-components expose such a service. In many cases it would be a huge benefit if you can make these information which have usually been prepared by GIS-specialists available to a broader audience. The Web Map Service returns geographic information in an image format so it should be possible to take these information and create a custom tile layer for Virtual Earth.

Creating Dynamic Tile-Layer from OGC-compliant WMS

Like with the ad-hoc tile-cutting in the previous posting, the Virtual Earth part will be the same again but rather than pointing to a virtual directory on your web server we will just point to a web service which consumes in turn the WMS.

I will be lazy again and recycle one of my old papers instead of writing it all over again. The link below will guide you to the documentation:

A sample application including source code is available here.