===== digital mapping =====

OpenStreetMap publishes maps of all Earth regions, including the [[https://planet.openstreetmap.org/|whole planet]].

To use this data as a visual map, you need to [[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Rendering|render]] the raw data - which is available in XML and [[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PBF_Format|PBF]] (you want pbf) - into either [[wp>Vector graphics|vector]] or [[wp>Raster_graphics|raster]] [[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles|tiles]]. There are a variety of tools that do that; the easiest is probably [[https://github.com/onthegomap/planetiler|planetiler]].

When you render, you need to pick an appropriate [[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Zoom_levels|zoom level]].

On my enthusiast desktop, planetiler took around 2 hours to generate vector pmtiles of the planet with all zoom levels. The resulting file was 69gb.

After that, you can serve the tiles using a [[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_server|tile server]]. Connect an appropriate client to view. Some tile servers like [[https://github.com/maptiler/tileserver-gl|tileserver-gl]] serve a web-based viewer so you don't need a client.