MBTiles

MBTiles (Map Box Tiles) is container format for storing tiled datasets. It uses a SQLite database. It is a convenient mechanism for storing a large number of geospatial tiles in a single file, making it easily transportable.

The specification may be found here.

Because MBTiles contains pre-tiled data, it is quite fast to access and local caching is unnecessary.

MBTiles is not streamable without additional software on the server side. If you wish to deploy a tiled dataset on a simple HTTP server, consider TMS instead.

MBTilesImage, MBTilesElevation

CLASS: MBTilesImageLayer (inherits from ImageLayer)

CLASS: MBTilesElevationLayer (inherits from ElevationLayer)

Property	Description	Type	Default
url	Location of the MBTiles database file	URI

Example

<MBTilesImage name="Countries of the World">
    <url>../data/world_countries.mbtiles</url>
</MBTilesImage>

<MBTilesElevation name="Global elevation grid">
    <url>elevationdata.mbtiles</url>
</MBTilesElevation>

Creating an MBTiles file

You can use the osgearth_conv tool to convert a GeoTIFF (or other data source) into an MBTiles database. Example usage:

osgearth_conv
    --in driver GDALImage
    --in url my_local_file.tif
    --out driver MBTilesImage
    --out url output_file.mbtiles
    --out format png
    --threads 4

Just replace the --in driver with the appropriate source type.

Type osgearth_conv alone for more command-line options.