Tiles Used

We've added a new option to the mapping menu which will tell you how many tiles you've used today, broken down by tile type and zoom level (0 being the smallest scale where the whole of the UK is visible). Here's an example:

OK Paul, all very interesting but you need to help me out here......please remember that some of us, here (and this includes me) only have normal (or slightly reduced) brain capacity.

So here's a few questions to help me understand what is going on.

What is a tile? How many tiles make up the whole map? Do I use more tiles if I scroll across the map, from one area to another? Does route planning on the maps affect the number of tiles used? How can I help reduce the tile usage but still get the same results? Is the Pope a Catholic?

You may wish to expand on this but don't get too technical(See first line of this post)

A bit of pre-amble will help I think. The mapping on WalkLakes uses three distinct tile servers. You can tell which it's using by looking at the logo bottom left:

• OpenSpace - for maps on our walk and hill pages we use tiles from the Ordnance Survey OpenSpace server. This way the 1:50K mapping uses their tiles and symbology.

• BigV - for 1:50K and further zoomed out tiles on our GPS mapping we use Open Data maps tiles which are served by our OpenMaps server.

• Bing - for 1:25K and aerial photography on our GPS mapping we use the Bing tile server from Microsoft.

When using the GPS mapping you're only using tiles from the second and third servers and as we own the second there's no problem with people using as many tiles as needed from that. We do however have to watch our usage of Bing tiles as we have an (annual) usage allowance.

So, to answer your questions:

• What is a tile? - the map you see is made up of images, normally 200px x 200px. Here's a random example which was served to someone in the last few minutes from our BigV/OpenMaps server. Your browser requests tiles as required and stitches them together to make a map:

• How many tiles make up the whole map? - how long's a piece of string?! OK, the real answer is lots not least as there's different resolutions. Tiles are created on "on the fly" by the tile server however to improve performance we (and other tile servers) cache common requests (so for example I'd expect all our tiles in the Lake District to be cached).

• Do I use more tiles if I scroll across the map, from one area to another? - yeeersss, although as I said at the top that's not really something that concerns us so long as the tile server you're using is ours rather than Bing's. So if the logo bottom left is the BigV one it's not an issue (those are the tiles counted under the heading "OpenMaps" in that popup).

• Does route¹ planning on the maps affect the number of tiles used? - no. Only scrolling and zooming (and switching to aerial) uses tiles. Even then toggling on and off aerial mode, although it claims to be using tiles, probably isn't for technical reasons which I don't want to get bogged down with here.

• How can I help reduce the tile usage but still get the same results? - I hope you've gathered by now that it really doesn't matter how many tiles you use on our BigV/OpenMaps tile server. So if you're browsing, rather than working on a route, don't use 1:25K or aerial.

• Is the Pope a Catholic? - I'm starting to wonder given his recent pronouncements on the poor and homosexuals.

You may wish to expand on this but don't get too technical(See first line of this post)

Too late for that I fear.

1. A route describes where you are intending to go, point by point. For more information click here.