[OSM-dev] Bulk downloading of Mapnik tiles

[Thomas Wood]

2009/3/16 Stephan Plepelits <skunk at xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at>:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 08:34:19PM +0100, Chris Browet wrote:
>>      Probably not, because lots of the tiles would need to be rendered
>>      especially for you.  _ t_ i_ l_ e_ s_ ._ o_ p_ e_ n_ s_ t_ r_ e_ e_ t_ m_ a_ p_ ._ o_ r_ g basically only renders
>>      tiles that are "looked at" at all, so bulk-requesting areas will
>>      force
>>      large areas to render to the highest detail.
>>
>> Not true, AFAIK. Tiles are rendered as a whole once a week.
>> I think there is a confusion with T at H (_ t_ a_ h_ ._ o_ p_ e_ n_ s_ t_ r_ e_ e_ t_ m_ a_ p_ ._ o_ r_ g)
> No, it's true. The tiles are rendered "on demand", using mod_tile. So if
> nobody looks at a tile, it's not being rendered. Rendering everything to
> the highest detail would take awful long.
>
> Every Wednesday the database is updated to the newest version, from that
> time on you get new tiles (or if the load is to high still an old version
> or no picture if it has never been rendered before).
>
> greetings,
>        Stephan

Still not quite. It's updated hourly now.

And I had a feeling that it updated larger 8x8 metatiles at a time. I
had a feeling that it cascaded down zoom levels, but it doesn't seem
to be documented if so.

-- 
Regards,
Thomas Wood
(Edgemaster)