[OSM-dev] Vector tiles stack for Android

[alex]

Hi Devs,

To display offline maps on Android, I am converting OSM data to mapsforge .map format and rendering vector tiles using the maps forge Android library.
I was very happy at first stages, but when things came to a stress point i got into critical issues like these:
- when rendering highly detailed areas like Denmark and Holland at zoom level 8-11, memory consumption on device grows soon over any acceptable limit.
- in tiles containing coastline water is drawn in white color, this bug is fixed with unofficial map-writer 0.4.0 but this version in turn contains other bugs which draw water where there is no water, so i also tried to switch converters automatically when i have coastline tiles but then i found other bugs.
- it is impossible to automate the conversion process because sometimes the converter hangs forever on apparently simple tiles.

After days of efforts and workarounds, I decided to give up because this mapsforge thing i loved is still too buggy. Also, the project has very little activity since mid-2013 and it seems unlikely that these issues will ever be fixed.

If you are still there… thanks for reading all this depressing stuff… but it's time for fresh ideas now!

Can you suggest better solutions to:
1) convert OSM data to some compact binary vector format?
2) render this data to bitmap tiles on Android devices?

(i am especially interested in conversion and rendering: the view layer is not an issue, osmdroid allows building custom tile providers to hook to almost any bitmap tilesource).

Thanks to you all
Alessandro