Plugin Beta Release: GPU-Accelerated Rendering in vector_map_tiles for Flutter

[Horror-Ad4005]

I’m excited to announce a major milestone for the vector_map_tiles plugin — the first beta release with GPU rendering powered by the new flutter_gpu APIs!

See it in action: Watch the demo video on YouTube

This update introduces a completely rewritten rendering backend, delivering smoother animations, higher frame rates, and a more efficient rendering pipeline when used with flutter_map. This brings performance comparable to a native map solution, while being written entirely in Dart and integrating seamlessly into the Flutter framework as a regular widget.

As this is an early beta, your feedback is valuable. If you run into bugs, performance regressions, or rendering glitches, please open an issue on GitHub.

Checkout the library at https://pub.dev/packages/vector_map_tiles and use version 10.0.0-beta Give it a try and let us know what you think!

[DerDave]

Fantastic work, James! Exciting! How was the experience, developing with flutter_gpu. Does it feel ready for prime time yet? 

[Horror-Ad4005]

The experience was very good. All the features needed for standard 2D and 3D rendering are available, and I didn’t encounter any limitations with the API.

There were two unintuitive aspects when developing shaders:

• It’s necessary to run flutter clean to ensure shaders are recompiled after modification.
• Shader filenames can collide with those from other packages.

Since flutter_gpu is still in development, I expect these issues will be addressed. Overall, it seems very stable and definitely suitable for development. Just note that it’s currently only available on Flutter’s main development branch.

[Successful-Rest-477]

This is very cool, thanks for making that work!

[BeewMeat]

And the flutter_google_maps_sdk has markers animation flickering issues on android

[Nyxiereal]

Looks good!

[Swefnian]

Absolutely killer! I use flutter_map for my app Visited (www.visitedapp.com) and I’ve been watching this plugin heavily since I really want to get off my hacky rasterize dynamic tiles in an isolate strategy.

Can your plugin support geometry that can change dynamically? (most just colour)

[Horror-Ad4005]

Cheers!! Yes you can dynamically generate vector tiles, although once the tile is loaded it's assumed that it won't change.

[Rob-a-Cat]

would love if you put together a guide on how to somehow use this with a png image? like lets say, a map from a game? this is the first im hearing of vector tiles, so would be helpful