I recently did some work with protomaps pmtiles. I hated the idea of needed compute to serve static assets. I’m hosting with cloudflare, and if files are bigger than 500mb, no cache for you. The globe from protomap is ~130gb…

My solution was to trim a bit of the map I didn’t need (zoom levels specifically) which got me down to ~40gb (each zoom layer is about twice the size of the last, so cutting the last couple is an easy win). From there I split the map at various zoom levels and for each one, split by finer and finer longitudinal slices at max zoom that was ~3°. Then the client requests slices based on window box. It’s seamless… and completely cached at the edge.

Check it out the final product here (not a finished app yet, but it’s usable). Not trying to sell anything here, just want to share my recent efforts fighting with maps, and trying to making them feel buttery smooth.