Maps In Unity 3D - Share your experience

Hi Guys,

I’m starting this thread to know more about your experience with maps in Unity, whether you are using GO Map or a different map asset.

When I published GO Map, about a year and a half ago, it was one of the first assets to make maps in Unity, probably the first to be a location-based game oriented map and not a classic “slippy” map.

By that time I kept evolving my asset constantly, adding new features, new themes and integration with other map services mostly following my roadmap but also listening to the feedbacks I’ve received from GO Map users and their projects.
Some of these implementations, such as street names, layer masks and indoor atlas SDK integration were developed in order to help users realize their own projects.


I think it would be a great idea to start this dialogue here too, on the Unity Forum, so I can hear more about what you think of maps on Unity 3D, what your projects are about and, why not, which map assets are you using and why.

Feel free to suggest new features, report bugs or compare GO Map with other assets you used.

GO Map goal will always be to make a very easy-to-use, but complete map plugin, with no customization code needed, to build awesome looking maps.

Bye
Alan

 

Hi Alan,

We're just about to launch MechFightAR featuring GOMaps!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.animateobjects.mechfightar&hl=en

The latest version of GoMaps is really terrific. We've tried a bunch of other mapping solutions and even created our own but your has been consistent updated and that helps us not have to worry about the mapping part. Losing MapZen was a bummer, but you've got it covered with multiple providers.

Happy to be part of your new community.









- Team Animate Objects

 

Hi!

Wow your game looks really cool, thanks for sharing your project!

The Mapzen shutdown was absolutely the most tragic event I've faced since GO Map came out, many developers relied on their service and had to swap to another in less than a month. Luckily the ones who were using GO Map didn't have to do much work to change to mapbox or another map service. =)

Do you have any suggestion for a feature that you'd want to see in the next GO Map releases?

Bye
Alan

 

https://maps-apis.googleblog.com/2018/03/the-real-world-as-your-playground-build.html

Google made / is making? Google Maps APIs for Unity. I'm excited.

 

That's indeed exciting news, mostly because Google never had a vector map API for us to develop maps in unity.
I think their strategy will be to release their data only through their Unity sdk, but if (finger crossed) there will be an open vector map api it would mean we will likely have Google data in GO Map too.

 

I haven't had time to fully dig into the newest release, but is there an easy "hook" or trigger to know when all tiles are done loading?

 

Hi!

Yes there is, check out the new "Flat Map - Loading Screen" demo scene where I used a simple GOMap event to check when all tiles are done loading and animate a loading screen.

Check the video here

 

Hey! I wasn't sure where to get support for this. The asset is wonderful so far!

I was curious if it was possible to ping a GPS coordinate for it's metadata? Ex. Get landuse of current coordinate?

 

Hey thanks!

You should be able to get every feature's data from its GOFeature object using a simple raycast script.
First thing first enable colliders, and maybe layer masks, on the layers you want to query from the GOMap inspector. Then you could easily edit the "GOCoordinatesRaycast" script to get the gameobject hit and it's GOFeature component.

By the way you can contact me directly through my website for this kind of questions,
Bye
Alan

 

We'd like to see improved handling of textures for the buildings including the sides and roof. The sides should repeat at a normal evenly divisible interval and the roof texture should align to the angle of the sides of the building if possible. I think GoMaps is only pushing the texture diagonally through the buildings (a trick which only goes so far). Also would be nice to figure out how to do some better seems for the roads. Adding terrain of course complicates everything as well. This would give a more natural feel to the procedural generated scenes. Some of the other commercial products have been working on these features, it would be nice to see here as well.

 

Hi, thanks for the feedback!

I'm always trying to improve the rendering process of GoMap and in the last release I've published a whole new roads generation system that is way better than before, now you have rounded ends and smooth curves.
I'm aware that the elevation adds complexity to the process and roads may not stick together perfectly, I'll keep pushing that part.

About the buildings... It's hard to find a rule that works for every building/part rooftop shape. The sides should already repeat the texture at fixed intervals (10 meters), that's a nice compromise to keep the verts count low.

By the way if you want to have a more technical chat about that send me an email!
Bye

 

Hi,

A new GoMap release is about to be reviewed and released on the asset store and it will feature most of the feedbacks I've received here! I have to say that the UV Mapping was a struggle but I'm really happy that you guys pushed me to review this part of my asset because the results are really great.

Thanks to everybody and keep coming up with ideas and feedbacks.

So @aobjects , about the UV mapping I've decided to come up with many mapping styles and let you select the right one for each layer:



And here it is a brief explanation of the new UV mapping styles:

This two styles are very good for landuse or everything that is extruded but it's not a building:

Top and Sides Repeated (look at the extruded green area) will repeat the textures on both top and sides of the mesh, classic and clean.



Top Repeated and Sides Stretched will stretch the texture on the mesh sides. Personally I find that effect really cool and "low-poly style" and I've used this for the city demo scene.


When it comes to buildings we have 3 modes:

Top Centered Sides RATIO will put a single texture not repeated as the building roof and will repeat the sides keeping a 1:1 ratio between height and width of each texture. That's my choice for buildings but the other modes could be useful too.


Top Centered Sides Fit will put a single texture not repeated as the building roof and also a SINGLE texture not repeated for each building side. It might look weird with this kind of textures but I will make a new city theme that will use this kind of mapping.



Top Fit Sides Fit it's basically the same of the last one with a slightly different placing of rooftops. That's really up to you to see if it's better or not with your roof textures.



As you may see from all this screenshots the Roads UV maps were improved a lot too. Now the repeating is smooth and it's really easier for you to create your own road textures.

Here's a picture of upcoming new city theme, I hope you enjoy it.
Bye
Alan