[gdal-dev] New GDAL2Tiles in GDAL SVN trunk + 1.6.0 Beta1

[Klokan Petr Přidal]

Hello,

new version of GDAL2Tiles utility is now part of GDAL SVN tree and
GDAL 1.6.0 Beta1 release.
It is the version which generates tiles compatible with Google Maps
and also web presentation similar to this one:
http://www.maptiler.org/example-usgs-drg-grand-canyon-gtiff/ more info
about the application at http://www.maptiler.org/.
Only thing you have to do for map publishing is to upload the
generated directory with tiles into your webserver.

GDAL2Tiles is now in beta, so expect some bugs and feel free to report them...
Stable version of the utility should come with stable GDAL 1.6
(probably in the end of November).

How to test it right now:

Windows users can use available binaries from OSGeo4W gdal-dev package:
(step by step: http://help.maptiler.org/betatest)
GDAL2Tiles depends on next-generation Python bindings, which means
FWTools is not supported now :-(.

For other platforms you have to compile latest GDAL from source code,
but I guess binaries for 1.6 beta and rc will appear soon too...

List of the features in new GDAL2Tiles:

- Support for tiles compatible with Google Maps (TMS Mercator
EPSG:900913), Google Earth (TMS Geodetic EPSG:4326) and raster based
tiles (Raster).
- Enormous improvement on quality of tile rendering, you can choose a
resampling algorithm.
- OpenLayers 2.7 based html viewer 'ready to use' for all tile
profiles, so you can combine tiles with WMS and another maps easily.
- Google Maps viewer with new Opacity Control:
http://www.maptiler.org/google-maps-overlay-opacity-control/
- Generation of KML SuperOverlay for Google Earth with maxlodpixels
- Automatic reprojection of raster from any source spatial reference
system into the global tiles. Only requirement is correct georeference
specified in the input file.
- GDAL itself is bringing support for TIFF/GeoTIFF, MrSID, ECW,
JPEG2000, Erdas HFA, NOAA BSB, JPEG and more
(http://www.gdal.org/formats_list.html)
- You can specify zoom levels which you would like to generate
- There is support for both NODATA and Alpha band transparency

Big thanks to all GDAL developers for help, also for support from
Google and BRGM: GDAL2Tiles is going to be used for scanned geological
maps of whole France with resolution up to 1:50.000, tiles for Google
Earth & Maps are going to be delivered by a farm of servers with
lighttpd. Another big usage of gdal2tiles is planned for old maps of
Scotland in NLS.uk.

There is an multi-platform GUI on the way at http://www.maptiler.org/
(Look at: http://www.maptiler.org/img/screenshot-alpha.jpg).

Ideas for features that are on the TODO list for GDAL2Tiles:

- Generation of the mapfile with tileindexes for all tile levels -
fast WMS access to the tile tree as an alternative to static tiles
would be simple with MapServer then
- Merging of tile trees (adding of new rasters into existing trees)
for updating raster data in the tree
- Improvement of the speed generation for multi-core processor by
python multiprocessing module
- Optimization of the size for produced (PNG) tiles for speed boost
when downloading, support for JPEG tiles
- Amazon S3 as storage for tiles (merge from tilecache project)
- Google App Engine as storage for tiles
...

Feel free to contact me in case you would like to contribute with some
code or write a patch... or give a donation for support further
development of GDAL2Tiles or MapTiler.

Best regards

Klokan Petr Pridal