[OpenLayers-Dev] Using Google's roads and annotation on top of WMS/Aerials

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 11:02:55PM -0400, John J Reiser wrote:
> Hello OpenLayers!
> 
> I was wondering if it was possible to overlay the roads/labels layer from
> Google Maps on top of a WMS layer. Right now, using the roads/labels from
> the G_HYBRID_MAP type either creates a layer with a solid gray background
> or appears under the WMS layer.

This is outside the design of OpenLayers. I have seen users hack things
to do it, but it's hard.

The problem is that fixed layers (Google is fixed because when you drag
the map, it doesn't shift) live in a different DOM hierarchy, which
makes solving this task more difficult.

I would say that at this point, you'd probably be better using Google
Maps directly to solve this problem than OpenLayers. 

If there was sufficient interest, research could be done into solving
this problem; it likely wouldn't be too difficult, just difficult with
the current code. (I can't comment on how difficult; it's possible that
funding could motivate further investigation.)

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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