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Mobile Maps Options
I've been looking into a mobile application that needs to be used offline with aerial imagery. The target platform would be an Android device of some sort, though probably a tablet. What I'm looking for here is whether or not I have overlooked something?
My first thought would be to go with Cordova using Leaflet, which is a JS library. I have some experience with Cordova in VS, and Leaflet is a good-looking tool that would meet my needs completely. Unfortunately, MS dropped Cordova from VS 2019, which means that to use that I'd have to stick with VS 2017, which would become an increasing burden. Using non-VS is an option, though not an entirely welcome one, as I work in an MS shop.
I then started looking at Xamarin, which appears to be the MS solution for cross platform development. Xamarin has the Maps NuGet package, but the more I look at it, the more it looks like that is online only and tied to either Google (which seems to be opposed to offline) and Bing (which doesn't appear to do offline, either).
A third option, which I haven't dug into too deeply, is the ESRI ArcGIS runtime for Xamarin Forms. I haven't determined whether or not ESRIS allows offline maps, but it probably does. ESRI has a convoluted and expensive licensing structure. The fortunate point there is that we have loads of ESRI licenses, though perhaps not enough of the right type for me to use this. That's a solvable problem if it just means getting one more ESRI developer license.
However, if I'm going to go that way, then perhaps there are other paid options. I looked at SyncFusion, and didn't like some of what they were saying. They do allow offline maps, but those maps are stored in the application cache. That's a bit of a problem with aerial imagery in the area I'm looking at. Street maps take up little memory. Hi-res aerial imagery takes up a LOT of memory. In fact, I'm expecting to need perhaps as much as 500 GB worth of tiles, so my intention would be to store them all to an SD card. No application cache would likely be adequate for my needs. I pretty much need to be using maps off SD cards due to size and portability issues (I can move cards between devices with ease). Leaflet (using Cordova) will do this, ESRI might do this, but it looks like SyncFusion and Xamarin Maps will not.
Is there anything else I should be looking at?
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Re: Mobile Maps Options
I'm not sure as I don't use it, but VS Code (as distinct to VS Studio) may still support Cordova. There's Internet info available about this.
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Re: Mobile Maps Options
I haven't used VS Code, but that would be interesting. I'm not quite sure why MS dropped Cordova from 2019. I seem to remember something about them setting Xamarin as being their preferred future for cross platform/mobile development, but the two really don't overlap entirely. There are libraries in JS that don't exist, or don't have the same functionality in Xamarin.
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Re: Mobile Maps Options
