Altus 1.0

Altus Mapping Engine 1.0

The BA3 Mapping Engine is a high-performance library designed for iOS developers who are creating both simple and demanding mapping apps for iPhones and iPads. Developers using things like MapKit and Route-Me generally run into performance, capacity or feature walls that block development, and the BA3 Mapping Engine can eliminate those walls.

You can learn about the features and performance of the BA3 Mapping Engine by visiting this BA3 Mapping Engine description. On that same page you can also download a free copy of the Mapping Engine SDK along with a detailed reference app. This reference app exercises all of the major features of the BA3 Mapping Engine and contains a wealth of sample code. You can see the reference app in action in the video found on the videos page

Tutorial and Documentation Update Log

3/17/2013 - metool binaries for OSX and Ubuntu added to tutorial repository.

• Using metool

3/12/2021 - Reference application added to tutorial repository.

• Reference Application

BA3 Altus Mapping Engine Tutorials

The goal of this wiki is to gather together all tutorial and Q/A material on the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine. This allows anyone interested in using the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine to come up to speed very quickly.

• Tutorial 0 - Accessing the source code for these tutorials
• Tutorial 1 - Creating the Simplest Mapping App with the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine
• Tutorial 2 - Adding GPS functionality to the simplest Mapping App
• Tutorial 3 - Adding Track-Up functionality to the GPS code from Tutorial 2
• Tutorial 4 - Adding two UI buttons to the Mapping Engine
• Tutorial 5 - Adding an own-ship marker to show GPS location and orientation
• Tutorial 6 - Displaying tiles (e.g. from MapBox, OSM, MapQuest, etc.) in the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine
• Tutorial 7 - Adding a new tile provider (in this case, MapBox's open aerial LandSat provider) to the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine
• Tutorial 8 - Adding a grey grid to show the user when tiles are loading
• Tutorial 9 - Creating an app that can handle markers created by the user
• Tutorial 10 - Displaying vector lines in the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine - Route Planning Part 1
• Tutorial 11 - Displaying vector lines and fast markers in the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine - Route Planning Part 2
• Tutorial 12 - Dynamically update vector lines and markers - Route Planning Part 3
• Reference Application - Explore the many features of the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine with a comprehensive reference application that exercises every feature.

Questions about BA3 Altus Mapping Engine

• Question 1 - How does the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine manage cache memory?
• Question 2 - What is METool? How do I use it?
• Question 3 - Is there any way to make the GPS marker in Tutorial 5 more obvious to the user?
• Question 4 - How do I create my own MBTiles file like the one used in Tutorial 1? How big is a file like this?
• Question 5 - How do I prepare a raster file for use in METool and the Mapping Engine?
• Question 6 - How much of the CPU is used by the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine? Why is there CPU utilization even when the engine should be idle?
• Question 7 - FAQ for beginners (things like "what is a tile provider?", "what is a marker?", "What is a raster image?", etc.)

Do you have any questions about the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine, feature requests, tutorial requests or suggestions for improving the Mapping Engine? Please send them to [email protected]