Introduction

Import Cesium v1 terrain tiles from a folder into an mbtiles (sqlite3) database, or serve the tiles in an mbtiles database either as TMS or slippy maps.

It was developed to import a folder with 14 million very small terrain tiles (generated by ctb-builder in Cesium v1 height format) into an mbtiles (sqlite3) database, and to serve those terrain tiles from there. In that way, we can also serve the tiles unzipped, which is useful for our HoloLens application, WorldExplorer. However, you could also use it to import other terrain tiles.

BTW a clean and simple SQLite database manager is SQLite Studio.

Installation

To install it globally, use:

npm i -g mbtiles-terrain-server

Build from source

Get the source

git pull https://github.com/TNOCS/mbtiles-terrain-server
cd mbtiles-terrain-server

You can either use yarn or npm to build it:

yarn
yarn build

or

npm install
npm run build

Help

MBtiles-terrain-server

  Import Cesium v1 terrain tiles from a folder into an mbtiles (sqlite3)
  database, or serve the tiles in an mbtiles database either as TMS or
  slippy maps.

  It was developed to import a folder with 14 million very small terrain
  tiles (in Cesium v1 height format) into an mbtiles (sqlite3) database,
  and to serve those terrain tiles from there. In that way, we can also
  serve the tiles unzipped, which is useful for our HoloLens application,
  WorldExplorer. However, you could also use it to import other terrain tiles.

  For example, after running example 3 below, you can get the raw (zipped)
  tiles at "host:port/tms/z/x/y.tile" or "host:port/z/x/y.tile" in TMS or
  slippy maps format, respectively. Alternatively, at
  "host:port/tms/z/x/y.terrain" or "host:port/z/x/y.terrain", you can retreive
  the unzipped data.

  When importing many files, you may have to run node using the
  --max-old-space-size option e.g.
  "node --max-old-space-size=4096 dist/cli.js -v -f tms -i c:/tmp/tiles
  tiles.sqlite3"

Options

  -f, --format String     Expected input format, either 'tms' or 'slippy'
                          (default).
  -p, --port Number       Port you wish to use. Default is port 8080.
  -i, --input String      Input folder you wish to import.
  -s, --src File name     MBtiles file to write or read.
  -h, --help Boolean      Show this usage instructions.
  -c, --cors Boolean      Use CORS (default true).
  -v, --verbose Boolean   Output is verbose.

Examples

  01. Create a new SQLite data by        $ mbtiles-terrain-server -i ./tiles
  importing a folder with terrain        ./data/terrain.sqlite3
  tiles in slippy map format.
  02. Create a new SQLite data by        $ mbtiles-terrain-server -f tms -i
  importing a folder with terrain        ./tiles ./data/terrain.sqlite3
  tiles in TMS format.
  03. Serve the terrain tiles using      $ mbtiles-terrain-server -p 8321
  CORS on port 8321.                     ./data/terrain.sqlite3