MapSCII - The Whole World In Your Console.
A node.js based Vector Tile to Braille and ASCII renderer for xterm-compatible terminals.
Try it out!
$ telnet mapscii.me
If you're on Windows, use the open source telnet client PuTTY to connect.
Features
Use your mouse to drag and zoom in and out!
Discover Point-of-Interests around any given location
Highly customizable layer styling with Mapbox Styles support
Connect to any public or private vector tile server
Or just use the supplied and optimized OSM2VectorTiles based one
Work offline and discover local VectorTile/MBTiles
Compatible with most Linux and OSX terminals
Highly optimized algorithms for a smooth experience
100% pure JavaScript! 😎
How to run it locally
With a modern node installation available, just start it with
npx mapscii
How to install it locally
With npm
If you haven't already got Node.js >= version 10, then go get it.
npm install -g mapscii
If you're on OSX, or get an error about file permissions, you may need to do sudo npm install -g mapscii
With snap
In any of the supported Linux distros:
sudo snap install mapscii
(This snap is maintained by @nathanhaines)
Running
This is pretty simple too.
mapscii
Keyboard shortcuts
Arrows up , down , left , right to scroll around
, , , to scroll around Press a or z to zoom in and out
or to zoom in and out Press c to switch to block character mode
to switch to block character mode Press q to quit
Mouse control
If your terminal supports mouse events you can drag the map and use your scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
Behind the scenes
Libraries
Mastering the console
x256 for converting RGB values to closest xterm-256 color code
for converting RGB values to closest xterm-256 color code term-mouse for mouse handling
for mouse handling keypress for input handling
for input handling string-width to determine visual string lengths
Discovering the map data
vector-tile for VectorTile parsing
for VectorTile parsing pbf for Protobuf decoding
for Protobuf decoding mbtiles for MBTiles parsing
Juggling the vectors and numbers
earcut for polygon triangulation
for polygon triangulation rbush for 2D spatial indexing of geo and label data
for 2D spatial indexing of geo and label data bresenham for line point calculations
for line point calculations simplify-js for polyline simplifications
Handling the flow
node-fetch for HTTP requests
for HTTP requests env-paths to determine where to persist downloaded tiles
TODOs
MapSCII GeoJSON support via geojson-vt CLI support [-] startup parameters TileSource Style center position zoom demo mode? mouse control hover POIs/labels hover maybe even polygons/-lines?
Styler respect zoom based style ranges
Renderer download and process tiles in a different thread (#3) optimize renderer for large areas (#6) label drawing multi line label?
TileSource implement single vector-tile handling
Special thanks
lukasmartinelli & manuelroth for all their work on OSM2VectorTiles (global vector tiles from OSM Planet)
mourner for all his work on mindblowing GIS algorithms (like the used earcut, rbush, simplify-js, ..)
Licenses
Map data
The Open Data Commons Open Database License (oDbl)
OpenStreetMap is open data, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF).
You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our data, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors. If you alter or build upon our data, you may distribute the result only under the same licence. The full legal code explains your rights and responsibilities.
The cartography in our map tiles, and our documentation, are licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (CC BY-SA).