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Using Geographic Imagery

Purpose

This topic provides an overview of rendering geographic imagery in the background content of the XamGeographicMap™ control.

Required background

The following table lists the topics required as a prerequisite to understanding this topic.

Topic Purpose

This topic provides information about layout of map elements in the XamGeographicMap control.

This topic provides information on how to add the XamGeographicMap control to an application page.

Geographic Imagery

Overview

Geographic imagery is a detailed representation of the world from a top view perspective. It can consist of an aerial-satellite map or road maps in a multi-scale imagery tiles structure. The XamGeographicMap control can display geographic imagery in order to provide end-users with rich and interactive world maps and geographic context for geo-spatial data.

Types of geographic imagery

The XamGeographicMap control can display geographic imagery tiles from three supported mapping services or from other mapping services that can be easily implemented in an application.

The following table summarizes supported and custom geographic imagery sources for the XamGeographicMap control.

Geographic Imagery Preview Description

Open Street Maps

GeographicMap Using Geographic Imagery 1.png

Provides geographic imagery from Open Street Maps service with an option to display a road map style only in one coloring theme. For more information on using this geographic imagery, refer to the Displaying Geographic Imagery from Open Street Maps topic.

Bing Maps

GeographicMap Using Geographic Imagery 3.png

Provides geographic imagery from Bing Maps service with configurable options to display the following map styles:

  • Satellite Map Style

  • Satellite Map with Labels Style

  • Road Map Style

For more information on using this geographic imagery, refer to the Displaying Geographic Imagery from Bing Maps topic.

Map Quest

GeographicMap Using Geographic Imagery 4.png

Provides custom geographic imagery from Map Quest service with configurable options to display the following map styles:

  • Satellite Map Style

  • Road Map Style

For more information on using this geographic imagery, refer to the Creating Custom Geographic Imagery from Map Quest topic.

Map Background Content

Description

The XamGeographicMap control’s BackgroundContent property is used to display all supported types of geographic imagery sources. For each geographic imagery source, there is an imagery class used for rendering corresponding geographic imagery tiles.

The following table summarizes imagery classes provided by the XamGeographicMap control.

Imagery Class Description

Represents the base control for all imagery classes that display all types of supported geographic imagery tiles. This class can be extended for the purpose of implementing support for geographic imagery tiles from other geographic imagery sources such as Map Quest mapping service. For more information on this feature, refer to the Creating Custom Geographic Imagery from Map Quest topic.

Represents the multi-scale imagery control for displaying geographic imagery tiles from the Open Street Maps service.

Represents the multi-scale imagery control for displaying geographic imagery tiles from the Bing Maps service.

By default, the BackgroundContent property is set to OpenStreetMapImagery object and the XamGeographicMap control displays geographic imagery tiles from the Open Street Maps service. In order to display different types of geographic imagery tiles, the XamGeographicMap control must be re-configured.

The following is a list of topics that provide information on how to display different types of geographic imagery tiles:

In addition, the BackgroundContent property can be set to any object that inherits the class. However, only objects that inherit the GeographicMapImagery class will allow panning and zooming of the map background content.

In the XamGeographicMap control, map background content is always rendered behind all geographic series. In other words, geographic imagery tiles are always rendered first and any geographic series in the XamGeographicMap control’s Series property is rendered on top of the geographic imagery tiles. This is especially important when displaying multiple geographic series in the same plot area of the XamGeographicMap control because geographic imagery tiles can quickly get buried in the map view. For more information on this, refer to the following topics:

Code

This code example explicitly sets BackgroundContent of the XamGeographicMap control to the OpenStreetMapImagery object which provides geographic imagery tile from the Open Street Maps.

In XAML:

<ig:XamGeographicMap x:Name="GeoMap">
    <ig:XamGeographicMap.BackgroundContent>
        <ig:OpenStreetMapImagery />
    </ig:XamGeographicMap.BackgroundContent>
</ig:XamGeographicMap>

In Visual Basic:

Dim GeoMap As New XamGeographicMap()
Me.GeoMap.BackgroundContent = New OpenStreetMapImagery()

In C#:

var geoMap = new XamGeographicMap();
this.geoMap.BackgroundContent = new OpenStreetMapImagery();

Related Content

The following topics provide additional information related to this topic.

Topic Purpose

This topic provides information on how to bind geographic imagery in the XamGeographicMap control.

This topic provides information about layout of map elements in the XamGeographicMap control.

This topic provides information on how to display geographic imagery from Bing Maps service in the XamGeographicMap control.

This topic provides information on how to display geographic imagery from Open Street Maps service in the XamGeographicMap control.

This topic provides information on how to create a custom geographic imagery from Map Quest service and display it in the XamGeographicMap control.

This topic provides information on how to use multiple geographic series in the XamGeographicMap control.