Use of Planet.osm with osmDroid for offline maps

Question

does anyone know if it is possible to build an Android application using osmDroid that makes use of Planet.osm stored on an SD card?

for example, you would store Planet.osm on a large SD card that has been put in a phone. The application loaded on the phone would then look in the SD card for the relevent maptiles and allow the user to have a full map offline.

Answer 1

No, not as you would expect it.

The Planet contains raw vector data whereas osmdroid needs pre-rendered raster tiles . You would need a renderer on your mobile device but rendering is a very ressource-intensive task and not really suited for mobile devices. Unless you are using pre-processed data (and ideally a vector renderer) as done by multiple mobile apps like OsmAnd. Storing pre-rendered tiles could be an option, but only for limited areas as their storage requirements increase very fast.

You can take a look at mapsforge if you intend to add vector rendering to your application.