Basemap vector tile support

[wiesehahn]

Hey,
I know the project is currently not funded, so this is just a feature request for discussion.

As basemaps in the map viewer there are currently only raster tiles (XYZ, WMS) via leaflet supported.
However the web is more and more geared towards vector tiles which have a lot of advantages (client side rendering, smooth zoom, etc.). Since this year there is open vector tiles via https://openfreemap.org and very recently via osm directly, also some national authorities provide them (e.g. https://basemap.de/).

The natural library to provide good support for vector tile basemaps would be Maplibre GL JS. In the upcoming 5.0 release there will also be a globe projection which might be a good option to vizualize stac catalog extents as well.

Are there any thoughts already about supporting vector tile basemaps and/or switching to maplibre gl js?

[m-mohr]

It is planned to switch to OpenLayers and ol-stac next year. I'm not sure right now whether OL supports vector tile basemaps, but if it does we could support it.

I don't plan to support multiple mapping libraries in STAC Browser.

[m-mohr]

@wiesehahn OL seems to support Vector tiles. Would you be open testing it with the new codebase that's in development in #535?

[wiesehahn]

I can try if I find time, unfortunately I do not have much of it currently.