I would have guessed that they use quadtrees for this, splitting each non-leaf n... | Hacker News

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		boomlinde on April 22, 2022 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: The smallest 256x256 single-color PNG file, and wh... I would have guessed that they use quadtrees for this, splitting each non-leaf node into quadrants of more detailed maps as you zoom in.

incanus77 on April 22, 2022 [–]

It's a quadtree of sorts, but is typically done via map projection (web mercator) math so that each tile is replaced by four tiles at the next highest (more zoomed-in) zoom level.

Number of tiles to cover the world at zoom z = 4^z

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