We're all loving the new version of Google Maps and its vector based graphics, and Google has spent the time to explain exactly what makes them better. There some great detail about vector graphics, and how using them improves things like drawing roads or place labels as well as enabling the things like 3D tilt view, and explanation of how things used to work with the tiled graphics (360 billion tiles were needed to cover the earth!), and most importantly, explanation of how offline caching works -- places you frequent will have a lot of detail, while places you don't venture to as often won't have as much, all done using about 100 times less data.
I know a lot of us were expecting an offline version of Google Maps, and it looks like that isn't here just yet. But Google did say they are continuing to work on the algorithms used to display the data, and we'll see even more improvements over time. Check it out at the source link. [Google Mobile Blog]
