Several Tiles Display

[SlowMagic]

Hi Everybody,
I am developing a mobil application to display maps, really simple version of google earth, this maps are compound of several tiles which correspond to differents sectors of the map. What is the best way to compound them in a single image on a canvas?. I have thought to display them independetly with diferent anchor points to fit its right possition in the final map but if I want to move on the map I would have to move all of the tiles each time. As another possibility I have thought to create a new larger image from all the tiles, it would be easier to move on the map since I just had to to move one image but what about the penalty of creating the new large image and handle it? Any example of how to compound them?.
Thanks in advance

[jappit]

Probably having more smaller images is a better solution to handle map movement and precaching of adiacent tiles, to let the user wait less for map tiles.

About image compounding, you could simply create a bigger image and, getting its Graphics via getGraphics(), you could paint on it the smaller images.

Pit

[SlowMagic]

The problem is that the tile resolutions of bitmap are 256*256 and depending of the area to be displayed and the zoom level, it could be up to 100 tiles to be combined on the screen which have a resolution of 240*290.
I have already tried it scaling down and combined the tiles in a final image but it is definitively too slow.
I should find a way to combine the tiles on the screen without so much process.

[jappit]

100 tiles seems to be quite a lot to be displayed at once for a single map screen. Just to do an example, if I remember well, Google Maps uses something like 10-20 tiles for each screen. You could try to use less tiles, looking for an optimal solution for both loading time and map movement.

Pit

[SlowMagic]

thanks, this seems the most rasonable way to handle it. If I reduce the number of tiles to a maximum of 10-20, the solution of scaling and combine the tiles in a larger image turns to be enough efficient.