Hiding the Base Map Tiles in Bing Maps V8

Question

Hi,

In Bing Maps V7, I could hide the base map tiles by setting the MapTypeId to "mercator". I could then re-show them using "auto".

How can I hide the base map tiles in V8?

Thanks,

Ken

Answer 1

Mercator map type isn't currently available in V8. Currently the team is investigating exposing the ability to create custom map types which is basically what many devs really want most of the time when using the Mercator map type. With a custom map type you could define a tile layer and it would replace the base tiles and would be little easier to manage.

The auto map type has been deprecated.

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Answer 2

I'm more after the ability to show or hide the base map tiles, not replace them. When displaying other tile layers, heat maps, pushpins, etc, it sometimes helps to temporarily remove detail by hiding the base map tiles.

Thanks,

Ken

Answer 3

A custom map mode and the tile layer you mentioned would work well. Also, we will be adding a greyscale map style soon which will be better suited for focusing on your data. If all else fails you should be able to create a custom met at mode if we don't expose one ourselves.

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Answer 4

That would be wonderful - we have custom maps we want to use as the base layer. Using this http://www.bing.com/api/maps/mapcontrol/isdk?autoRedirect=false as a the basis, I was able to get our imagery to show, but you still see the Bing map first before ours appears on top.

Additionally, we'd be charged from tile views once this goes into production - which would be fine if we were using them, but we are using our own.

Answer 5

Great news, we have added support for the Mercator map type in the experimental branch of V8. You can try it out by adding "&branch=experimental" to the map script URL. Alternatively you can go to this code sample and replace "aerial" with "mercator" and press the run button: http://www.bing.com/api/maps/mapcontrol/isdk?autoRedirect=false#loadMapWithOptions+JS

Also, Bing Maps doesn't charge based on the number of tiles loaded and hasn't for about 7 or 8 years now. Instead one billable transaction is generated when an instance of the map is loaded. After that all panning, zooming, or use of the services through the modules is non-billable. If you use the REST services, you can get a session key from the map by using the map.getCredentials function and use this special key in your REST service requests to make them non-billable as well.

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Answer 6

Fantastic! Thanks!

Ken