Luciad Developer Platform

LuciadRIA was released in 2012 with a 2D map based on a HTML5 Canvas. In 2016, the WebGL-based hybrid 2D/3D map was introduced, leveraging WebGL support in most browsers.

Moving forward, our focus will lie solely on WebGLMap. WebGLMap offers all the capabilities of a non-WebGL Map, and brings much more to the table.

This document announces our plans for phasing out the non-WebGL map, and explains how you can easily modify your application to use the WebGL map.

Phasing out the non-WebGL Map

Starting with LuciadRIA 2024.0, non-WebGL Map is deprecated. The 2024.0 and 2024.1 releases will be the last releases supporting it. In the next major release, LuciadRIA 2025.0, we plan to remove the non-WebGL Map. All maps will be hardware-accelerated.

Switching to WebGLMap in your application

You can switch to WebGLMap by changing the constructor call of your Map. Replace

import {Map} from "@luciad/ria/view/Map.js";

const map = new Map(domNode, options);

with

import {WebGLMap} from "@luciad/ria/view/WebGLMap.js";

const map = new WebGLMap(domNode, options);

The WebGLMap API is a superset of the Map API, so no further changes are necessary.

See LuciadRIA benefits for the features available to you when you use WebGLMap.

You can find the WebGL system requirements here.

We plan to keep the Map type in the API in 2025.0, as an alias for WebGLMap. That way, you won’t have to update all usages of the Map type to WebGLMap, as an argument type in method signatures for example.

Upgrade considerations

For completeness, we list the upgrade considerations:

A WebGLMap doesn’t support RasterImageLayer nor the corresponding SingleImageModel, such as a GoogleImageModel or a WMSImageModel. If you’re using a RasterImageLayer or SingleImageModel in your application, consider replacing these with a RasterTileSetLayer and RasterTileSetModel. For example, replace WMSImageModel with WMSTileSetModel.
If you’re making heavy use of complex stroking (ComplexStrokedLineStyle) or tactical graphics in your application, it might take longer for those strokes to appear on the map the first time. This happens because every stroke results in a new shader being compiled. To remedy it, you can implement the tips outlined in the Boosting tactical graphics performance on a WebGL map article.
GoogleLayer isn’t supported on a WebGLMap. Instead, you can use Google Maps, HERE Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMap, or any other background layer. Also consider showing Google 3D Tiles as an alternative.
InPathLabelStyle.inView and InPathLabelStyle.restrictToBounds aren’t supported on a WebGLMap. When you switch to WebGLMap, some labels might fall outside the view slightly more often.

Aside from the items listed above, WebGLMap supports everything that a Map can do, and more.

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact the Luciad Product Management team at product.management.gsp@hexagon.com.

Non-WebGL Map end-of-life announcement

Phasing out the non-WebGL Map

Switching to WebGLMap in your application

Upgrade considerations