Google Inc.

Travis McPhail

Paul Vincent Byrne

John Donald Rosasco

Daniel Jared Epstein

Jim Brooks

To render features on a digital map, a position and orientation of a virtual camera relative to a plane of the digital map is determined. The plane is tilted so that a plane of a viewport of the digital map is not parallel to the plane of the digital map, where the viewport delimiting a view of the digital map. Map features are selected for inclusion in the view of the digital map in accordance with the determined position and orientation of the virtual camera. A level-of-detail (LOD) is determined for each of the map features in accordance with a distance between the virtual camera and the map feature. The map features are rendered, using a rendering engine, in accordance with the determined LODs.

Variable level-of-detail map rendering

To provide smoothly scaleable map features on interactive digital maps, a first and a second sets of style parameters for rendering a map feature at a first zoom level and a second zoom level, respectively, are received. The first and second sets of style parameters are provided to a vertex shader. The vertex shader is configured to interpolate the first set of style parameters and the second set of style parameters to generate an interpolated set of style parameters for a certain zoom level between the first zoom level and the second zoom level, and render the map feature at the certain zoom level in accordance with the interpolated set of style parameters.

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Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Travis McPhail