PMTiles and Named MVT Layers Offer Smoother Geospatial Time-Series Animations

A developer has demonstrated a technique to eliminate flicker and reduce CPU load in geospatial time-series animations by packaging all timesteps into a single PMTiles archive with named vector tile layers. Instead of fetching new tile sources or re-decoding data for each animation frame, the approach loads the archive once and advances frames by updating a style variable and triggering a repaint in OpenLayers. The method uses the open-source tool tippecanoe to convert per-timestep GeoJSON files into a single PMTiles file, with each timestep assigned its own named Mapbox Vector Tile layer. The author notes that server-side tile generation and packaging has a greater impact on performance than the choice of client mapping library. The result is smooth, flicker-free playback from first load, with no blank frames even when browser cache is disabled.