@hiiker_Just another reason why HiiKER maps, are the best maps!
♬ original sound – HiiKER – HiiKER
Your Map Isn’t One Image. It’s a Pyramid.
TL;DR: A HiiKER map looks seamless, but under the hood it’s built from millions (and at global scale, billions) of tiny square images called tiles. We fetch exactly the ones your screen needs, when it needs them—so it feels instant.
The illusion of one big map
When you open HiiKER, it feels like a single continuous picture of the world. It isn’t. The map is a mosaic of 256×256-pixel tiles arranged in a pyramid of zoom levels. At the top (zoom 0) there’s one tile for the whole planet. Each step down doubles detail and multiplies the number of tiles by four. Street level is millions of tiles.
Why tiles make maps fast
Your phone never downloads “the whole map.” It only asks for the handful of tiles visible on your screen (plus a bit around the edges so panning feels smooth). Those tiles come via a global CDN and are aggressively cached. Pan or zoom and you’re just swapping out small squares, not reloading a giant image. That’s how we keep things snappy in the hills with patchy signal.
What those strange numbers mean
Tiles are addressed by three numbers: z/x/y (zoom, column, row). For example, the tile covering the summit of Ben Nevis at zoom level 18 might be:
/18/127430/80580.jpg
That path says: “Give me zoom 18, tile column 127430, tile row 80580.” Your screen shows a grid of these, seamlessly stitched together.
Raster, vector, and why your map looks crisp
Some layers are raster (pre-rendered images—great for satellite and scanned paper maps). Others are vector (geometric data your device draws on the fly—great for sharp, label-rich basemaps). HiiKER blends premium sources—Ordnance Survey, Harvey Maps, OSI, Purple Lizard, and more—so you get clarity where it matters: on the trail.
Zoom out and the trick returns
Zoom all the way out and those billions of pieces collapse back into that single, tidy view of Earth. Same map, different slice of the pyramid.
