The map updates itself no refresh
A tile that does not exist yet is not an error: the server answers that it is making it, the client subscribes over WebSocket, and the tile lands in the scene the moment it is ready. No polling, no refresh.
A missing tile is not an error
Requesting a tile that has never been generated does not produce an error: the API answers "accepted, being prepared" (a 202, not a failure) and starts the generation. "Not ready yet" is a normal state of the system, not a breakdown.
Subscribing replaces polling
The client subscribes to the tile it is waiting for, over the WebSocket connection that is already open. When the tile has been generated and cached, the server tells the subscribed sessions it is ready to download. Nobody asks again in a loop, and nothing arrives late: the notification leaves the moment the tile exists.
The running scene absorbs it
The tile loads into the scene mid-render: the camera does not move, the session carries on, nobody refreshes. Leave the camera on a place nobody has visited yet and the map fills itself in.
What the claim covers
The real time described here runs from a tile's generation to its display, and that leg is instant. How current the upstream OpenStreetMap data is, is a separate question that belongs to the compilation pipeline, and this page makes no promise on its behalf.
Read on: what you plug in: canvas, scene and camera, or which OpenStreetMap tags become 3D geometry.
Read more
- OpenStreetMap as a 3D globe, not a flat map
No Mercator, no projection distortion, no broken poles. One continuous camera from a doorstep to orbit, on a world that is a real sphere at every scale.
- Restyle the map at runtime, no rebuild
Colour is decided at draw time, not baked into tiles. Set a palette while the scene runs and it reaches every pixel, at every distance, including the sky.