Offline Basemap for Android/IOS Field Mapping Part 4 KMZ SuperOverlay Solution

Hi, This video is the fourth part of four planned videos about how to bring your map to the field using popular Android and iOS mapping apps. For this fourth part. I will demonstrate the KMZ SuperOverlay format. KMZ SuperOverlay is like normal KML/KMZ, however, it is dedicated to storing raster data (tiled), so the raster data can be opened in native KML/KMZ software such as Google Earth Pro, and still retain the georeference
information.

Because KML/KMZ is quite popular compared to other file-based tiled geospatial data formats (such as MBTiles), many GIS and mapping software programs can read it, including some of the best-known mobile mapping apps on Android or iOS. KMZ SuperOverlay is also easier to make compared to others (MBTILES, PMTILES, ArcGIS MMPK, Geopackage), you don’t have to specify the planned zoom level. Just load and convert, and you will get the result. So, KMZ SuperOverlay is kind of combining the benefits of GeoPDF and MBTiles for offline basemap serving. 

In this video, I will demonstrate how to build a KMZ SuperOverlay using GDAL and Global Mapper, followed by how to open the data in the Android Mapping App. One thing I should tell you, currently, because
implementation of KMZ Superoverlay are different in every software (although they are all compatible in Google Earth Pro), only KMZ superoverlay generated in Global Mapper that can be read in Mobile Mapping
App such as Locus GIS. This situation might be different in future due to constant software development, so, always check and test before doing the data conversion.