Articles about map export formats, tools and OpenStreetMap data use cases.
PLY is the Stanford Polygon File format by Greg Turk (1994): ASCII/binary, per-vertex attributes; standard for point clouds, photogrammetry, 3D scanning, MeshLab.
WebP since 2010: Google's open raster format built on VP8. Lossy 25-35% smaller than JPEG, lossless 26% smaller than PNG, with alpha and animation support.
COLLADA is a Khronos XML format for 3D scene exchange: ISO/PAS 17506:2012, supports meshes/animation/physics, used by Google Earth, now being replaced by glTF.
Garmin JNX container for BirdsEye satellite imagery on Oregon and GPSMAP handhelds: JPEG tiles in zoom pyramid, 100MB limit, reverse-engineered structure and OSM rendering to JNX.
OBJ deep dive: line-based ASCII from Wavefront Technologies, .mtl companion materials, OSM building extrusion via building:levels, opening in Blender and Maya.
Deep guide to EPS: PDF's predecessor from Adobe, versions 1.2-3.0 since 1987, how to make an EPS map from OpenStreetMap for legacy print shops.
MIF/MID from MapInfo Corp 1990: ASCII 2-file pair, REGION/PLINE/ARC geometry, GDAL MITAB, legacy GIS archives.
IFC is the ISO 16739 BIM standard from buildingSMART for exchanging 3D building and infrastructure models: IFC4.3 (2023) adds roads, bridges, ports; works in Revit, ArchiCAD, Tekla.
Deep guide to GeoPackage: open OGC standard on SQLite, single-file ecosystem for vector, raster, tiles and QML styles, Shapefile replacement.
FBX from Kaydara 1996 to Autodesk: ASCII/binary spec, DCC pipeline Maya↔Max↔Unity↔Unreal, OSM 3D building export.
COPC = LAZ 1.4 plus a built-in octree spatial index for streaming over HTTP. USGS 3DEP, AHN, forestry — the modern cloud standard for LiDAR.
Deep guide to Shapefile: 1998 ESRI format, mini-zoo of 4–6 files, 2 GB limit, 10-character column names. When you're forced to export it.