Close zoom and map detail

Reviewed 1 November 2026. Watchtower’s native 2D maps use a shared maximum display zoom of 22, matching the strongest existing zoom range found in Natural Hazards, Incident Graph, Marine Intelligence and other uncapped MapLibre views.49 maintained map construction paths and five Earth-viewer construction paths were audited, including standalone War Room and Commodities Data pages. Construction paths are not a count of unique datasets.

Streets, buildings and aerial imagery

OpenFreeMap’s OpenStreetMap-derived vector data adds minor roads, paths, building footprints, street names, house numbers and selected points of interest where present. The native vector tiles stop at 14; client rendering at closer scales keeps geometry and text crisp but does not invent new surveyed detail or building heights. Detailed streets is also available in the country-map background controls. Existing explicitly saved basemap choices remain choices.

Esri World Imagery advertises levels 0–23 and geographically varying source resolution. Watchtower checks the provider’s tile-availability metadata and uses the highest available source tile at or below the requested level. Where necessary it crops and resamples the correct ancestor footprint, instead of stretching an unrelated area or presenting a blank high-zoom tile. Resampling is labelled here as magnification, not extra native resolution. The service describes0.3 metre imagery in selected metropolitan areas, and local aerial contributions down to0.03 metres in selected communities; these are provider descriptions, not uniform worldwide guarantees.

The main globe, aviation and other Earth views can approach a 10-metre controller distance rather than the previous kilometre-scale floors. This is a camera limit, not a claim of 10-metre image resolution. Scientific weather, satellite and other data overlays retain their original resolution, time and uncertainty. Country markers, aggregate locations and privacy-rounded outage references do not become precise because the background is detailed.

Other map providers

Google, MapTiler and Mapbox offer additional imagery, road data, photogrammetry or service guarantees. No single provider is the sharpest at every coordinate and date. Google documents location-dependent maximum satellite zoom; MapTiler’s high-resolution imagery coverage varies; Mapbox’s permitted API zoom range is not a guarantee of photographic resolution. Those services require their applicable account, API-key, billing and licence arrangements. No paid service has been enabled by this upgrade.

Use and limits

Zoom with the wheel, navigation controls or pinch. Use Layers → Background/Map display for the available styles. Map scale and the Map detail link help distinguish display magnification from source detail. Map layers, source event geometry, filters, saved investigations and historical snapshots keep their original meaning.

External provider-owned embedded maps (such as live AIS and embedded Google/OSM views) retain the provider’s own controls and maximum zoom. Scientific solar-system diagrams use physical scales rather than street-map zoom. Historical/third-party comparison images retain their native image footprint and resolution.

Imagery requests are on-demand for viewed map tiles, bounded to four concurrent requests, finite response/queue/cache sizes and access/rate-limit pauses. There is no offline bulk-download feature. OpenStreetMap standard raster fallback respects its native level-19 tile ceiling; terrain and scientific rasters keep their own source limits. Provider failures remain visible; unavailable imagery does not establish missing real-world activity.

Sources and licences

Close-scale street and building references on historical atlases describe the modern basemap, not conditions at the selected historical date. Scientific Earth viewers can load their cartographic background independently of unavailable model data; missing model values remain missing.