RustMaps Fahrenheit Research

Use this command to install RustMaps:

winget install --id=FahrenheitResearch.RustMaps -e

Fast offline map tile renderer with a dark theme, designed for weather and radar application backgrounds. Renders Natural Earth vector geodata into 256x256 PNG tiles using the Web Mercator (EPSG:3857) projection.

rustmaps

Features

Dark-theme cartography: coastlines, land, lakes, rivers, country/state borders, city labels
Multi-resolution: 110m/50m/10m Natural Earth datasets selected by zoom level
Anti-aliased line rendering with variable-width strokes
City labels with halo text for readability
Interactive GUI with pan, zoom, and tile export
CLI for batch tile generation
Used as a library by NexView and hrrr-render

Getting Started

1. Install Rust

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

2. Download Natural Earth Shapefiles

Download the following datasets from naturalearthdata.com and place all .shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj, and .cpg files into a data/ folder next to the executable (or in the repo root for development):

Dataset	Resolution	Download
Coastline	110m, 50m, 10m	110m / 50m / 10m
Land	50m, 10m	50m / 10m
Lakes	50m, 10m	50m / 10m
Rivers	10m	10m
Country borders	10m	10m
State/province borders	10m	10m
Populated places	10m	10m
Urban areas	50m	50m
Ocean	10m	10m

Required shapefiles (the GUI will show an error listing missing files):

ne_110m_coastline.shp
ne_50m_coastline.shp
ne_10m_coastline.shp
ne_50m_land.shp
ne_10m_land.shp
ne_10m_admin_0_boundary_lines_land.shp
ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces_lines.shp
ne_50m_lakes.shp
ne_10m_lakes.shp
ne_10m_rivers_lake_centerlines.shp
ne_10m_populated_places_simple.shp

3. Build and Run

GUI (interactive map viewer):

cargo run --release

CLI (batch tile rendering):

cargo run --release --bin rustmaps-cli -- --data ./data --output ./output

Data Directory

rustmaps looks for Natural Earth shapefiles in the following locations (in order):

RUSTMAPS_DATA environment variable (if set and the path exists)
data/ folder next to the executable
data/ folder in the current working directory

Set the environment variable if your data is in a custom location:

# Linux/macOS
export RUSTMAPS_DATA=/path/to/shapefiles

# Windows
set RUSTMAPS_DATA=C:\path\to\shapefiles

GUI Controls

Action	Control
Pan	Click and drag
Zoom in/out	Scroll wheel or +/- buttons
Export tiles	Click "Export Tiles" in the status bar

The status bar shows the current zoom level, cursor coordinates (lat/lon), average render time per tile, and number of cached tiles.

CLI Options

rustmaps-cli [OPTIONS]

  --data      Path to Natural Earth shapefile directory (default: ./data)
  --output    Output directory for rendered tiles (default: ./output)
  --serve           Start a tile server instead of batch rendering
  --port      Tile server port (default: 8080, requires --serve)

Library Usage

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
rustmaps = { git = "https://github.com/FahrenheitResearch/rustmaps.git" }

use std::path::Path;

fn main() {
    let renderer = rustmaps::load_renderer(Path::new("data"))
        .expect("Failed to load geodata");

    // Render a single tile (z/x/y)
    let pixels = renderer.render_tile(5, 8, 12);
    let rgba = pixels.to_rgba(); // [u8; 256*256*4]

    // Or render directly to PNG bytes
    let png_bytes = renderer.render_tile_png(5, 8, 12);
    std::fs::write("tile.png", &amp;png_bytes).unwrap();
}

Downloads

Pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS (Intel + Apple Silicon), and Linux are available on the Releases page.

macOS users: If Gatekeeper shows a "damaged app" warning, run:

xattr -cr /Applications/rustmaps.app

License

MIT