Dec 3, 2012 - Vizrt announced today that it has upgraded the map and geographical animations tool, Viz World, to integrate with OpenStreetMap (OSM).  With the new integration, Viz World users can access OSM community data from within the Viz World interface, effectively allowing Vizrt’s customers access to vector street data for most of the world.

OpenStreetMap is an open source online map database accessible at www.openstreetmaps.org. It provides a free, editable map of the world through the efforts of many contributors around the world.

For Vizrt customers, OSM street data is converted to shape files by an OSM approved 3rd party. The shape files are then converted to a format that is optimized for use in Vizrt’s rendering engine. The conversion makes it faster to render the vectors and search the database. Using a downloader interface, broadcasters load the data for their region or anywhere in the world where the data is needed. The data is then searched by street, address, intersection or point of interest.

Vizrt will update the extensive street data provided by the OpenStreetMap community to its servers twice a year to provide the latest street mapping information to its customers.

To recognize OSM for its pioneering work providing this global street map database, Vizrt is requiring customers who use OSM data to place an attribution on the screen with the simple text attribution of “OpenStreetMap.”

 “OpenStreetMap has created an invaluable and high-quality geographic database.” said Petter Ole Jakobsen, CTO of Vizrt. “We hope this attribution gives the community the recognition it deserves, while serving our customers the highest quality maps so they can accurately report on world events.”