Differences between mapbox-3dtiles and fill-extrusion

[abrichr]

Hello,

Thank you for making this open source!

I'm relatively new to MapBox. Could you please clarify what is the difference between this implementation, and the example at https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/example/3d-buildings/ which uses a fill-extrusion layer? What are the tradeoffs for each approach? When would you prefer one over the other?

[dpelaez10]

I'm fairly new here as well, but from what I understand based on the documentation, the example you linked above uses a pre-built data source:

The data source for the building heights is the Mapbox Streets vector tileset, which provides data for the building layer in the light-v10 style.

Whereas with this plugin you can create your own custom 3D data sources from LiDAR point clouds or other 3D models.

So I'd say this plugin offers more customization, but may be more complicated to implement. If all you care about are buildings in 3D then maybe go with the example you listed above.

Cheers!

[ibrahimnzamane]

fill-extrusions are not real 3d tiles they are what call 2.5D which means that they are 2d but to look like 3d the polygons are extruded upwards. But, real 2dtiles have tiles in 3d that means that it will have a 3rd coordinate to represent height.