Mapbox GL JS Updates & Release Notes

Features and improvements ✨

Introduce Level of Detail (LOD) support for landmark models, enabling automatic switching between model versions based on camera distance.

Support additive blend mode with clamped density by setting the line-blend-additive-clamp property.

Improve rendering performance by reducing per-frame matrix allocations.

Improve rendering performance via parallel shader compilation on supported devices.

Improve rendering performance by advancing shader precompilation.

Improve shadow rendering performance.

Improve vector icon loading performance.

Improve initial load by skipping redundant config-related style layers updates in Web Workers.

Improve initial load by rescheduling shader precompilation to occur during browser idle time after the map's idle event.

Improve model processing performance.

Improve performance and memory footprint by streamlining communication between the main thread and Web Workers.

Reduce first-interaction jank by optimizing shader compilation pipeline behavior.

Optimize expression parsing performance.

Improve an error messaging for the line-trim-offset property without lineMetrics.

Bug fixes 🐞

Fix LUT to properly work with premultiplied color.

Fix a potential memory leak and crash occurring when a map was destroyed.

Fix an issue where cross-fragments config values were not correctly updated.

Features and improvements ✨

Improve the performance of symbol layers on old devices.

Add TileProvider for raster and raster-dem sources, adding support for PMTiles with raster tiles.

Enable client-side fontstack compositing by default. When multiple fonts are requested they are now fetched individually and composited on the client.

Promote interactions API to stable.

Add a bundler-friendly ESM bundle in the NPM package (import mapboxgl from 'mapbox-gl/esm').

Lazy-load procedural buildings and precipitation code when using the ESM entry point.

Bug fixes 🐞

Fix values smaller than 1 in line-dasharray not working.

Fix a render issue where black boxes could appear instead of symbols briefly in some environments.

Fix scale-factor being applied twice to icons with feature-dependent icon-size.

Fix redundant WASM requests on map load when using the Standard style.

Features and improvements ✨

• Introduce the TileProvider API, a mechanism for extending GL JS with custom vector tile providers.
• Add first-class support for PMTiles via the new TileProvider API and an official plugin (mapbox-gl-pmtiles-provider.js) that loads on demand.
• Add experimental line-blend-mode property for rendering lines using additive or multiply blending.
• Slightly improve overall map loading times.
• Improve symbol layer rendering performance (by adopting Uniform Buffer Objects for data-driven properties).
• Improve indoor maps loading performance.

Bug fixes 🐞

• Fix dragging gesture not working on the compass control.
• Various fixes and improvements for the Appearances API.
• Fix an edge case when combining custom icons with images included in the style's sprite.
• Fix setWorldview not updating layout properties correctly.
• Fix an issue when rendering stacked underground 3D roads.
• Fix line dashes with non-integer total array lengths.
• Fix various rendering issues when using *-cutoff-fade-range properties.
• Fix clip layer not clipping fill-extrusion ambient occlusion.

Breaking changes ⚠️

• Removed mapbox-gl-unminified.js bundle in the distribution — please switch to either mapbox-gl.js, mapbox-gl-dev.js, or the new esm-min/mapbox-gl.js ESM bundle.
• Removed spriteFormat Map option — now Mapbox styles will always use vector icons, while non-Mapbox styles will continue using classic raster sprites.

3.19.0

Features and improvements ✨

• Promote elevated lines properties to stable: line-z-offset and line-elevation-reference.
• Add experimental text-size-scale-range and icon-size-scale-range style properties.
• Add experimental Map#setScaleFactor/Map#getScaleFactor methods for controlling symbol layer scaling.
• Apply global scale factor to images within text-field.
• Fix z-fighting for elevated raster layers.
• Add raster-elevation-reference paint property to elevate raster layers relative to ground instead of sea level.
• Add line-elevation-ground-scale layout property to scale elevated lines with terrain exaggeration.
• Use native async/await when loading models. Note: Please ensure GL JS is excluded from transpilation in your build setup.
• Explicitly state minimum supported browser versions in browserslist.
• Support pitch and distance expressions in filters.
• Support incremental updates when using setFeatureState.
• Add experimental Map#setNearClipOffset/Map#getNearClipOffset methods to control the near clip offset when ortohographic projections are used.

Bug fixes 🐞

• Fix RasterArrayTileSource#reload() not working correctly.
• Add request cancellation support to the ModelSource.
• Fix flickering of aliased thin lines.
• Fix elevated line bevel join artifacts at sharp corners.
• Fix regressions in NavigationControl.
• Fix namespace conflicts in different featuresets' selectors.
• Recalculate layers with visibility: none in case properties were changed.
• Fix bug in border update logic of fill-extrusion layer, overriding clip layer's behaviour.
• Fix empty tiles on non-integer maxZoom when terrain was used.
• Fix prototype pollution via Style JSON.

Features and improvements ✨

• Promote elevated lines properties to stable: line-z-offset and line-elevation-reference.
• Add experimental text-size-scale-range and icon-size-scale-range style properties.
• Add experimental Map#setScaleFactor/Map#getScaleFactor methods for controlling symbol layer scaling.
• Apply global scale factor to images within text-field.

Bug fixes 🐞

• Fix RasterArrayTileSource#reload() not working correctly.
• Add request cancellation support to the ModelSource.
• Fix flickering of aliased thin lines.
• Fix elevated line bevel join artifacts at sharp corners.

Features and improvements ✨

• Fix z-fighting for elevated raster layers.
• Add raster-elevation-reference paint property to elevate raster layers relative to ground instead of sea level.
• Add line-elevation-ground-scale layout property to scale elevated lines with terrain exaggeration.
• Use native async/await when loading models. Note: Please ensure GL JS is excluded from transpilation in your build setup.
• Explicitly state minimum supported browser versions in browserslist.

Bug fixes 🐞

• Fix regressions in NavigationControl.
• Fix namespace conflicts in different featuresets' selectors.
• Recalculate layers with visibility: none in case properties were changed.
• Fix bug in border update logic of fill-extrusion layer, overriding clip layer's behaviour.