Avoiding &quot;Map data not yet available&quot;

Question

In my application there is a viewer that launches the Silverlight page with the ESRI control where the user can view their asset directly on the map and change the location of the building if necessary. Normally I get the extent of the Geometry, calculate the middle point by averaging, then I pad 2000 metres in each direction to create a box of roughly 4000m x 4000m. This 4000m x 4000m box will be used as the Extent of the map on load.

This works fine if the asset is in a populated area where high resolution data is available. If they (our QA) put the location on this asset is an area where only low resolution data is available, all they will get is the "Map data not yet available" tiles on the map. Initially our QA thought my codes were causing this problem until I explained to him that remote area do not have high resolution mapping. I already mentioned that similar problem will occur regardless of whether it is the ArcGISonline server, Google Map or Bing Map.

The ArcGISonline map service I am using:
http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Street_Map/MapServer

This is what my developement manager and my QA want to know:

- Is there a way we can detect this "Map data not yet available" in code? That way maybe I can make the envelope bigger so the low resolution data will be available.

- Is there a ArcGISonline map server where the "Map data not yet available" is in French? We have French speaking clients in Quebec (Canada) that want everything localized.

- Can I put in my own image to replace the default "Map data not yet available"?

- What will be a good statement to explain to our clients for this issue?

SomeGISGuy · Answer

- Is there a way we can detect this "Map data not yet available" in code? That way maybe I can make the envelope bigger so the low resolution data will be available.

No.
 - Is there a ArcGISonline map server where the "Map data not yet available" is in French? We have French speaking clients in Quebec (Canada) that want everything localized.

No. You might want to take a look at the Bing maps layer which has this option (and also likely has higher resolution imagery).
 - Can I put in my own image to replace the default "Map data not yet available"?

No.