Offline base map options?

[ShaneBuscher]

The .NET Runtime app I'm developing is in need of nationwide (US) street and imagery base maps for all zoom levels. When connected the app can use ArcGIS Online base maps, however, I need tiled based maps for offline use. I'm looking to side load the tile caches and am looking for source data options.

I've seen the samples of downloading ArcGIS Online tiles at runtime, but this strategy has two caveats:

1. Forces users to download tiles before they go offline
2. The available ArcGIS online data services (i.e. World Street Map) are limited to zoom levels 0-9. 

As far as I can tell, there seems to be a gap for providing tile caches for ArcGIS Runtime SDKs like .NET apps that go offline. I am hoping there are other solutions besides a massive endeavor of creating custom base map tile caches. Is the ESRI Data Appliance a valid option? Are there any other options out there?

[AnttiKajanus1]

You can sideload used TPKs that can be created many ways in the ArcGIS system (ArcMap, Geoprosessing etc, runtime). Extracting tiles is way to do that from the runtime but from consuming point of view, there are much more options. Especially if you are building desktop application that has basically access to all files without issues.

There are several ways to get the tpks into the device from downloading pre-generated files from server / ArcGIS Online or you can use for example USB disks to copy the data (assuming that the amount of the data is going to be fairly large ).

The layers can just reference to the tpk file. You can ofc do that from code. There is also some information about this on the guide documentation.

<UserControl x:Class="ArcGISRuntime.Samples.Desktop.ArcGISLocalTiledLayerSample"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:esri="http://schemas.esri.com/arcgis/runtime/2013">
    <Grid>
        <esri:MapView>
            <esri:Map>
                <esri:ArcGISLocalTiledLayer Path="..\..\..\samples-data\basemaps\campus.tpk" />
            </esri:Map>
        </esri:MapView>
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

[AnttiKajanus1]

What comes to the services, you should be checking the services hosted in ArcGIS Online.

If you are looking export functionality, you can for example check

http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=226d23f076da478bba4589e7eae95952 or

http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=e384f5aa4eb1433c92afff09500b073d. There are other services also available.

[ShaneBuscher]

Thanks for all the info. I'm aware of the ArcGIS Online tile services but am not fully understanding the licensing and use constraints. Do individual ArcGIS Runtime licenses provide full access to this authenticated service?

[AnttiKajanus1 · Accepted solution]

You need to sign in to the system (online) to get the access to the services so if you have deployment license for runtime, you don't automatically get access to the services in Online. But if you have named user and you use that, you have access to them.