Could we make transparent the background layer on a map fragment

Question

Could we make transparent the background layer on a map fragment which save a map from google maps in order to display only the route (polyline) without the map.

This route will be display on a video (camera which filmed the road) in order to get an augmented reality navigation.

Thanks

Answer 1

There are two ways you can do it:

1. Register your overlay in the MapType Registry. Here's the docs on how to do it.
2. Set your custom maptype as mapType in GoogleMap object. (Remember this will give you only those geographical areas which are present in your particular overlay)

Alternately;
You can set the mapType as None. Which should give you the map without any tiles on it like Roadmap, Hybrid, Terrain maptypes. See snippet. (Althogh I don't have experience with this maptype, I am assuming it gives you a blank canvas of the globe)

public void onActivityCreated(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onActivityCreated(savedInstanceState);
        mapFragment.getMap().setMapType(GoogleMap.MAP_TYPE_NONE);

EDIT: You can implement GLSurafaceView. If you are looking to develop augmented reality, this seems like a relevant option. Here's the description of the class.

Answer 2

Interesting idea, but I don't think it's possible. You could create a TileProvider that produces tiles from the video source, but you would have to constantly clear the tile cache and redraw the map. I don't think there's any way to clear the cache short of destroying and recreating the whole MapView. It might work, but it would probably be very slow.