Creation Sharing Project Münsterland, And Ruhr Nord (temporarily Stopped Due To Adjustments At Google)

When asking Google, it is now that you have to pay for the Google API. Previously, you had $200 free credit that you could use every month. But unfortunately this rule is now gone and you have to pay for every request. It has been calculated that if I continue this project at this speed, it will cost me over 300 euros per month to be allowed to use the API. That is why I hope for a solution soon to continue this. Until then, unfortunately, the project has been stopped. Maybe DTG will come up with a solution.

 

Google Maps Platform monthly credit: Starting March 1, 2025, Google replaced the $200 Google Maps Platform monthly credit with a free usage cap for each Google Maps Platform API.

After looking at the pricing limits, you can make up to 100,000 requests per month for free, if I understand it correctly.

 

Yes indeed. Only I have 0 free requests. Which I find strange. It has cost me more than 300 euros in the past months. Twice I said that I am under 100,000 and they said that the new thing is that you have to pay for every request.

Since that happened I've been less active. But now the conditions have become more severe that you really have to pay for every request.
And also think that this will stop a lot of projects...

Of course I'm not sitting still. I've started making a fictional project.

 

This is very bad news indeed. Google is just getting more and more greedy.
I really hope that we can use something else other than google. Not just in TSW but Classic as well.

 

So I looked into this a little and found a way to avoid getting charged, so I was able to set quota to 350 calls a day.

Which should prevent the editor calling on google to provide tiles but it means you'd have to wait till the next day to use the maps again.

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So the calls are limited to 10,000 a month not 100,000. This is for static maps.

 

Maybe we should use one of those replacement map server overlays that are available.
Tell google, "sorry but we are not playing your games"

 

unfortunately DTG has apparently a contract with Google. there have made multiple requests to bing maps or openstreetmaps. But has been rejected by them.

 

uuuuugggghhhh.
I kind of had a sneaking thought ages ago that there was something like this. But I thought... nah... Why would that be?
Since that seems to be the case, why does a company like DTG that makes Train Simulators have a contract with google?

 

Cause they provide really good maps.

 

Not always. I have seen some pretty poor google maps.

 

i have fit it in 5,000 calls but i have to pay for every call.
it depends on the country. the Netherlands has completely different rules than the UK and US for example.

 

Oh? I was unaware of this, is this in the editor settings?

Found it in derived data, it wasn't setup.

 

Being able to turn on an OpenRailwayMap overlay would be very useful for making sure you have your track layouts set up properly.
It does acually have an API. (www.openrailwaymap.org) You can even have your own Instance of OpenRailwayMap running on your own system (that would take up an aweful amount of data though. You would need to definately turn the DDC cache on for that.

 

So I've double check and by default the DDC saves to C:\Username\My Documents\My Games\UnrealEngine\Common

 

So keep an eye on API Requests. If it is 0 the image is cached, if it starts displaying numbers its requesting the image from google.
So 100 Requests is 100 Calls.