Are tile overlays possible with the iPhone's MapKit

I already have a tile source set up for use with the Google Maps JavaScript API. I am trying to translate this for use with the iPhone MapKit. I have correctly implemented the javascript zooming levels into mapkit. Whenever - (void)mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView regionDidChangeAnimated:(BOOL)animated is calle开发者_StackOverflowd, I snap the region to the nearest zoom level based on the same center point.

Is it possible to implement a solution possibly with CATiledLayer to implement a tiling solution. Does the iPhone use the standard 256x256 tiles like google maps does natively? Any direction or help on this would be greatly appreciated. I would rather not waste a couple weeks trying to implement this if it's not possible.

FWIW, I spent quite a bit of time looking for a decent solution… before diving into a CATiledLayer example, I noticed MKOverlay and MKOverlayView — which are new in iOS 4 and plug right into a MKMapView.

Couldn’t find a good example implementation of using MKOverlays that pull arbitrary image data (say, UIImages from a remote tile server), but I tinkered around with the API enough until I got it working.

Built a simple example implementation of it in case anyone (like me) wants a reference:

http://github.com/mtigas/iOS-MapLayerDemo

Hope this helps someone out in the future.

MapKit doesn't provide much in the way of custom tile sources (in fact, it provides absolutely nothing to customize sources: you either use Google Maps or you don't). I've been working with a similar problem myself, though, and I've found RouteMe to be a pretty good solution for custom maps: http://code.google.com/p/route-me/

Built-in support exists for OpenStreetMaps, OpenAerialMaps (which is currently offline), Virtual Earth, and Yahoo Maps, but the framework makes it pretty easy to plug in your own tile source, too.

Yes, since iOS 7, MKTileOverlay will do:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/MapKit/Reference/MKTileOverlay_class/Reference/Reference.html