Virtual Point Layer ala Google

[tmcw]

Google's local search renders secondary results (the small red dots) as a layer and then loads information about them on hover - it loads a radius of points around the mouse position. The big difference between this and all of the ways that the OpenLayers module works is that it doesn't seem to use elements at any point in the process - it's all just math of where the cursor is vs. pointers. This could be extremely useful to emulate, because it means that one can do layers with lots of points and with hover behavior, which works in older browsers or on slower systems.

Is there any interest in implementing this? I can try my hand at writing basic code to get it started and to test & develop along the way. It seems like this could work basically like other vector layers and use the same input formatters, etc., but display different - in the beginning - and then possibly load points on hover later on.

[tmcw]

Well, progress on this code is happening on GitHub:  http://github.com/tmcw/virtualvector