How to implement a scrollable, zoomable map in JavaFX/ScalaFX?

Question

I am implementing a map as a computer game accessory; it should show the geography of the computer game with a few informative overlays. I wonder what's the best way to achieve this in JavaFX, or more precisely ScalaFX.

Right now, I have a very naive implementation:

• I have tiles for the map in different zoom levels. For each zoom level, I arrange ImageViews in a Group and transform that group, so that all zoom levels use the same coordinates.
• A separate group with the same coordinates is used for my overlays.
• I zoom using the mouse wheel and make only one zoom level visible, depending on the current zoom.
• I pack all this into a ScrollPane.

That has a few limitations:

• all tiles, for all zoom levels, are loaded at startup. That's ugly, but works in my particular use case.
• using a ScrollPane only works if the map has limited bounds. Again, fine here, but not for maps in general.
• the UX is weird: the ScrollPane scrolls with the mouse wheel, while most maps scroll per drag and drop; most maps zoom with the mouse wheel or pinch to zoom. It's critical that zooming preserves the "anchors" (mouse/touch positions) during the gesture. (It would also be nice to be mobile-ready out of the box, but that's just dreaming right now...)
• different levels of detail in the overlay, depending on the current zoom, are possible, but probably not very efficient or convenient.

Obviously, this is one of the approaches I tried. This question mentions a library by some eppleton, but it doesn't seem to be maintained, and the blog that used to describe the library doesn't exist anymore. Also, it seems to focus on providing a game engine, with a tile having meaning to the game; a tile in a map is just an image, and the overlay doesn't care where one tile begins or ends.

To finish this with a concrete question: Are there any libraries or techniques that I can use to fulfill my needs? I'm especially interested in my third bullet point (UX), but I guess that if there's a suitable approach, it would cover points 1 to 3.

Answer 1

UPDATED: Few more options are on the table now:

• Gluon Map
• GMapsFX

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One option is not to build but use existing open source project, such as openmapfx