Google Maps V3 (Calc Distance from Route)

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone could off some advice on the following theoretical issue, before I begin development of my app. I have a theoretical database populated with several thousand markers. The user of my site will enter there Start/Destination into my map; which thanks to google’s wonderful API, will provide them with a route. I would then go and add my markers to their map. The problem I have is, that displaying several thousand markers is going to be slow and terribly messy from the user’s point of view.

Can anyone think of a means of simply displaying only the markers within ‘x’miles from the route?

Ideally I’d love base the distance calculations upon the driving distance rather than the Air distance, but I don’t believe this is going to be possible as I expect it would require a DirectionRequest for each marker! eeep!
As it stands none of the data has been populated into the database, which means that I don’t mind using Post Codes or the LatLon; actually, I’d be interested to know which you guys would suggest, although I’m pretty certain that using LatLon would be faster.

 

thanks for this information