[HN Gopher] OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in ...
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OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
Author : clarecorthell
Score : 846 points
Date : 2021-02-09 21:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (eng.lyft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (eng.lyft.com)
| known wrote:
| Wish Google MAPS and OSM share data with each other;
| technotarek wrote:
| Can anyone recommend an OSM based turn-by-turn, iOS app that is
| CarPlay compatible?
| habi wrote:
| https://www.magicearth.com/support/using-carplay/
| exabrial wrote:
| Except my street. No matter how many times I email Lyft support,
| it always sends them the wrong place. Most Lyft drivers don't
| read the directions on pickup either explaining the problem.
|
| /sigh #FirstWorldProblems
| randoramax wrote:
| Have you tried fixing the map yourself? It's easy, just like
| Wikipedia.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| As an OSM mapper I would not say that debugging and fixing
| address issue is easy...
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's maybe a little snarky, but the most common issue is
| relatively straightforward to fix, just add the missing
| address.
| chihuahua wrote:
| That is a nice feature of OSM, and I've done this a few
| times.
|
| But I wonder if there is any propagation delay from OSM to
| Lyft. When I made some changes to OSM data, I expected the
| Strava app to pick up the changes for route creation, but
| they don't receive updates constantly. Instead, it took
| several months until the changes took effect on Strava.
| clarecorthell wrote:
| No bothersome problem is too small! If you'd like to share, we
| would be eager to look into this. Reach us through the app or
| at osm-questions [a] lyft.com.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| The real problem of GP is with the drivers not reading the
| note. Each system should have a manual override, Lyft does
| seem to have one, but the human element failed.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| If it is OSM data issue then you can ask for help on one of
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels
|
| Or me directly - though either would likely require revealing
| your address and location to diagnose what is going wrong.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| And I helped with that. :)
| npteljes wrote:
| Me too :) feels great to see the changes online, and then as
| they propagate to different providers.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| On the other hand, I wonder if OSM's accuracy in Europe has taken
| a hit in the last year. The lockdowns have led to a wave of
| bankruptcies of restaurants and fitness centers in several
| countries, but because mappers are forced to stay home and aren't
| circulating in the city doing their business, they aren't
| noticing so much what has changed and removing those POIs from
| the map. Also, the extremely strict lockdowns in some countries
| have prevented people from going out for mapping expeditions in
| the surrounding regions to add missing infrastructure.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Interestingly with almost nothing to do but walks around the
| city, Covid is the first time I started actively contributing
| to OSM. Although StreetComplete [1] definitely helped there,
| albeit just as a gateway for actually updated POIs, which still
| required the web interface.
|
| [1] https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > gateway for actually updated POIs, which still required the
| web interface
|
| Vespucci app can be used to do it directly on phone.
|
| Vespucci vs StreetComplete are quite interesting, in many
| aspects they are complete opposites.
| Harvesterify wrote:
| Also, OSM Go![1] allows you to edit/delete any object on
| the map :)
|
| [1] Available as PWA and Android app:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm_Go!
| mongol wrote:
| If you notice this you can add a note to the map. This does not
| require an account or logging in and it will be visible to
| mappers.
| angott wrote:
| This is an issue with all map services, really. I see the same
| thing happening on Google and Apple Maps, lots of places that
| are permanently closed haven't been updated yet.
| petre wrote:
| Apple, Amazon, Facebook and MS have been lately contributing
| a lot to OSM, so what you see on Apple Maps might very well
| be OSM data.
|
| https://joemorrison.medium.com/openstreetmap-is-having-a-
| mom...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Apple Maps has been OpenStreetMap for years.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Apple's old map was OpenStreetMap plus other sources but
| its new ones are proprietary. But its new ones are only
| available in the US, UK, Canada and Ireland.
| jonas21 wrote:
| I believe the old map was mostly TomTom (TeleAtlas) with
| a little bit of other sources sprinkled in.
| balp wrote:
| Yes, more TomTom that openstreetmap, that was clearly
| show by the dataquality. Much less walk and vike
| information. If you don't drive a car all my sampling say
| OSM is way better.
| izacus wrote:
| No, Apple is USING OpenStreetMap which is a different
| thing - they pulled the data but haven't contributed much
| back as they're building their own proprietary backend.
| habi wrote:
| Apple does contribute to OSM quite a bit, see around 4:00
| in https://2020.stateofthemap.org/sessions/SPRQVZ/ for
| details of corporate contributions: "Apple is currently
| doing the most work on the map".
|
| Here is the base repository of their contributions on
| GitHub: https://github.com/osmlab/appledata
|
| And if I see this correctly, the #adt hashtag (for Apple
| Data Team) contains already +100000 changesets for this
| year alone: https://osmcha.org/?filters=%7B%22comment%22%
| 3A%5B%7B%22labe...
| petre wrote:
| They also pay Kaart to do it, so most if not all of the
| Kaart contributions are paid for by Apple.
|
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple#Contributions_t
| hro...
| elgaard wrote:
| I do not think so. Well restaurant may be a little behind.
|
| I try to maintain all restaurants etc in Denmark by comparing
| OSM POIs to public health inspection reports. see:
| https://digitalfrihed.dk/restaurants/all.html
|
| So today there are 243 restaurants, cafes and fast food places
| in OSM that do not have a valid inspection report (the pink
| ones on my map). I think that many are just closed temporarily
| because of Covid and therefore have not been inspected and the
| inspection report just timed out. Probably some that have an
| inspection report will never open again, but I will soon find
| out. Many of them are cafeterias for employees in larger
| companies and will likely open again.
|
| Many restaurants are open for takeaway, also many that did not
| do takeaway before the lockdown.
|
| I have lately been doing speedlimits, mostly from Mapillary.
| But I have also done some surveying on bicycle.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| I took my honeymoon trip to New Zealand almost a decade ago using
| a Garmin gps and a map I made myself from the OSM database
| flashed on an SD card. It worked great.
| guntars wrote:
| Lyft has access to some pretty good data on where the roads
| actually are and if there are any closures. Looks like they are
| already contributing back, which is awesome. Something I've never
| heard being done, but could be very helpful for cities, is
| tracking the bumpiness of roads as a metric for road quality. The
| city could have near real time access to information on where the
| potholes are. I'd think they'd be willing to pay for it.
| blt wrote:
| The Lyft app could measure bumpiness in great detail by using
| the phone's accelerometer.
| friseurtermin wrote:
| We're working on a project in that direction [0].
|
| The basic idea of the app is that cyclist record their bike
| rides through the city and accelerometer data is used to report
| dangerous situations (e.g. a car crossing a cycle lane without
| regards for the cyclists). It turns out that this accelerometer
| data can also be used to check the cycle path quality. Some
| cities respond well to the idea while others just ignore the
| problem
|
| [0]: https://www.mcc.tu-
| berlin.de/menue/forschung/projekte/simra/...
| jacobr wrote:
| Volvo cars will notify other Volvos about slippery roads and
| other road hazards, and there's work to share this data with
| other car manufacturers as well.
| https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/volvo-european-data-task-...
|
| Is there something like an Open Routing project where this
| dynamic data would make more sense than in OSM?
| mqus wrote:
| The wiki states that this data type is being proposed:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Surfac...
| qwertay wrote:
| Says the proposal is abandoned in 2011. The thing is OSM does
| not deal with real time data, the general rule is if the data
| is likely to change within the next month it doesn't go in
| OSM. A lot of OSM apps and servers cache the OSM dataset so
| anything like a road closed for one day would be stale before
| it even reached users.
|
| Thats one of the big issues with OSM though, they have an
| attitude of "Thats not my problem, it should go in another
| dataset" but then no one actually has an alternative place to
| put it so users just miss out.
| berkes wrote:
| There are people working on layering the data better. I was
| at a talk about this at two State of the Map conferences. I
| don't have links or names ready, on mobile, sorry.
|
| The idea, in my words, is to have a standard on how to link
| between layers: how to merge them, so to say.
|
| That way, a routing app for a car would only need the roads
| and their features layers. But the search engine for
| tourists needs the poi layer and not all the road details.
|
| A 'live' layer for e.g. traffic density could then be a
| neat commercial product for OSM consumers. But without
| standards to link your layer to, say, the OSM streets, it
| is almost impossible to offer and process such a layer.
| elgaard wrote:
| There have been projects like that.
|
| The problem is that potholes do not exists because cities do
| not know where they are. They exist because of lack of
| resources or priorities.
| [deleted]
| aasasd wrote:
| There's a similar-ish precedent: in my city, OsmAnd can display
| whether streets have proper lighting. Though I guess that
| doesn't change as often as asphalt--but then again, I can only
| envy people if potholes are fixed _too fast_ for them.
| tauntz wrote:
| I did a prototype for that idea back in the J2ME days when the
| first phones came out that had accelerometers. It works
| surprisingly well, provided you have lots of data (multiple
| cars driving through the same route to average out any random
| fluctuations due to driving style etc).
|
| There were two issues: 1) It was way too early for this idea as
| the devices that had the HW for it were rather rare 2) I had no
| killer app that would entice people to install and run the app.
| There were no app-taxi companies at the time and just telling
| people that "please download and open that app when you are
| driving to help the local municipality fix the roads" wasn't
| really going to fly
|
| I'd still love to work on that idea though.. one day :)
| dewitt wrote:
| "Road directionality" being only 98.9% accurate seems to be a
| huge problem for a navigation app!
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| Road directionality is variable over time. I'm not sure at what
| rate it changes but I bet it's a lot more than 1.1% per year.
| djrogers wrote:
| Hmm, I've seen maybe a handful of two-way streets change to
| one-way over my entire life, and have never seen a one-way
| street change direction. If ~1% of streets _changed
| direction_ every year, there'd be mass confusion and
| frustration.
| macintux wrote:
| There's apparently a trend of converting one-way streets to
| two-way; cities have realized that one-way streets are a
| little too efficient, they increase bandwidth but often
| cities want you to stop and shop.
|
| Indianapolis has been moving that direction, at least, but
| I don't know how widespread it is.
| jmkb wrote:
| Mapping OSM in NYC, I've run into about a dozen one-way
| streets that have changed direction at some point,
| sometimes for just a block or two.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| One major thoroughfare in London changed (if I remember
| right) from one-way in one direction, to one-way in the
| other direction, to two-way, in the space of a couple of
| years.
|
| People got used to it very quickly, to the extent that they
| would not remember the change ever happened.
|
| If you have a broad enough roads to have two-way streets
| everywhere, there's little motivation for it to change.
| [Edited to note: at the level of individual cities, OSM's
| directionality was often estimated to be 100% correct]
|
| But, with some narrower one-way streets, there becomes a
| clear motivation to tweak things to improve traffic flows
| (and also tweak the surrounding two-way streets).
| nawgz wrote:
| Im yet to read TFA, but I could foresee there being plenty of
| one-way private drives and parking lots - if not included in
| the study, I tend to agree with you
| visarga wrote:
| Off topic - is there a way to get an index of all businesses in
| OSM (restaurants, hotels, shops, etc)? I need the data for
| training a NLP model.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Yeah, http://overpass-turbo.eu/
|
| use the wizard.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I've just checked (some years have passes since the last time)
| and it seems improved a lot for Europe too.
|
| I personally am not really interested in geospatial precision, I
| mostly use public transport so I need all the bus/tram/etc stops
| placed and named accurately.
| advisedwang wrote:
| I'd be really interested in a comparison to other mapping
| providers. 95% doesn't sound that great in the abstract, but
| perhaps that's better than the competition?
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| As Google has lost it's sheen of benevolence over the last decade
| public knowledge projects like this become ever more appealing.
| Wikipedia proves they can be wildly successful all without
| capital investment and the perverse incentives that follow.
| HotVector wrote:
| I used to think Google was the "good guy" by providing so many
| resources for free, but I've realized how they've exploited
| their market dominance by essentially manipulating the masses
| with their ad service. We need to move away from conglomerates
| and start using software that doesn't sell your soul to the
| devil.
| blackboxlogic wrote:
| I thought I was helping the world by fixing things on google
| maps. That will be a perpetual reminder for how naive I can
| be.
| konjin wrote:
| You need to start paying for software because if you don't
| then you're the product.
|
| Payment might include leasing out your infrastructure to the
| project until cryptos become viable for something other than
| ponzi schemes.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Are you aware of software developed as a hobby or as part
| of the actual product (without making the user a product)
| or as a limited version demonstrating full product?
| konjin wrote:
| There is a reason why we don't visit surgeons who do it
| as a hobby.
| berkes wrote:
| There is a fallacy in that conclusion though.
|
| When you pay, you may still be a product. There is no
| (economic) law that dictates that when you pay, your data
| may not be sold.
|
| Paying customers might dissapear if they find out you make
| additional profit through datamining or -sales. So there is
| more incentive not to sell or mine data, but it is no
| guarantee.
|
| The only guarantee is when technology ensures the service
| provider does not have the data at all. E.g. through e2e
| encryption.
| qwertay wrote:
| Wikipedia shows that average people are pretty good at
| assembling data. The problem is drive by contributors are not
| very good at developing software. Wikipedia is super basic
| software wise while GIS and everything around it is extremely
| complex.
|
| The data in OSM is pretty good but there are no apps for it
| that are actually good other than leaflet JS for embedding on
| sites.
|
| Have to remember that a maps app is way more than just data.
| Its efficient routing, its good text to speach, its pulling in
| data from multiple sources like the gps location of the bus I'm
| waiting for or the roads closed for construction currently.
|
| You would also need a whole bunch of heuristics for the OSM
| dataset that the current apps don't have. OsmAnd would not be
| able to tell the difference between the turning lane on an
| intersection and an entire road that just has no name because
| the way the data is entered is there is just an unamed path
| joining the roads so the text to speach would say "bear
| slightly left" instead of "turn right on to foo street".
| blendergeek wrote:
| > Have to remember that a maps app is way more than just
| data.
|
| Agreed.
|
| > Its efficient routing,
|
| This is a hard one especially for long routes when calculated
| on a phone rather than on a server.
|
| > its good text to speach,
|
| Ummmm. Text-to-speech is almost always provided by the OS
| rather than the app.
|
| > its pulling in data from multiple sources like the gps
| location of the bus I'm waiting for
|
| There are surprisingly good apps for bus navigation using OSM
| in some parts of the world. Unfortunately, where I live, bus
| companies seem to "license" that data only to Google.
|
| > or the roads closed for construction currently.
|
| This is literally part of the OSM dataset.
|
| > You would also need a whole bunch of heuristics for the OSM
| dataset that the current apps don't have. OsmAnd would not be
| able to tell the difference between the turning lane on an
| intersection and an entire road that just has no name because
| the way the data is entered is there is just an unamed path
| joining the roads so the text to speach would say "bear
| slightly left" instead of "turn right on to foo street".
|
| Rather than "heuristics for the OSM dataset", we generally
| need a more complete dataset. A "turning lane on an
| intersection" and an "entire road that just has no name"
| _should_ be mapped differently. The turning lane will
| probably be mapped as a "link" type road with a
| "destination:street" of the road that it is going to (if it
| is mapped as a separate road at all). The generic no-name
| street will be mapped as a road with "noname" (yes, there is
| a special tag for this). Further, in many cases, a "turning
| lane" will be mapped with the "turn:lanes" tag on a road
| leaving no room for confusion with generic unnamed roads.
|
| I will admit that in current mapping in many places you will
| often get "bear slightly left" rather than "turn right on to
| foo street". However, this is almost always caused by a
| (current) lack of completeness in the data rather than a need
| to create some sort of set of heuristics to figure out what
| is "actually" going on.
|
| I think the hardest part for a good maps app that you did not
| mention is search. Searching in OsmAnd (offline) is abysmal.
| In fact it is worse than that. It is so bad that I will
| switch to a web browser, search on DDG, open a link in GMaps,
| find the coordinates and copy them to OsmAnd for routing
| because I know Osmand search does not have a snowball's
| chance in h** of remotely finding what I want in any sane
| manner.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > "entire road that just has no name" should be mapped
| differently
|
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:noname (used for
| example by StreetComplete that I really recommend if
| someone has Android, wants to contribute and is not
| interesting in learning to use a complicated editor).
| berkes wrote:
| Graphhopper is an excellent open source routing engine.
|
| I'm not sure if you are really saying that Open Source is
| unfit for GIS. Because there is a lot of proof it is a
| perfectly suited model for GIS.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Absolutely true, Graphhopper is amazing.
|
| But I completely agree with the point of the original
| comment. Open Source software often comes with questionable
| usability and is often not well fitted to be used by the
| average consumer. While lots of open source applications
| offer the same, if not more, features than their commercial
| counterparts, it often feels like you need a special degree
| to use a simple android application or desktop app.
|
| Without a good and usable, cross platform application to
| use with OSM, OSM will never be something used by the
| average consumer.
| berkes wrote:
| Then the conclusion would be "Open Source is unfitted as
| model to build end-user software for the average
| consumer".
|
| Which I still disagree with, but that is a different
| discussion. It has nothing to do with Open Source being
| unfit as model for sofware around OSM or GIS.
|
| Edit: to be clear: Bing Maps, Apple Maps, Facebook,
| WhatsApp are just some of the (average) consumer facing
| products that use OSM for their data. Some solely use OSM
| as data, others enrich and/or use it to mix with other
| sources. This to show examples of how OSM data _is_ used
| in and by apps that you probably use. But where the data
| is Open Source, the app using it, is not.
| sschueller wrote:
| Mapping should be something done by the government. They know the
| most (construction plans etc) and they need to do it anyway. The
| data should then be available to anyone who needs it.
| Madzen__ wrote:
| Is that not common in other countries? In Norway we have
| Kartverket[1] which maps all properties, trails, ports and
| roads.
|
| [1] https://www.kartverket.no/en
| sabujp wrote:
| this is an excellent design interview question
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have been considering looking at OSM as "yet another data
| source" for my maps, but overall I run into the highly abstract
| issue of comparison: how do I know that two segments (one from
| say OSM, one from perhaps the county) reference the same stretch
| of street for comparison?
|
| Even the slightest nudge of a single coordinate point on the line
| would mean that they were not geometrically identical, so I would
| not know to compare their attributes. Names are almost laughably
| bad for this purpose, for having multiple forms ("N SECOND ST" vs
| "NORTH 2ND STREET") and for being terrifying vague (so many, many
| Main Streets). Worse yet, a given segment might be split at a
| point _not_ an intersection (speed change occurs here,
| municipality change, directionality change, road type change,
| etc) so I cannot even rely on those. And it is entirely possible
| for different maps to include a driveway, splitting a street at
| that point, while another does not, leaving it continuous.
|
| Large-scale automated comparison of this kind of thing is
| challenging.
| galimaufry wrote:
| > Names are almost laughably bad for this purpose, for having
| multiple forms ("N SECOND ST" vs "NORTH 2ND STREET") and for
| being terrifying vague (so many, many Main Streets).
|
| libpostal (open source, open data location parser) might help
| with this. Between using it to parse the name, and
| supplementing this with the city name (using reverse geocode
| with imprecise coordinates), you might be able to get something
| useful.
| jakecopp wrote:
| https://sharedstreets.io/ may help!
|
| > SharedStreets Referencing System is a global, non-proprietary
| system for describing streets. The Referencing System is the
| foundation of the SharedStreets toolkit and it is used to
| connect a wide range of street-linked data. The Referencing
| System connects street data from private companies and cities.
| Referenced data can then be transferred between different maps
| seamlessly.
|
| I think it can align maps that have similar streets that may
| not align perfectly coordinate wise.
| juliansimioni wrote:
| One of the under-appreciated advantages OSM has here is that
| they have a fairly well enforced convention of using fully
| expanded abbreviations in addresses and street names.
|
| It's _much_ easier for automated comparison to replace `street`
| with `st` than it is to guess which one of many possible
| expansions to replace `st` with (is it saint? street? sankt?
| strasse?).
|
| This isn't foolproof but much of the "authoritative" data out
| there has no such convention, making analysis much more
| dangerous.
| jonas21 wrote:
| The official USPS abbreviation list has some pretty crazy
| ones:
|
| https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28apc_002.htm
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Oh, cramming the names into a common format is something I
| have under my belt, but there are additional wrinkles and,
| worse yet, local bizarreness (aka "historical convention").
| The names are the least of it, really, even if they are ...
| odd.
| racuna wrote:
| I used it while backpacking across Europe back in 2019. Very
| useful when I was offline.
|
| But a lot of building numbers were missed.
|
| So I had to use Google Maps when I had Internet connection.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Not just in US.. Here in Spain too. It's really great. Especially
| niche things like walking tracks are super accurate whereas on
| Google Maps I'm walking in one big grey square :D
| post_break wrote:
| Is this because Google has increased the api pricing and people
| have switched to OSM?
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| When I worked in HFC/Fiber Design (and automation via code), we
| tried looking into OSM as a replacement for our workflows that
| used google earth and hack on top of hack (Google earth kept
| removing parts of the API that were useful for automation/semi-
| automation, at least I got to learn lots about P/Invoke I guess?)
|
| Back then, it unfortunately wasn't usable for us, but I kept the
| research bits aside just in case when I left the job in 2013.
|
| When I spoke with someone still at that company a few months ago,
| I learned that over the years OSM had evolved/matured enough that
| they were using it far more than google earth.
|
| I miss GIS/Mapping. It's great to see it is still a collaborative
| community. :)
| clarecorthell wrote:
| Lyft study shows crucial OpenStreetMap road attributes are fresh
| and high quality in 30 North American cities, as compared to
| groundtruth. Blog post and paper detail the process, methodology,
| and results.
| lindner wrote:
| One thing that someone might consider is working with Data
| Portability laws to allow for export of user contributed data to
| corporate map platforms.
|
| I'd like to add my Google Maps contributions to OSM
|
| I'm a Level 7 local guide there and was an active user of
| MapMaker back in the day..
| wraptile wrote:
| Google map reviews is the only thing keeping me from OSM based
| maps. I love to explore, take photos and review places. OsmAnd
| has some review functionality but it's very barebones
| unfortunately.
| jakecopp wrote:
| Which sort of contributions would you like to copy from Google
| Maps to OSM?
|
| If you personally surveyed these places you can go to
| OpenStreetMap.org, sign in and then you can add your changes -
| OSM may already have the info so a straight import wouldn't be
| possible.
|
| Make sure not to copy any of Google's details to OSM that you
| didn't personally survey as that would violate copyright.
|
| Please reach out to me if you'd like a hand with getting
| started mapping on OSM :)
| lindner wrote:
| Wrong answer.. This effort does not scale. You want to make
| it such that facts added by anyone can be easily imported
| with a simple opt-in.
|
| GDPR data portability could be expanded to include defined
| formats for export so that import can be done in an automated
| fashion.
| Brakenshire wrote:
| The problem I have with OpenStreetMap is the license, it seems
| you can use an OSM derived base map and then layer anything else
| on top without problems, but you cannot process the data or mix
| in proprietary data without releasing the algorithm or the final
| dataset. So any competitive advantage derived from processing the
| data has to be immediately made open.
|
| So you see a lot of use of OSM as a base map, but very little use
| as a mapping database for commercial applications. I see why they
| did this, to prevent companies taking their data to bootstrap a
| closed competitor, but the consequence is that the data is locked
| in and is getting much less use than you'd hope as a database.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Can you elaborate where license would be a problem?
|
| Keep in mind this:
|
| https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidel...
|
| Which eases the issue a little bit. For instance, MS uses OSM
| buildings for Bing Maps. Or Apple uses OSM for road data in
| selected countries (Ukraine?)
| Brakenshire wrote:
| I'll give a contrived example, say you're a property startup,
| and you want to produce a walkability rating for each house
| you sell. You might want to do a calculation on OSM for
| restaurants within 5 minutes walk, maybe a chef rating for
| whether there's a greengrocer, fishmonger, delicatessen and
| butcher within walking distance, or you want to take into
| account a walk back from the train station and the opening
| times to see whether the shops are still open after someone
| comes back from their commute. This is the kind of thing
| which would be interesting for big cities with a lot of
| commuting by public transport.
|
| My understanding is if you did this with OSM data you'd
| either have to make the algorithm that did the calculation
| public, or the output dataset (locations as keys and the
| final ratings for each as values).
|
| OSM has exceptions for horizontal slicing (layer separate
| data on top of an OSM basemap), for vertical slicing (union
| OSM data with separate data) and for trivial manipulations,
| but it seems it doesn't if you do this kind of non-trivial
| processing of OSM data.
|
| So that means that it's almost impossible for a company to
| find an interesting way of processing the data which can give
| them an advantage over a direct competitor, and there's no
| real incentive to do so.
|
| This is my reading of the terms from a few months back,
| hopefully I'm wrong about it. But I suspect this is why it's
| rare to see the data being used like this.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Well, companies do offer isochrone APIs. That, or graphical
| maps, are Produced Works under ODbL and only need
| attribution. Actually enabling that was the _point_ of
| licence switch in the fall of 2012 which while mostly
| successful wasn 't without pain points (e.g. in Australia
| key contributors rejected new Contributor Terms and their
| edits had to be redacted).
| Brakenshire wrote:
| Thanks, that's interesting, it doesn't match with my
| reading of the guidelines, again, glad if I'm reading
| them wrong and you can correct me.
|
| https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Gui
| del...
|
| It says clearly there that the underlying database for a
| produced work has to be published. So can a competitor
| not just request the derived database directly from a
| company selling the API?
|
| Also, " If the published result of your project is
| intended for the extraction of the original data, then it
| is a database and not a Produced Work" - does that not
| exactly describe an API? It talks about mugs, data
| visualisations, map images, physical maps and so on as
| produced works. I thought this meant you could protect
| (i.e. not release) essentially a styling of map data, but
| not the map data itself, which must be released.
| hutch120 wrote:
| I think this adds to the case for Rousseau's Theory of human
| nature... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
| [deleted]
| Ayesh wrote:
| Good that OSM is accurate in cities as well, because in hiking,
| skiing, or even some ferry routes, OSM simply wins because that's
| often the only mapping provider to even have _any_ data. Some of
| my first hand experiences:
|
| - French GR-20 routes. Google maps are laughably empty, while OSM
| has you covered with almost the same information as the hiking
| maps you can buy on the trail.
|
| - Anapurna - similar to GR-20 situation. This route gets changed
| often due to landslides, but there is always some person doing a
| great job updating information not too late after.
|
| - Volcanoes - OSM maps often contain camping grounds, water
| sources, etc. This is something I actively contribute too. The
| level of detail is amazing. Some guides in fact lose potential
| clients because of this.
|
| OSM is a wonderful feat by all its contributors, and isn't
| appreciated as much as it deserves.
| bovine3dom wrote:
| You can look at French hiking maps online at
| https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte - I find it works well for
| planning a route and then I use OSM when I'm actually doing the
| hike.
| thitcanh wrote:
| Is there an easy way to contribute from my phone? If I could
| just turn the GPS on and let it track my path I'd be able to
| contribute all of my random hikes that might not be on OSM.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I quite like that interactive website that helps visitors
| choose a mapping tool: https://whatosm.pavie.info/
|
| It asks the difficulty level, time you'd like to spend, and
| whether you want to map at home or on the terrain.
| sp8962 wrote:
| You should be aware that it rather biased (doesn't show
| tools that are in competition to those that the author was
| involved in), and out of date.
| MayeulC wrote:
| That could be, but it's a start, and helped me discover a
| few tools.
|
| Do you have a list of such tools? Do you have a source
| for attributing this to malice rather than ignorance?
|
| Now, my personal opinion on mobile editing: Vespucci is a
| bit complex, but basically allows you to do anything on
| the go. I ususally save GPX tracks using OSMAnd, but it
| can be heavy on the battery.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| OSM discourages adding raw GPS tracks to the map, rather they
| should only be uploaded to a sort of waiting room hosted on
| OSM's infrastructure. A GPS track from a phone or unit is
| something that needs to be carefully examined, compared to
| other GPS tracks from the region or aerial imagery, and then
| tweaked and refined. You need to be able to use specialized
| mapping software properly in order to contribute tracks to
| OSM. The good news is that the barrier to entry is fairly low
| for people like you and me on this "news for nerds" site.
| jakecopp wrote:
| You can also add details using
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete, it's
| super simple and almost like a game :)
| diggan wrote:
| There is bunch of suggestions on how to contribute to OSM
| with your mobile here: https://learnosm.org/en/mobile-
| mapping/
|
| On the left side you have a list of apps/devices with guides
| and summaries
| nichos wrote:
| Street complete (fdroid/playstore or GH) is a very easy way
| to use your phone to quickly to edits or validate data.
| https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| You can directly upload GPS traces:
|
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/traces
|
| That won't get them into the OpenStreetMap database, but it
| makes them available (if you set them to public) for anyone
| looking to add the trails.
|
| There's also apps like StreetComplete. It has 'challenges',
| where it prompts you for answers to questions and updates
| OpenStreetMap accordingly (so what is the surface type of a
| road, things like that).
|
| Vespucci is a full featured editor for Android.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Interesting thought.
|
| I have GPS traces for a number of Amtrak routes across
| America. I wonder if those would be useful.
| pomian wrote:
| Why not? It is always informative to have more information.
| Especially if you know ahead of time, what side of the
| train to be on, to see more interesting things. Also having
| information on one map program is great. Why switch apps?
| Especially since OSM is so privacy friendly.
| stirlo wrote:
| I imagine something as large as a railway is already
| covered (especially with the railfan community). In fact in
| most locations they actually include the number of tracks,
| passing loops and other features that a simple GPS track
| will not have.
| npteljes wrote:
| After registering, it took me only like an hour to have my
| track up and mapping it with their brilliant online editing
| tool. There are some gotchas, but the interface is really
| friendly and their wiki is vast with info, references and
| tutorials alike.
| dualthro wrote:
| For volcanoes, what do you mean guides lose potential clients
| because of this? Like their maps aren't as good as other guides
| and so people don't hire them? I'm a bit confused.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| It gave my old Garmin GPS a new life, where Garmin stopped
| providing updated data. A packaged map file with OSM data made
| it useful again.
|
| For those in a similar situation, I use this
|
| https://www.openmapchest.org/maps/canada/
| habi wrote:
| For those in a similar situation which want this for Europe,
| too, use http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl, which has worldwide
| coverage.
| benjaminclark wrote:
| These experiences are interesting, but I think Annapurna might
| not be the right benchmark to evaluate against. One of the
| least climbed and most deadly mountains on Earth seems rather
| far from OSM's core use case.
|
| It is cool that OSM has the data, but I hope anyone attempting
| the summit is getting information more directly from other
| climbers.
| greeneggs wrote:
| The reference is presumably to hiking the Annapurna Circuit,
| not for climbing Annapurna itself.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna_Circuit
| [deleted]
| jokteur wrote:
| In my country, there is an amazing government mandated service
| called Swiss Topo (https://map.geo.admin.ch), which can be
| accessed freely. Here are some features:
|
| - detailed maps from 1:10,000 to 1:1,000,000
|
| - hiking routes which are actively maintained. You can create
| your own hiking routes, and it will estimate the time that it
| will take to complete them.
|
| - historical data, like historical maps since 1864 and aerial
| photos
|
| - aeronautical maps, naval charts, geological maps, ...
|
| - basically any kind of data that you can find on maps, such as
| land registery, water planning, spatial planning, etc.
|
| I am not sure if other countries provide this level of service
| free of charge. I would be curious to see what other countries
| offer on this topic.
| dopidop wrote:
| I know that I dearly miss the French IGN. It's close to
| impossible to find decent paper map for hiking in the US.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I've found the Nat Geo waterproof maps to be quite good.
| Between the "Trails Illustrated" fold-up maps and the
| "Topographic Trail Guides", the east coast is pretty well
| covered.
|
| https://www.natgeomaps.com/trail-maps
|
| I also use Gaia GPS as a planning tool. Fiddle with routes
| on the laptop, then load the relevant map squares on the
| phone for offline use. It has the NatGeo maps, plus several
| other sources, available for overlay. With this, my NatGeo
| paper maps largely become backups.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Have you tried USGS topo maps?
|
| I guess the paper will be out of date, I'm not sure what
| the new electronic ones do for local and regional trails (I
| think they would print okay, they just aren't distributed
| directly on paper).
| darkfirefly wrote:
| NSW, Aus offers SIX Maps: https://six.maps.nsw.gov.au (this
| offers very good imagery of the NSW areas, better than
| google)
|
| That's the easy-to-use-maps.
|
| There's also the aus-wide https://nationalmap.gov.au where
| you get basic satellite maps with the option to add various
| datasets and even daily maps from Landsat 2A
|
| There's also ELVIS foundation spatial data
| https://elevation.fsdf.org.au
|
| There's don't really cover hiking trails that much, etc.
| There's more general purpose mapping applications.
|
| It's also possible to find various topographic maps in static
| form somewhere on the government sites.
|
| Councils are the ones that provide the hiking trails, etc. so
| it depends on the locality. The Northern Beaches council for
| example provides an interactive trails map, but most have
| static maps.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Those are all government funded and the data is private,
| correct?
| wildfire wrote:
| Wow - very interesting.
|
| Btw: the URL for Six maps is: https://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/
|
| Not sure if it was changed but it took me a few tries to
| find the right permutation
| dvdkon wrote:
| Here the national land survey bureau (CUZK, rough
| translation) maintains maps in a similar scale to the one you
| posted. But they were opened only recently (they used to be
| for sale for pretty high prices) and the bureau haven't built
| a compelling web interface over them. The current UI [1] is
| basically just an ArcGIS frontend, with no automatic layer
| choosing based on zoom level and quite slow at that.
|
| Planning maps are usually unfortunately only held by the
| responsible subjects (towns and larger administrative
| blocks), so there's no one map or one format. Most of these
| maps are at least published in some viewable capacity,
| though, from what I can tell.
|
| [1]: https://ags.cuzk.cz/geoprohlizec/
| [deleted]
| Faaak wrote:
| swisstopo is really good, but as far as i know, sadly, only
| some data is open, and not all of it
| habi wrote:
| There's a bit of discussion in `osm_ch` that from March on,
| the SwissTopo data will be free OpenGovernmentData:
| https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/swisstopo/free-
| geodata.htm...
|
| The debate is what 'free' means :)
| jokteur wrote:
| Oh, this is very interesting. Thank you for the link.
|
| I think some of the questions about what 'free' of charge
| mean are answered below in the frequently asked questions
| section.
| lqet wrote:
| While I agree that OSM is great and highly accurate, I would be
| careful using it in remote locations where your life may depend
| on a correct trail. It is very easy to edit OSM (changes are
| propagated into map tiles after a few minutes), and malicious
| intent is not immediately spotted. The latter is especially
| true in remote locations.
| leokennis wrote:
| I mean...sure, never blindly trust anything. But is there any
| proof of "malicious intent" in OSM mapping, having lead to
| actual issues?
| stinos wrote:
| _I mean...sure, never blindly trust anything_
|
| This. 'death by GPS' is a thing unfortunately, and those
| are usually maps you actually pay for which makes it worse,
| in some way.
| sorenjan wrote:
| I usually look at Strava's heatmap when I'm unfamiliar with
| an area. Chances are if there's a path on the map, it shows
| up on the heatmap.
|
| https://www.strava.com/heatmap
| gevz wrote:
| That is a fantastic idea. Thank you for sharing. I just
| checked a few trails that were missing in OSM and they all
| showed up as bright yellow on heatmap.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Strava even has their own fork of the OSM online editor
| iD[0], that uses the heatmap data to align (or "slide"
| [1]) paths to where people have been. I haven't used it
| in a while, it was pretty slow when I did and I don't
| know about licensing etc, but it looks like it still
| works. So if you want to add the trails you could try it
| out.
|
| [0] https://strava.github.io/iD
|
| [1] https://labs.strava.com/slide/
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Slide unfortunately hasn't worked for years. Not long
| after Paul Mach, who created slide, left strava, there
| was that whole national security incident with the heat
| map.
|
| The heat map was changed to hide military bases, etc, but
| it broke slide and no one cared enough to fix it.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| This is incredibly unfortunate because Slide is ideal for
| mapping trails in the woods. Lacking something like it I
| end up tracing them by hand, which is a pain. (I do a lot
| of trail mapping in Michigan.)
| thrower123 wrote:
| In rural areas of the US, there are some places where OSM data
| is hilariously bad. At one point they imported a whole bunch of
| TIGER data that wasn't cleaned up properly, and it's still
| showing roads that don't exist a decade later.
|
| It's a good way to tell if a mapping service is using their own
| data or just ripping off OSM though.
| malloryerik wrote:
| This is good to hear. Any idea if it's accurate with coastal
| data? I'm asking for a scientific project that seeks to map the
| locations of various seaweed strains.
| teddyh wrote:
| There's OpenSeaMap: https://map.openseamap.org/
| dharmab wrote:
| The other great mapping resource is CalTopo
| (https://caltopo.com). Outside did an article on how CalTopo is
| used by people who work and play outside:
| https://www.outsideonline.com/2229756/your-navigation-outdat...
| seism wrote:
| That story (from 2017) is fantastic. CalTopo - and OSM, at
| best of times - a project of passion. Thanks for sharing!
| [deleted]
| s0rce wrote:
| I often notice when OSM is wrong/missing data while hiking and
| I'll record a trace and update when I get back home. I enjoy
| contributing but I wish there was a bit more of a community
| aspect to it (or maybe I simply haven't found that). In some
| areas the US government agency maps are hilariously out of date
| or simply completely wrong so OSM is great to able to simply
| fix it after visiting.
| blackboxlogic wrote:
| I've really enjoyed the community at slack.openstreetmap.us
| great for finding projects or people to work with. There are
| local channels!
| matkoniecz wrote:
| You can find something at
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels or
| https://community.osm.be/ (click on your area).
|
| Personally I follow
|
| - global Discord channel (and local one)
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Discord - global and
| local Telegram - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_
| OSM_centric_Tele... - forum of a local community -
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tagging_mailing_list (if
| you enjoy participating in design of tagging schemes) -
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk_mailing_list
| leokennis wrote:
| For hiking, what I also like to do is add small and "useless"
| features to the map, that can help navigation.
|
| Like, if there is a small open spot or some minor structure
| in the middle of the woods, I will add it. If someone is
| walking and not sure if they are still on the right track,
| they can look around, see the open spot, see the open spot on
| OSM, and know that they are indeed at that place.
| ghaff wrote:
| OSM isn't perfect--especially on trails that aren't official in
| any way. (Although there are some totally informal trails
| literally out my door that are far better than you could
| reasonably expect. And the missing sections are probably on
| private land which is one reason I haven't filled them in.) But
| Google seems to have pretty much zero interest in mapping even
| popular official trails in many cases.
| thejosh wrote:
| Help contribute back to make it amazing. That's why OSM is
| amazing :)
| roelschroeven wrote:
| Nothing is perfect, not even official paper maps.
|
| I remember a hike we did on holiday in the Drome department
| of France when I was a little kid, long before OSM or Google
| Maps or even Microsoft's Terraserver. Must have been
| somewhere in the mid to late 80's, I think. We did have a
| paper map though, and I think it was an official topographic
| map. We started in one valley and the plan was to hike up the
| ridge and then down to the neighboring valley, where we knew
| the Tour De France was going to pass that day. Watching the
| Tour was not really the main objective, otherwise we would
| have driven to a more suitable spot by car, but it was an
| incentive to keep us kids going. In hindsight we could never
| have made it on time.
|
| The map clearly showed paths on both sides of the ridge, and
| sure enough, walking up the ridge went smoothly (if tiring)
| along that path. But when we arrived at the top, there was no
| path down the other side to be seen. There simply wasn't one,
| and the terrain was not exactly suitable for walking down
| without a path. The world simply didn't conform to the map.
| So we stayed there for a while and saw the Tour pass far
| below us, much too far to recognize anything except the
| helicopters but even those looked more like flies than
| helicopters from our high point of view.
|
| That wasn't the only time we saw significant differences
| between French maps and France itself, but it was by far the
| most memorable one.
| Loic wrote:
| For people not knowing it: https://opentopomap.org
|
| OpenStreetMap with the traditional topographic view. But I
| was not able to find where you wanted to hike to see the
| Tour de France.
| arethuza wrote:
| That's pretty good - _almost_ as good as OS 1:25,000 maps
| for landforms and actually better for showing paths.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| I don't know exactly either, but there are some clues I
| thought of after I posted that story. I remember we were
| cheering for Flemish cyclist Fons De Wolf since he had
| won the stage the day before. I found out that he won
| stage 14 in the Tour De France of 1984 (which means my
| earlier estimation of mid to late 80's was not entirely
| correct), so the stage we observed from a distance must
| have been stage 15, from Domaine du Rouret in the Ardeche
| to Grenoble (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Tour_de_F
| rance#Route_and_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/198
| 4_Tour_de_France,_Stage_12_...)
|
| Sure enough, that passes through the Drome departement
| where we were on holiday. I don't have the exact route
| for that stage, but it's described as a hilly stage so I
| assume it passed through the Vercors Massif on its way to
| Grenoble. That's most likely where we were that day, but
| where exactly I can't tell. I could ask my father but I
| don't think he'll remember either. It's quite a long time
| ago, after all.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| There's an OpenTopoMap too, at least on Android. I think
| it's amazing how much information on the world around us
| we can now get with almost no effort and cost.
| s0rce wrote:
| I'm often hesitant about mapping the unofficial trails,
| particularly the ones you aren't supposed to use. There are
| many around the SF bay area, some are simply non-maintained
| non-system trails, while others are illegal mtb paths off the
| allowed trail network. Some of them are so well traveled in
| areas with minimal erosion that they are almost as good as
| maintained trails, although often less well graded.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, these are basically ATV trails near my property which
| are probably mostly not supposed to be there. Certainly on
| private land although conservation land as well. I've been
| appreciative for them during current times and I've even
| been appreciative that the ATVers tend to come in and clear
| fallen trees and the like. But that doesn't mean I feel
| comfortable plotting tracks on OSM--especially those parts
| of the tracks on private land and especially those parts
| where ATVs have ripped up the terrain in said private land.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In thr Uk, I believ, paths 'legalise' themselves - once a
| path is established, if used continously it will become a
| public right of way.
|
| Then you cant close it or obstruct it even if you are the
| land owner
| [deleted]
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| What is the best-in-class iOS app using OpenStreetMap? For
| iPhone, MagicEarth looks extremely good
| (https://www.magicearth.com/), but I'm wondering if people have
| other recommendations...
| blendergeek wrote:
| Have you tried OsmAnd?
|
| Their iOS offering has gotten fairly good recently. It does
| cost a small amount of money to get the full version. The free
| version is complete (it is only limited in how many regions you
| can download) and more than useful for trying it out.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I have been using maps.me for about 5 years. It is becoming
| more and more commercialized but it's fast and has a simple
| interface.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Maps.me was recently purchased by a weird payments company
| and replaced with a generic reference MapBox OSM app.
|
| This might have been reverted later but it was big on HN a
| few weeks ago.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| It was reverted, but a fork started nevertheless, OMaps,
| currently in an early stages of development.
|
| https://github.com/omapsapp
|
| Matrix chat: https://matrix.to/#/#omapsapp:matrix.org?via=m
| atrix.org&via=...
| Terretta wrote:
| Arguably, "Windy Maps" is up there:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/windy-maps/id1201228182
|
| Same devs as the stunning https://www.windy.com/ weather site
| which also has an app:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/windy-com/id1161387262
|
| If you're more about hiking, maybe "Gaia GPS Hiking, Offroad
| Maps":
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gaia-gps-hiking-offroad-maps/i...
| mch82 wrote:
| What small, growing companies are in the general field of
| mapping?
|
| Are there companies that fund employees to work on Open Street
| Maps?
| habi wrote:
| Not only small companies do, but _big_ ones, too:
| https://2020.stateofthemap.org/sessions/SPRQVZ/
| CivBase wrote:
| I've been looking to replace Google Maps with OSM on my
| smartphone. OSM itself is great, but I've been having a harder
| time finding a good app to use it with. Is anyone familiar with a
| good option? I mostly use a maps app for location searches and
| real-time GPS navigation, but offline maps and location sharing
| are nice-to-have features.
|
| I've been using OsmAnd and it's okay. The interface is pretty
| good. It supports offline maps, but not location sharing. Map
| tiles are kind of slow to load compared to Google Maps, which is
| odd since the tiles have to be downloaded to local storage. The
| location search often includes redundant results and whatever
| database they use to store place data is sparse on details like
| pictures, hours, or reviews. I'll keep using it to stay de-
| platformed from Google as much as possible, but I'd be willing to
| pay a bit for something more responsive and polished.
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| I think Gaia GPS has a free tier? The base map is OSM. I've
| seen changes that I've made in OSM pulled in within a couple of
| days. I've gotten a lot of use out of my subscription.
|
| I can't speak as much to the location searching capability.
| leokennis wrote:
| Love Gaia GPS as well. Location search is hit and miss, but
| once you're on a trail, it's a flawless app.
| npteljes wrote:
| I previously had good experience with Maps.me. OsmAnd is great
| with its myriad settings and such, but somehow is a huge
| battery drain on my phone. I use it just fine in the background
| though, because it still provides turn by turn navigation that
| way. I think OsmAnd doesn't use generated tiles, but rather
| generates the map on the fly, hence the slowness.
| andreareina wrote:
| I'm pretty sure OsmAnd renders all the roads, buildings etc on
| demand, which is why it's slow. It has to be _able_ to rerender
| since it supports different styles, but it doesn 't seem like
| it caches the results or prerenders adjacent tiles.
|
| EDIT: performance issues seem to not be due to rendering the
| vector data[1].
|
| [1] https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/8370
| blendergeek wrote:
| > It supports offline maps, but not location sharing.
|
| Are you on iOS or Android?
|
| On Android there is the OsmAnd Online GPS Tracker [0].
|
| [0]
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand.tel...
| Nrbelex wrote:
| Check out mapy.cz [1] or an ad-free version from Windy [2].
|
| [1]
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy...
|
| [2]
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.wind...
| einpoklum wrote:
| I'm using an app called Maps.Me, which seems to be OSM-based.
| It's kind of commercialized, which I don't like, but it's
| usable.
|
| I'd be interested in something more FOSSy, myself.
| spurgu wrote:
| Maps.me was on HN a couple of weeks back.
|
| MAPS.ME is gone. We must bring it back:
| https://telegra.ph/What-happened-to-the-old-MAPSME-12-20
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25515004
| andrewshadura wrote:
| The most active fork is probably OMaps.
|
| https://github.com/omapsapp
|
| https://matrix.to/#/#omapsapp:matrix.org?via=matrix.org&via
| =...
| mkl wrote:
| Surprisingly, the original is still being updated too:
| https://github.com/mapsme/omim
|
| Is OMaps available for phones yet? All I can see is
| source code.
| pomian wrote:
| I've been using Maps, from fdroid, also. It is very good,
| quick, and you can choose tracking on and off, etc. It states
| under info, that it is based on maps.me, version that's
| working is 9.1.8-8.
| xorcist wrote:
| There used to be a free fork of Maps.me called simply Maps on
| F-Droid here:
| https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.axet.maps
|
| Very nicely designed. It seems to be gone now however, maybe
| someone else knows why.
| contravariant wrote:
| I was looking for a more lightweight FOSS map app (as
| opposed to OsmAnd+, which is excellent but not the most
| performant), as far as I can tell the Maps maintainer had a
| falling out with / didn't respond to the F-Droid
| maintainers.
|
| That said I had to piece this together from some commit
| messages by the F-droid maintainers so I'd prefer a better
| source myself.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| There's a new one called OMaps, currently in an early
| stages of development.
|
| https://github.com/omapsapp
|
| https://matrix.to/#/#omapsapp:matrix.org?via=matrix.org&via
| =...
| chefandy wrote:
| I recently tried the newer iOS app and it requested my
| location in the background somewhere around once per minute
| when I wasn't using the app. Didn't do anything to
| investigate-- I just deleted the app-- but it was sketchy.
| mongol wrote:
| I like Locus maps a lot. The UI is a little busy but once you
| get used to it you appreciate it because it really is a work of
| love.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| We used Locus to hike through Norway.
| freidenker wrote:
| And with Locus maps you can use OpenAndroMaps [1] as a map
| source.
|
| With their map styles [2] OpenAndroMaps are IMO the best
| hiking maps you can get. They even added very precise
| elevation data from LIDAR scans recently.
|
| [1] https://www.openandromaps.org/en
|
| [2] https://www.openandromaps.org/en/legend/elevate-mountain-
| hik...
| mongol wrote:
| Locus also have a store where they sell offline maps very
| similar to OpenAndroMaps for very small amounts. Not sure
| if they include elevation data however.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| I love MapOut (iOS only). It's an outdoor-focused mapping app
| with easy offline downloads and really beautiful cartography.
| theomega wrote:
| MapOut is such a beautiful app, I'm using it very often. If
| you are doing any outdoor sports or even just wanting to get
| to know your surrounding, I heavily recommend MapOut on iOS.
| Worth every euro. The developers are also very responsive in
| case you have any questions.
| rwh86 wrote:
| Other than the ones that have been mentioned already, I also
| use Maverick, which has a free and a paid version.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codesector...
|
| I like its ability to show the different map layers, and it has
| great information screens that show things like GPS coordinates
| and such, great for geohashing or geocaching. Also has a cool
| display of how many satellites are visible and whether they're
| GPS or GLONASS or whatever.
|
| The track recording feature is also nice, saving as a gpx file
| that can be easily uploaded to the openstreetmap online iD
| editor with drag-and-drop.
| commoner wrote:
| Magic Earth offers a more polished user experience for driving.
| Compared to OsmAnd, you gain address geolocation from a third-
| party source (not sure which), traffic alerts, and a dashcam
| feature, but you lose map editing functionality and many of the
| non-driving features in OsmAnd. Magic Earth is closed source,
| although it is free of charge and has no ads. It doesn't hurt
| to have both Magic Earth and OsmAnd installed.
|
| https://www.magicearth.com
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I downloaded magic earth and it works surprisingly well. I am
| concerned about the fact that it is free, though. I wonder
| what's their business plan.
| nbar wrote:
| What is the barrier to adding more data? Do they need funds to
| purchase it from satellite providers?
| matkoniecz wrote:
| You can donate at https://donate.openstreetmap.org/ - though
| money is not used for buying satellite imagery, but rather for
| server upkeep, maintaining core software etc.
|
| You can also contribute directly - there is edit button on
| https://openstreetmap.org
|
| StreetComplete may be useful if you have and Android phone and
| you are not interested in learning how to contribute
| (registering for OSM account is the worst step).
|
| Vespucci (for Android), Go Map!! (for Apple devices), JOSM
| (Java standalone program) are full-scale editors that I also
| recommend.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| OSM Foundation does not buy imagery. The community just relies
| on what is made available to them: Bing, Esri, Maxar, Mapbox
| all make their imagery available worldwide, on top of that many
| state or local governments have freed up their imagery.
|
| As for street-level imagery there's Mapillary and KartaView,
| both relying on volunteers with smartphones.
|
| The most important stuff, and the real asset of OSM, is what
| can't be added with aerial imagery: POIs aong with their
| attributes, road surface, speed limits, turn restrictions,
| paths in forests covered by trees and so on.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| they need more contributors...
| sneeuwpopsneeuw wrote:
| My experience with OSM is limited I only contributed a few
| times to the data in a local city in the Netherlands. I also
| used the xml data export only a few times for small
| experiments a long time ago. but from my experience is see
| the following:
|
| * If many people enjoying or live somewhere they will update
| it very fast and accurate. Way beyond google and apple will
| ever have. (If a bench is placed somewhere else on a school
| campus then it will most likely be update within a few days,
| from my experience at least)
|
| * Small structures are detectable on air and satellite images
| but it is really hard to know what kind of structure it is.
|
| * Data from the dutch local governments do, from what I see
| on OSM, often contain good updates on new buildings. But if
| something old is changed. (Like a temporary school building
| is removed then that change is not reflected by a data update
| from the goverment, and it is often removed by a user after a
| while) So getting better data from the governments is
| probably a thing.
|
| * A lot of layers are build on top of OSM. For example if a
| building is easy to use as a person who uses a wheelchair and
| if there toilet is wheelchair friendly. My ex-girlfriend was
| in a wheelchair so I used a app for that a lot. But she never
| used It. They app was very slow and had a strange UI. So
| changing the data of custom layer on top of OSM with better
| tools is hopefully going to be a thing.
|
| * Users use it mostly because they like to contribute. Google
| has the power to send many people notification questions
| about places where they have been. OSM does not have this
| power.
|
| * I would dare to say that OSM is already way more precise
| then google or apple maps. But users do not always care about
| that. The big driver for me to keep using google maps is that
| I often just want to go somewhere, and to go somewhere means
| that I want to travel by using the train or bus (after
| covid). In the case i'm in the city I want to know how long
| it takes to go somewhere by bike or by foot. In the case i'm
| going to a new city I often want to see how something looks
| and Google streetview or general images are better then a
| map. Google prioritizes all that information above having a
| more accurate map.
|
| So no I do not think it's about getting more people involved.
| I think it's more about what kind of user does the platform
| want to have.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Satellite probably won't give you highly detailed models.
| There'd be some ML going on to detect features. Plus, your
| image will lack ortho-rectification. Imaging is still primarily
| a ground-based/very low orbit operation with photogrammetry and
| lidar.
| sneeuwpopsneeuw wrote:
| knowing what kind of structure a rectangle on your satellite
| image is, is also a big problem. A shed or car looks roughly
| the same. So I would say it's more about getting better
| Satellite and plain images + combining that with knowledge
| about the area and government.
| Cshelton wrote:
| Unfortunately, working in the Commercial Real Estate world, OSM
| is no where close when doing a forward geocode... around the
| block is not close enough.
|
| Only ones accurate _enough_ are Google (won 't use) and Mapbox.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| I thought mapbox used openstreetmap data?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Not exclusively. They probably dump OpenAddresses data (or
| something similar) into their geocoder.
|
| https://openaddresses.io/
| juliansimioni wrote:
| Hi, founder of Geocode Earth (https://geocode.earth),
| another geocoding service that _does_ use OpenAddresses and
| only other open data sets.
|
| Mapbox purchases data from, I believe, TomTom, and other
| proprietary sources. That's why they have cheap(er) pricing
| if you want to get results without the legal ability to
| store them, and much more expensive pricing if you do want
| to store it. I'm sure negotiating that arrangement with the
| proprietary address data vendors was...fun.
| maxerickson wrote:
| That seems like it could just be an up charge.
|
| (or a discount for the ephemeral results if you want to
| look at it that way)
| Cshelton wrote:
| Yup, we pay them quite a bit to be able to store it.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| A friend of mine runs opencage, which is a geocoder based
| on open streetmaps and a few other data sets. They got a
| lot more business when Google raised their prices a while
| back. Anyway, go give them some love if you need a
| geocoder because they are an awesome small company with a
| great service. Their freemium layer is also pretty
| generous.
|
| Nominatim is the defactor open streetmaps geocoder but
| its weakness is that it relies on only that; so it is
| only as good as OSM is.
|
| Geocoding is a surprisingly hard problem to solve with
| and without open data. Picking apart text strings into
| unambiguous addresses is just super hard with all the
| conventions for this around the world. One area open
| streetmaps is still inconsistent is house numbers and
| postal codes. Getting solid open data for that is just
| hard in some places.
| jonathan_app wrote:
| OSM is usually quite good. My colleagues simulated nationwide
| travel using OSM roads:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337332041_Agent-bas...
| grecy wrote:
| I used OSM as turn-by turn loaded into my Garmin [1] for my three
| year drive around Africa, and then to cross North America six
| times in 2019.
|
| I have been utterly _staggered_ how accurate and complete it is
| in every conceivable scenario - dirt street villages in Sudan and
| Mali, capital cities in same, capital cities in South Africa and
| all over the US and Canada.
|
| I also used it to drive down through Southern Europe, to cross
| parts of the Sahara and Namib deserts and even in the mighty
| Congo it had more detail and info than any other mapping source
| I've ever seen.
|
| My hat is off to the OSM team.
|
| [1] loading OSM into a Garmin is a nice easy way to get free
| routable maps on your dashboard for the entire world -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRQrG6bC3k
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I am glad to hear that you found it accurate and complete. I
| know a lot of mapping of sub-Saharan Africa has been done by
| foreign armchair mappers working from aerial imagery for e.g. a
| HOT effort. I myself did a great deal of aerial mapping West
| African villages in preparation for a trip through the region
| that I ultimately had to cancel, and I was nervous that without
| being able to actually verify my edits firsthand, I was
| introducing some errors.
| not2b wrote:
| I used an OSM-based map on my Garmin on trips to India; did
| five trips to Bangalore and often played tourists on
| weekends; I had a particular interest in the ancient temples
| of Karnataka. I used a driver who knew the sites well, but
| not always perfectly, and the map was a huge help; coverage
| of roads in rural areas was quite good, not perfect but
| several times got us around closed roads the driver was
| familiar with and onto good alternate routes.
|
| Not sure how much of the mapping was done from aerial imagery
| and how much was actual GPS tracking, but it was better than
| I expected. And this was about 5 years ago.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| There's a lot of humanitarian groups contributing to OSM.
| Usually they get to work after natural disasters, so that
| emergency workers can get around easier.
| nix23 wrote:
| A friend and i where once on a mission, making bike-tours in the
| swiss mountains every weekend, and map every forgotten water-
| fountain in villages we crossed, great fun!
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| OSM is lovely, except for the UI. It is way over complicated.
| jakecopp wrote:
| Which UI do you mean? The project is much larger than the
| frontend at OpenStreetMap.org - I agree that could do with some
| work :)
| aendruk wrote:
| The thing is it doesn't really have a UI; it's just a database
| that people can do what they want with.
|
| The interfaces that you see--even on the OSM website--are a
| myriad of separate projects.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Now if only there was a sensible way to self-host OSM data. From
| what I've found you either have to build a dedicated server to
| continuously building the tiles (which takes a ton of storage and
| processing power) or pay for it at an insane monthly price. I
| wish OSM would directly make their tiles available to mirror.
| (Maybe they do, but I haven't found it yet)
| simonw wrote:
| I built a tool for downloading tiles last week - but with a
| warning in the README to make sure you are following the
| OpenStreetMap tile downloading policies.
|
| https://simonwillison.net/2021/Feb/4/datasette-tiles/
| dawnerd wrote:
| That actually looks pretty close to what I've been looking
| for. I'll have to look into it more when I get time.
| npteljes wrote:
| I just looked it up and apparently, all tiles would take up 54
| TB[0], and even just the important tiles are around 1TB. I now
| understand why just downloading them isn't an option.
|
| [0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_disk_usage
| walrus01 wrote:
| It specifically says: OSM does NOT pre-render every tile.
| Pre-rendering all tiles would use around 54 TB of storage
|
| that 54TB figure is only if you pre-render into raster every
| zoom level of every tile for the whole world. a more typical
| self hosted openstreetmap renders the tiles on demand as you
| scroll or move the map.
|
| Disk space usage is MUCH less, such that my test/development
| setup fits well on a virtual machine with 300GB of disk space
| on a 12TB hard drive that cost $145. By this measurement I
| believe it's using just under 4 dollars of disk space, 8
| dollars if you count its duplicate where it gets backed up
| to.
| npteljes wrote:
| Maybe the tileset could be distributed via torrent, like
| how they distribute the main dataset.
| n4r9 wrote:
| You can download tiles directly from openstreetmap.org,
| although bulk requests are obviously discouraged.
|
| Running your own tile server isn't too bad. The tiles are
| cached so that not much processing power is needed after a
| while of usage. Yes it requires storage but so would any self-
| hosting solution.
| durkie wrote:
| someone was kind enough to upload their recent (oct 2020) build
| of OSM vector tiles to the internet archive:
| https://archive.org/details/osm-vector-mbtiles
| dawnerd wrote:
| You nailed it wow. Didn't even think to check there.
| Symbiote wrote:
| https://openmaptiles.org/ might be an option, although it
| doesn't include everything Open Street Map itself includes.
| fungi wrote:
| https://hub.docker.com/r/maptiler/tileserver-gl
|
| hosing the entire planet is not sensible, but you can safely
| host a region/city/small country.
|
| that said im not in love with maptiler and trying out a bunch
| of other tile servers with limited sucess.
| flukus wrote:
| It really depends on your requirements, but if you only need
| one city then you're hardware requirements are in the raspberry
| pi territory: https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/
|
| The site linked already provides docker images, I'm tempted to
| build a pi one.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Apparently, I'm not in the 30 cities that are accurate.
|
| Used Magic Earth on my phone which is based on OSM. The very
| first address I input was off by about a mile. Didn't exactly
| inspire a lot of confidence.
| emj wrote:
| That is actually a good point, what happens is that many
| streets does not have any address points, and your search puts
| the marker on an arbitrary end of the street, so a mile off
| sounds about right. Address points are really cumbersome to
| crowd source, you really need either open data or buy a
| geocoder. Not easy to do if need to allow everyone to download
| the data and do what ever they want with it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| To be a little pedantic, converting an address to a location is
| more of a function of a geocoder, not a function of the map.
| Software could have a very accurate map, while at the same time
| using a poor geocoder, so addresses are located incorrectly.
| npteljes wrote:
| Not even pedantic, I think it's an important realization.
| Before knowing OSM, I though of Google Maps as a single
| service. Not realizing at all that mapping, addresses, POI
| entries, directions, navigation, etc are huge, separate
| problem domains. I think parent has the same perception.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Address search (geocoding) isn't what this article is about.
| OSM by common agreement has a long way to go on that.
| not2b wrote:
| Right, but if you're Lyft you have to find people and
| locations from their addresses.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't know which mapping options Lyft/Uber/etc use, but in my
| neighborhood, Google Maps has given street names to the allies
| behind people's houses. You can tell the drivers that have a
| clue, and will realize they should not turn down an alley.
| Drivers that are less cognizant of how the world works, follow
| the instructions dutifully, and waste time trying to figure out
| why everyone is confused.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Google Maps is funded by corporations who want to mine your data
| and sell you stuff, whether you need it or not.
|
| OpenStreetMaps is funded by... well, actually, it's complicated.
| There are lots of individual donations, but there is also money
| by Amazon, Facebook and Apple. And some other corporations.
|
| Regardless - consider making a donation:
|
| https://donate.openstreetmap.org/
|
| I would also entreat you to ask OSM to get off corporate funding.
| And of course, if you can, contribute map data about where you
| live.
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(page generated 2021-02-10 23:02 UTC)