Right now the full-planet demo server is in Germany and lives at [1]. A brief explanation is at [2]. I'm hopeful that the project will continue to improve with time and eventually end up being a real contender in the web maps space. I'm talking with folks about the potential for getting some more robust hosting options too which is very exciting.
For the moment though, Headway has some usability issues. It's missing ETAs, has no steps list for directions, or proper geocoding search results page, etc. I'm going to get to these issues with time, but please drop me a line if you're interested in helping out. Especially interested in help with web frontend, design, or internationalization. Development takes place on GitHub [3] and discussions tend to happen in the matrix room [4].
Do you think Headway could be a replacement for us? We currently use the Mapbox JS library to create the pins etc. - could we use Headway with Leaflet JS for example? We also use the Mapbox geocoder, mainly for reverse geocoding of addresses. How does Headway's geocoder compare?
It’s also actively maintained and has a strong community behind it.
[0] https://deck.gl/
Our bill last year was $80k and honestly its right on the cusp of being worth the effort to switch.
You might be able to pay someone from the project to help you switch. A nice way to give back and it will probably be a smoother transition.
Is this a route planning built on top of OSM? Does this bundle OSM data "all in one" so that you can more easily host an OSM server?
Edit: To the comments telling me I'm wrong about this, remember that Headway has a geocoder and routing system, along with a transit trip planner (currently disabled on maps.earth though). These are not things you could get with off-the-shelf solutions that include a GUI until now. I also want to self-host my mapping software for privacy reasons, and Headway makes that easy too. I probably need to be better about explaining what all Headway does that's different than just bringing up an OSM tileserver though. Thank you all for the feedback :)
OSM is amazing, for sure, but standing up even a small OSM service that only services a map in your local town/city/community is too daunting for most people (myself included).
Considering there are many other comments in this thread that mirror my main question, I would try and figure out messaging. Is it a particular tile rendering on top of OSM data? Is it trip heading information? Is it helping people stand up self hosted OSM servers? Is it helping with just a few components of that process? If so, which components? etc.
It's hard to know what the "value add" is here and a lot of this is my own ignorance on how the OSM ecosystem works but that's kind of what I would recommend trying to convey to people.
I wouldn't assume deep familiarity with OSM. I would like to hear more, especially concerning tools to help stand up a self hosted OSM server more easily, as I would suspect many other people would, but it would be nice to have some basics spelled out instead of assuming I have deep familiarity with the sprawling and intricate OSM ecosystem.
It would be great if this could be stated on the page.
I kept hackernews open in order that someone would explain to me what this actually does. Your comment thankfully fullfilled this.
https://github.com/stevage/saltymill
Yeah, it's a pain in the arse getting all the bits together. And I wasn't attempting full planet scale.
(new map('map_div')).addLayer(new TileLayer('http://{s}.tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png'))> Self-hostable maps stack, powered by OpenStreetMap.
In addition to listing out some of the required specs (for a localized area) [1]:
> ... generation ... needs ... 8GB of memory ... running ... around 4GB ...
> ... recommend ... 50GB ... disk space
[0] https://github.com/headwaymaps/headway
[1] https://github.com/headwaymaps/headway#system-requirements
Sick phone though I'm a little bit jealous :)
Is it just me (Firefox on Android) or does the UI really not allow tapping landmarks (shops, restaurants, subway stations)?
Also, directions don't seem to work right now (infinite loading) but I suppose this is due to the server receiving the HN hug of death right now.
By the way, for anyone looking for the mobile (non-web) version of this: Organic Maps is a fantastic frontend for OpenStreetMaps (and of course there's the good old OsmAnd, though I like Organic Maps better these days).
The website doesn't seem to work for me either on mobile.
[1] https://maps.earth/place/openstreetmap%3Avenue%3Away%2F12903...
[2] https://maps.earth/directions/bicycle/openstreetmap%3Avenue%...
And why not reuse one of the existing open source map or directions front-ends?
I didn't use OTP's frontend because I found it unpleasant to use. Valhalla's frontend wouldn't work well with OTP and I don't find it terribly pleasant to use either.
Neither work on mobile, and neither work with vector maps, it seems? I haven't tried out GraphHopper's UI though.
E.g. see https://valhalla.openstreetmap.de/
Or https://github.com/Qwant/erdapfel
Or https://graphhopper.com/maps2 & https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper-maps (disclaimer: I'm a contributor there)
Whenever I've looked into other projects for this it's either focused on rendering tiles from Mapbox data (where not all the OSM tags -- especially not MTBing ones -- are available) or really old info or presumes that someone else will be generating tiles.
It's going to be somewhat tricky because of a few mediocre decisions I made early on in the development process, but if you were up for helping out I'd love to get a bring-your-own-style experience working in Headway. Long-term, I want to add the ability to easily brand Headway and customize it for your own needs without forking it.
- You probably shouldn't render guideposts or route markers on the map, or at least not with generic "info" icon.
- Things with access=private are likely not terribly relevant to people looking at the map. This will include things like parking spots or gardens.
- Lots of shots and amenities have icons, but doctors don't. Neither do fire stations.
- Sports pitches are shown as nodes, but may be better shown as areas, since they often cover quite extensive swaths of ground that's otherwise empty with just an icon in the middle. Same with playgrounds, schools, and kindergartens, gardens, and parks.
- For buildings and building parts, if you don't make use of the parts in any way (such as showing roofs, height, etc.) perhaps just disregard the parts and only render the building outlines. This, combined with the fact that geometries seem to be simplified, even at the highest zoom levels, results in a bit of a mess of lines at times where some outlines are simplified differently from others that should actually share parts of the same edges and thus overlap perfectly. (e.g. https://maps.earth/place/openstreetmap%3Avenue%3Away%2F11120... or https://maps.earth/place/openstreetmap%3Avenue%3Away%2F11120...). Same thing with the geometry simplification also happens with adjacent geometry that should actually not have gaps (e.g. semidetached houses or garages next to houses). Lots of buildings that are actually rectangular also get quite weird angles.
- Tunnels are quite subtle. And while at least roads in tunnels don't overlap buildings that are actually above them (like with Carto) it's still hard to make out what's above and what's below in such cases (e.g. https://maps.earth/place/openstreetmap%3Astreet%3Apolyline%3...). Culverts for waterways are handled better than roads in tunnels in this case.
Overall though, this seems like a quite nice map style. Closer to Google Maps in that it emphasizes roads, but some people like the less detailed look (and it works better with vector maps, I guess, to have fewer polygons to render).
At runtime tiles are served over the wire but everything else happens server-side. So it's a bit of everything :D
Headway is much much more responsive on a local scale than it is in https://maps.earth/ and the search results are more relevant too. My own personal instance for Seattle has largely replaced Google Maps for me. :)
In Italy, most of the cities have the Italian name, some of them have an English name (Florence, Naples), some have a German name (Triest). The behaviour is different than OSM, at least for me.
- Naples is mapped with many names (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/40767), ‘Napoli’ being the standard one.
- Florence (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/42602) has ‘Firenze’ as standard name.
A renderer can choose which name to put as label on the map, usually it’s `name` or `name:locallanguage-abbreviated`.
What are your thoughts on the feasibility/benefits of using a p2p system like IPFS to share OSM map/tile data between users, rather than serving from one centralized server?
See the tutorial there or https://learnosm.org/en/beginner/start-osm/
Congrats on all the progress in 3 months!
A lot of applications need to show data related to location (e.g.: a photo app might want to show a map of where a photo was taken). Having a local service to resolve these would be superb.
I know this product has a different goal, but I wonder if the backend side of it could actually fill in this role. Essentially exposing location/mapping services to local applications.