Google Maps app is great, lets you gain points by adding information & photos & reviews etc. They even send you a free bespoke pair of socks or a badge if you're active enough. So fun to add photos and then see how many views they get (I posted one of a chippy in Scotland (for Americans that's Fish & Chip 'Thick French Fries' shop) which got over 1.4 million views - mental). The location history feature suggests things to contribute which helps too.
Would be good to have something similar to make contributing fun.
Take a look at StreetComplete [1]. It is gamification of updates to OSM.
[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplet...
Was a really rude intro to the community and reminded me a lot of SO or Wikipedia with its gatekeeping.
I've never submitted a single thing since then. If that's how you treat newcomers then I want nothing to do with you.
One thing I wish it had was the ability to add an entirely new building. I'm currently living in a town that is experiencing massive growth and I'll often see a structure that's still a vacant lot on osm, and I don't think you can add it with StreetComplete.
For more task-based editing with gamification elements check out StreetComplete, an Android app.
Also, the markers disappear entirely past a certain zoom level. When that happens, zooming out one notch does not cause them to reappear, either - I had to do like 4 levels before they'd show up. The worst part is that it also happens when you click on a marker and the map auto-zooms on it.
EDIT: just realized that for that last problem, what happens is that a single combined marker (the one that shows a number) is broken up into individual markers. The problem there is that those individual markers often end up outside of the viewport, and so it looks like the combined markers just disappeared.
On the one hand it's free work benefiting the corporation... but on the other hand it's genuinely helping sometimes thousands of other people. I benefit massively from reading Amazon reviews, and it feels good to give back. But it is also a contribution that further entrenches Amazon (or Google Maps), it's not like Wikipedia where contributions can be used by anyone.
What do we do when we can help other users, but doing so also supports corporations for free? Although then again, I've never paid a dime for Google Maps and use it daily, it's literally a major part of my life -- so does getting the product for free also play a role?
On the topic: I think it would be a good idea for OSM if done in a good and non-technical user-friendly way.
I found the "Emergency" door of a local hospital hard to find IRL, so I added a photo of it from the driveway POV. Another sort of real person you can help are the web-clueless owners of local small businesses.
I also enjoy adding a food shot or a representative photo of places I have enjoyed as a small reward and enticement for others to do likewise.
But personally, I have a ton of fun just mapping for the sake of it. Seeing my contributions rendered is a satisfaction.
Doing it because you get a pair of socks or some smiley clippy character telling you something cute is very different.
Do they protect against self promotion somehow? seems like it would be an easy way to market something to a huge audience. I mean something like giving a completely legit review then dropping a link to your website or something.
The database contains an incredible level of detail which can be used in completely different contexts and I'd say what's rendered is roughly only 1/10th of the data
There is a script (disclaimer, that I wrote) to set up a couple of docker images so you can create / host something like this yourself: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/mvexel/diary/399939. It requires downloading of a "full history" OSM data file for the region of interest.
They were terrible years ago on GM, so this is part of the evolution. But I can see how OSM will end up better than GM, like Wikipedia over Encyclopedia Brittanica, but it needs a bit more to get there.
Btw: the online process to make changes on OSM is wonderful and encouraging.
Everyone who can help OSM should. There's no reason OSM can't be a wikipedia-quality product, to the point where close source, advertising-beholden alternatives can't meaningfully compete. Add businesses in your town today! Add business hours if you can! Fix any errors you see. And try to switch to OSM for everything you can. Every little bit helps.
This is incredible work and I'm sorry that I held such a negative opinion of it for so long!
I was wondering if someone(s) consume data feeds from local govts. Stuff like permitting, licensing, change-of-address.
I ask because it seems that I'll idly spot a business, while driving around, that I'm sure didn't turn up in a search. (I mostly use Apple Maps.)
Then I thought "surely adding new listings could be automated".
My next thought was "well, just because it's in the database doesn't mean Apple, Google, Yelp will show it".
But the 2022 version suffers from a number of issues that Google and Apple are both suffering from recently: a lack of focus on who this map is for. Is this map ornamental? Or is it for driving? Walking? Finding tourist locations? What is it for?
One of the obvious changes in OSM between 2012 and 2022 is the addition of building footprints at the cost of removing a lot of street names. At this scale, do footprints really help? Am I planning a walk and need to know the street name where I will turn? When you are close to a destination, yes the footprints help one identify the correct building. But not here.
Here's a Google Maps example: if you put Canada's Yukon Territory into frame, does it show you the major roads? No. Does it show you any roads? No. Even if you select "traffic" it doesn't get the hint that you care about driving. It just wants to show you a map of geography.
And now an Apple Maps example: put California into frame. Freeways and two-lane roads are shown as thin lines that are nearly invisible. Good luck planning a route with this map! Want to go from Point A to B? It can do it! But want to consider side trips or general routing yourself? Nope.
There's still no adequate substitute for a AAA map for driving. I suspect hikers, bikers, and walkers are also poorly served by these non-specialized maps too.
That's the whole point! Think of OpenStreetMap as a global spatial database of raw map data. An infinite variety of specialised maps can be generated from this data. Maps for driving, for hiking, for public transport, for cycling, and much more: it all depends on what renderer is used.
It's important to remember that OpenStreetMap is primarily a database and the rendered tiles you see on this page are secondary. Data consumers can decide individually whether they want to display a map for cyclists, pedestrians etc. For example, on the official homepage you will also find tiles rendered for cyclists. The important thing is that the data is there and can be used freely by anyone.
It only works in my town in the UK, so don't try scrolling the map too much.
The detail was really good even back in 2012.
For me it isn't down, just taking a very long time (multiple minutes) to load the 2012 data.
I actually found StreetComplete a few days ago and have started fixing issues, at least for my neighborhood.
It showed/shows a side-by-side view of Open Street Map 2012 vs. 2022.
See https://shtosm.ru/all/verni-mne-moy-2012/ (or translated: https://shtosm-ru.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x... )
OSM editing is usually done over satelite imagery these days, so I would imagine the old one must've been very far off in some areas.
Linux, OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, Audio and Video codecs etc.
The world needs more examples of how building a digital commons is a good long term strategy because it's far too easy to take the short term view each time this comes up.
I'm guessing you're talking about private, proprietary imagery?
It's clear that they are added in blocks - edges to forest-cover data are at edges of very large (100km?) tiles.
I wonder, though, where that information comes from. Public sources GIS, and analysis of public satellite imagery, are two possibilities that come to mind.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/Public_lan...
Believe things if you believe them to be true.
It could also be a niche thing, like if you make an app that shows the nearest defibrillator or other emergency facilities that people might need in a pinch. Any area gaining good coverage of this type of data would immediately have an app to turn to. With adoption also comes the influx of new contributors.
It of course lacks many features of OsmAnd, but you can't have both. UI issues of OsmAnd come from its features.
Also important tools in OSM land are osmium[2] and imposm[3] but the latter I think is Go not C++.
[1] https://osm2pgsql.org/ [2] https://osmcode.org/osmium-tool/ [3] https://imposm.org/
Both map renderers Tangram-ES and Maplibre-GL - https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-es and - https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-gl-native are also written in C/C++.
Finally, most routing software, such as OSRM or Valhalla are written in C/C++.
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy...
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/415779/193375980-7...
Edit: I found Geofabrik but their Google api key is invalid I guess.
https://musical-osm.netlify.app
I'm always surprised by how active it is whenever I visit it. OSM is such an amazing project.
Avery Fisher Hall
David Geffen HallIs this a prank or broken? What year did OSM come out?
When we map (e.g. when we click on the "Edit" button), we use satellite images from providers like Bing, Maxar, ESRI, who have authorised their imagery to be used as base layer. Many countries also authorize their national orthophotography to be used as base layer.
https://data.maptiler.com/downloads/dataset/satellite-2021/#...
That's like 20 m per pixel at its highest zoom, completely useless for most things.
For reference, I've used ortho4xp to get some satellite imagery based x-plane scenery. I have several hundreds of GB of scenery like that for a few relatively small areas, like my home country the Netherlands, the area around Berlin, and a few more places. That scenery comes in at multiple GB (4-6GB) for just a single rectangle on the map (1 degree latitude by 1 longitude degree, depending on the zoom level. You typically use it at zoom level 17 but you can configure it to go for zoom level 19 near airports, which helps when coming in to land. This stuff is huge. At zoom level 19, you can see quite a bit of detail. It looks great from a few hundred feet up in the simulator.
What map tiler offers us looks like it is similar quality to that. I assume they are licensing some satellite data for this. Zoom level 19 resolution for the entire world is likely to be in the peta byte range. 500GB is probably zoom level 15 or 16ish. Still usable but not great if you want to zoom in and see details.
Edit. Another point is that zl 19 and better does not come from satellites but from air planes and isn't available everywhere (only in populated areas typically).
(You can have a look into vector tiles like from MapTiler or their open source project openmaptiles.org)
I just found this example (has nothing to do with openmaptiles as far I can see): https://js.protomaps.com/examples/multi_language.html
But you are right as this approach does not scale well in regard to using it for all languages out there. So a vector tile stack is a better approach for just switching languages.