11–20 of 215 posts
Open Street Maps is great as a data source, but the front end client apps for using it are somewhat lacking. On my iPhone, I use Maps.me when I travel to Cuba and Google Maps almost everywhere else. If I was building an app, I'd definitely use OSM and probably Mapbox.
I always wondered who actually pays for the bills in OSM? Who pays all the servers, all the traffic, etc...?
They are easy to download for offline use. Following the suggestion of friends, I have repurposed an old phone as a "travel phone" with maps of the whole world (or at least the parts I can download!)
Not perfect, but when I catch a plane, I don't have to worry about local networks.
Fun story: recently in Europe, Google Maps stuttered. Now and then, there was a networking issue. It is almighty wiseness, Google Maps was then showing a white page instead of showing me the previously downloaded maps. This was irksome, especially in navigation mode. I was litteraly following my way on the screen, when it turned white in front of my eyes. Several times. I turned white too.
After that, I decided I would take a chance with the backup plan. I turned off the phone and used the travel phone instead. No network, so no lookup of business names, but Here maps offline with street addresses did better than Google Maps online.
I called that a learning experience. I later was told Google Maps lets you download some tiles, but it is not as convenient as having litteraly every continent saved. I do not want to plan what part I may need. Just "down it all"!
Open Street Maps is great as a data source, but the front end client apps for using it are somewhat lacking. On my iPhone, I use Maps.me when I travel to Cuba and Google Maps almost everywhere else. If I was building an app, I'd definitely use OSM and probably Mapbox.
The routing has many different cycling modes, and you can also click the little leaflet icon on the right and switch the view to "OpenCycleMap" to get a more cycling-oriented map view.
Open Street Maps is great as a data source, but the front end client apps for using it are somewhat lacking. On my iPhone, I use Maps.me when I travel to Cuba and Google Maps almost everywhere else. If I was building an app, I'd definitely use OSM and probably Mapbox.
Very slick, works well, offline. I guess aimed more at outdoor use than cities, or driving.
I always wondered who actually pays for the bills in OSM? Who pays all the servers, all the traffic, etc...?
OSM maps are quite detailed, perfectly serviceable...but Nominatim is not very good (at least in my experience?) I used https://github.com/perliedman/leaflet-control-geocoder to interact with Nominatim but entering something that can sound relatively common (like a mall or an abbreviation of an institution) will come up with locations in entirely different countries than the user had in mind and at least in the case of that geocoder control (props to the dev for making it, BTW) there isn't a clear way to determine WHERE something is before selecting it.
I noticed this when I searched for "Mall San Pedro" and was returned the right location but it was displayed as something completely different, under the name of the street. It's a little disconnecting.
I appreciate that it might come down the libraries and tools that are querying Nominatim with certain design decisions, but the useful of a database is in the implementation of it into tools.
I quite like https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ as a UI for OSM that has sensible search and routing. The routing has many different cycling modes, and you can also click the little leaflet icon on the right and switch the view to "OpenCycleMap" to get a more cycling-oriented map view.