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How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

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Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#81

Post by notriddle »

matt4077 wrote: post #49
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With auto-discovery of routes, Google might be picking up the most popular routes, but that does that does not mean they are the best ones. For example, on Strava heatmaps you can frequently see routes that are heavily cycled, but they might also be extremely stressful because one has to share the road with traffic. In fact, most cyclists might only be using them because they are sports cyclists with very thin tires…

Funny you should mention Albania: It's exactly where I learned never to doubt Google Maps. Specifically, never to assume that "It's like ten meters between these two points... I don't see a reason why we would need to go all the way around". (There was a 30m deep gorge) More to the point: Given enough position data, Google should be able to assess all those road parameters you mention, far better than manual entry co…

Shouldn't matter if Microsoft and Apple are both collecting the same telemetry and feeding it into OSM.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#83

Post by morganherlocker »

arctux wrote: post #69
morganherlocker wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our traffic data is generated in house using anonymized location telemetry from our SDKs, much like most other traffic providers. The live speed predictions we generate for congestion and ETA models are competitive globally, providing the most accurate ETAs available in many parts of the world. Our accuracy today is particularly strong in the US, when compared to similar services.

Do you know if Mapbox has any plans to work with the World Bank's OpenTraffic[0]? [0]: http://opentraffic.io

Not at this time. It's an awesome project, but we started developing our traffic engines around the same time and needs quickly diverged. We do try to open source many of the low level pieces of our model as reusable libraries whenever possible, such as our graph normalization algorithms[1]. At the end of the day, much of the core is difficult to decouple from data engineering infrastructure which will be internal to each organization, due to the immense volumes of live data that must be handled to power a modern traffic engine.

Aspects of the model like noise reduction, modality classification, and speed distribution estimation also require lots of fine tuning that is specific to the telemetry being ingested & the usage patterns of the output. For example, our speed models learn and correct from observed errors in various situations over time, which is coupled to our internal metrics data.

[1] https://github.com/mapbox/graph-normalizer

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#84

Post by toomanybeersies »

nickysielicki wrote: post #18
ucaetano wrote: post #2

This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…

Second best? At least in my experience, OSM data is leaps and bounds better than Google Maps in every way possible, and it has been that way for a couple years now. The reason that I still use Google maps is that it's fast and well-integrated with my phone, and it has a lot of added features on top of the actual mapping that makes it very useful --- things like location sharing when you're on a longer road trip, crea…

In my limited experience with trying to use OSM for geocoding using Nominatim, it didn't work very well for New Zealand locations at all. It would generally map the GPS coordinates as being in the centre of the block, rather than the actual address.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#86

Post by skybrian »

nickysielicki wrote: post #46
ucaetano wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saying that OSM data is objectively better for the rural parts of the world I've been to. Which is a subjective factor. "X is objectively better for the categories that I subjectively selected". Mapping is a subjective topic, simply because there are endless ways to evaluate and compare maps, so attributing any type of weight to any factor is a subjective exercise based on your own personal preferences.

I'll agree that what layers a map ought to show is a subjective matter. But if you have two maps and they both have a shared subset of layers, you can (for that subset) objectively evaluate which map more accurately represents the real world, eg: has more objects than the other map, and/or has objects marked more accurately. And what I'm saying is that for the layers that they have in common, I think OSM wins hands d…

The place where you live and the places you happen to visit is a subjective factor. Other people (who visit other places) might have a different overall experience, even if you'd agree with them on any place you both visited.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#87

Post by lucideer »

mtmail wrote: post #76
lucideer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source? I'd be interested to look at the work they're doing.

https://github.com/osmlab/appledata

Thanks for that. I see now that it's linked from the article—I'd previously overlooked it as the article seemed to imply it was the product of their volunteer programme, but it seems it isn't:

> The building information was developed with sensors from low altitude aerial imagery.

> The building footprint and height information was captured and developed in 2013.

There's also Atlas[0], not mentioned in the article, which seems to be a (open-source/non-free??[1]) tool released by Apple for use specifically with OSM data. Really interesting stuff.

[0] https://github.com/osmlab/atlas

[1] https://github.com/osmlab/atlas/blob/dev/LICENSE

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#88

Post by jakecopp »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #48
danpat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here at Mapbox we're doing navigation on OSM with traffic data - we collect our own telemetry, and use it to guide OSM-based routing. There are numerous Android/iOS apps using our API that you could use, or you could build one yourself.

I've been wondering, given that you've made all of the building blocks, why hasn't Mapbox built and released an open source maps app for Android? It looks like you're just weekend's work away from having an open source app which is competetive with Google Maps on F-Droid.

I second this, and very interested in doing it myself!

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#89

Post by pymai »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #48
danpat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here at Mapbox we're doing navigation on OSM with traffic data - we collect our own telemetry, and use it to guide OSM-based routing. There are numerous Android/iOS apps using our API that you could use, or you could build one yourself.

I've been wondering, given that you've made all of the building blocks, why hasn't Mapbox built and released an open source maps app for Android? It looks like you're just weekend's work away from having an open source app which is competetive with Google Maps on F-Droid.

I presumed they open sourced it already since the "Maps" app in the fdroid store is the same app just minus some ads or something

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#90

Post by mberg »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #48
danpat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here at Mapbox we're doing navigation on OSM with traffic data - we collect our own telemetry, and use it to guide OSM-based routing. There are numerous Android/iOS apps using our API that you could use, or you could build one yourself.

I've been wondering, given that you've made all of the building blocks, why hasn't Mapbox built and released an open source maps app for Android? It looks like you're just weekend's work away from having an open source app which is competetive with Google Maps on F-Droid.

Mapbox has been pretty strategic about not being perceived to compete with it's developers. Besides creating an amazing stack remaining neutral I think is part of their appeal.
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