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Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps

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51–60 of 117 posts

Re: Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps

#51

Very impressive! 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…

OsmAnd doesn't seem to get many updates nowadays. I get that it's open source and we can't demand anything for free and all that, but they have some monetization options that should bring in some money, but aren't really worth the price IMO. The issue tracker is full of bugs and feature requests marked as nice to have, but almost nothing happens.

Re: Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps

#52
post #24
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSM doesn't have a server per se (other than the OSM API server). It's a dataset for the most part. Headway lets you bring up a server that will render maps tiles, allows you to search for places and get routes between places. It's trying to be a user-friendly UI for various pieces of the OSM ecosystem. There are a lot of amazing pieces of software out there that work with OSM data, but there isn't an easy way to bri…

There are services hosting OSM data, often times requiring paid API access for anything other than personal use. 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…

> tools to help stand up a self hosted OSM server more easily

I think that’s already the wrong way to think about it. For some reason that I do not comprehend, OSM comprises at least 3 different file formats, and 5 or 6 different ways to store that data.

When you ‘set up an OSM server’, what you really do is pick one of the storage methods, and then import the data with one of a variety of tools that were built over the years (and are probably compatible with only one or two of the storage methods each).

Seriously, the OSM ecosystem is a clusterfuck. Anyone that aims to standardize it into something easy to deploy has my full support.

Re: Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps

#53
post #47
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to add it at https://openstreetmap.org :-)

But don't expect it to show up on maps.earth right away... it looks like it's at least a month behind OSM at this point.

That's mostly because I decided to use maps from the daylight maps distribution. The current tiles were actually built last night. I think it probably makes sense to track planet.osm.pbf directly though because I want to create a virtuous cycle where users feel that contributing to OSM has a real tangible payoff.

The main issue with updating regularly is going to be that long-term I can't really afford a beefy enough machine that has a fast uplink to Cloudflare where my artifacts are hosted. Getting all of the planet-sized artifacts uploaded even just this one time was a huge pain. I ended up having to generate them on my desktop, ferry the data to a friend's house on a laptop via motorcycle and upload them from there. This is one of the things that I want to help remedy if I get enough support via Liberapay or GH Sponsors.

Re: Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps

#55
post #34
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using tile.openstreetmap.org is subject to the OSM tile usage policy: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_usage_policy

Their data is also subject to this policy: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap_License They also heavily discourage bulk downloading tiles so I'm not sure if you're that much better off building your own tile server.

If you are building your own tileserver then you take one of the OSM dumps for your area.

Re: Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps

#56

Very impressive! 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…

Recently switched from Osmand to Organic and am quite impressed. Rendering and routing are much faster and there are no crashes even with very long routes.

Re: Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps

#58
post #53
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't expect it to show up on maps.earth right away... it looks like it's at least a month behind OSM at this point.

That's mostly because I decided to use maps from the daylight maps distribution. The current tiles were actually built last night. I think it probably makes sense to track planet.osm.pbf directly though because I want to create a virtuous cycle where users feel that contributing to OSM has a real tangible payoff. The main issue with updating regularly is going to be that long-term I can't really afford a beefy enough…

It doesn’t pull the OSM data (from their servers)? Or you did that once and pre-processed everything now?

I presume you can do something similar for the daily and minutely updates, but I imagine merging that with the existing stuff is more work.

Re: Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps

#59
post #48

This seems really neat. I have a question that I hope isn't something I'm missing, but is there an easy way to change the rendering ruleset? I ask because I've been wanting to build some custom maps for mountain bike trails in the state where I live and have them served up similarly. 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 -…

This is tracked here: https://github.com/headwaymaps/headway/issues/85 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.

Thanks for pointing me there. I'll give it a read and see what I might be able to do.
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