Alternative: https://versatiles.org/
Yes, Versatiles is a nice truly open project! One of the long term plans for OpenFreeMap is to migrate to Shortbread + Versatiles styles.
Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
171–180 of 243 posts
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think both solutions could easily saturate a 1 Gbps line. I benchmarked Btrfs + nginx and it could do 30 Gbps, which doesn't really make a difference if your server is 1 Gbps only. The fact that there is no service running was the more important for me. Mostly for security and bugs. I had so many problems with various tile servers in production, they needed daily restarting, they had memory leaks, etc. Basically I…
You both specify the filesystem to be Btrfs. Is there any advantage in this case against ZFS, ext4, XFS... or is it just a practical choice?
Yes, small files can fit in the metadata, which makes a super big difference when you have 300 million files of 405 bytes each. Also, inode handling is way better compared to ext4.
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#173Neat! We used to host our own mbtiles map for like $11/mo, but the problem was (this was prior to planetiler and people generating public worldwide mbtile dumps) there wasn't a free/cheap source for regularly-updated mbtiles. The dump from OpenMapTiles was not updated for years. So we gave up and went to mapbox, where we regularly exceed the monthly free tier for web, but they give us a discount. Because that is a sc…
Thank you for sharing the story! I hope OpenFreeMap can contribute either with the MBTiles / Btrfs dumps, or with the public instance.
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#174This is fantastic, thank you!
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#175If it does a good job, somebody should get paid for it. I wouldn't rely on using this if it depends on donations (I call this begware). People expect to pay for services and products.
My main project is MapHub, it gives me my income. It's not an income like you'd get in a FAANG job, but still, I'm running it for making a living. For MapHub to work, I had to invest in my own tile server infrastructure: there is no way I could have made MapHub financially profitable with a 3rd party tile provider. So I kept iterating and iterating on the tile server infrastructure and after 9 years I arrived at a st…
As long as it stays with one server that’s fine. But what do you do in the hypothetical scenario that Facebook decides to use your tile server?
Nginx is fast, but I think that’s asking too much of it.
Of course that problem hasn’t happened yet, but it’s what I’d be worried about.
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#176Great project! Do you support geocoding with a nominatim api?
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
My main project is MapHub, it gives me my income. It's not an income like you'd get in a FAANG job, but still, I'm running it for making a living. For MapHub to work, I had to invest in my own tile server infrastructure: there is no way I could have made MapHub financially profitable with a 3rd party tile provider. So I kept iterating and iterating on the tile server infrastructure and after 9 years I arrived at a st…
As long as it stays with one server that’s fine. But what do you do in the hypothetical scenario that Facebook decides to use your tile server? Nginx is fast, but I think that’s asking too much of it. Of course that problem hasn’t happened yet, but it’s what I’d be worried about.
I benchmarked and nginx can host 30 Gbps on cold cache, on actual real world load. (I played back a log of 1 million real world requests).
So using nginx in a 1 Gbps server is definitely not asking too much of it, or I might not have understood your comment clearly.
Why would Facebook decide to use my tile server? When a company's business depends on having reliable map tiles, they either self host or have an Enterprise deal with Mapbox, etc.
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#178Something I'd be willing to pay for is historical tiles/data. I'm writing an application that lets you view historical data, and the problem is that most/all map services show only current data. It would be nice if the map reflected the year of the data we're layering on top. So if you want to make some money, there's an option for you!
The key problem here is a lack of accurate data. OSM is amazing, but is constantly getting improved and closer to realtime "ground truth." Historical OSM data is usually worse all-around, rather than "equally good, but as of year XXXX" Perhaps there is a different dataset with better historical accuracy than OSM, but I do not know of one. You'd likely have to reduce your scope: trails in a specific park? Roads in a s…
As a hobby historian (not really haha) I'm interested in old streets and names particularly.
Especially here in Europe / Germany, where entire quarters where bombed to rubbles newer streets do not match neither namely nor spatially.
I loved how you could "move back in time" in street view. I think that has been killed too? There is a lovely Twitter/X account for Detroit tho: https://x.com/DetroitStreetVu
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#179I've been using Google maps for a decade, and when they started offering a $200 credit, it was fine until my bill started going up to $200-300 after the credits.
It's for a hobby project that's outlasted well-funded projects, so the traffic kept increasing as competitors folded.
A few years back, I tried to run my own tileserver, but the difficulty of creating an updated vector tileset put me off, and I just continued paying the Google tax. Last month I finally got a really nasty bill, and it forced me to cancel my weekend plans and change to Mapbox.
I like Mapbox for its other API features, but I'm wondering if I could alternate between this and Mapbox, so I keep my overall costs lower. I'd prefer to donate a fixed amount instead.
Question: Does anyone have experience with switching the underlying OSM mapping services either programmatically or by webpage? I'm more asking around the end-user experience. I suppose I have to check what features of mapbox-gl 2+ I use that won't be available in the libre forks.
Re: Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
#180Hello. This seems like exactly something I'm looking for to save cost for my project: https://golfcourse.wiki
I'm currently using Stadia Map Tiles from when they went from free to paid.
If I'm understanding you correctly, I can switch to your instance to serve tiles to my site for free once again? I'm very happy to pitch in some cash to help keep the servers running.
I am running leaflet.js and I guess I should be able to figure out how to migrate, but if you already have a tutorial somewhere, please let me know.
This is really cool.