Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

manuelclaeysbouuaert.be

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 72 posts

Re: Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

#11

Post by ktpsns »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #8

The old maps had way better contrast, it seems.

Modern Google/Apple maps are incredibly low contrast and I don't know why. Seems like they want to have streets and land stand back to make room for features such as pin locations, buisness markings (advertising) or dedicated layers such as traffic.

I really don't get it. Here in Germany, in the last century, "road atlases" were a thing, big maps with great overview and detail maps which were basically at maximum contrast. For examples, see for instance https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=autokarte+deutschland&iax=i...

It seems that OSM (OpenStreetMaps) gets this "more right" in some respect, but still it is not the same. Why? Too little confidence of the map makers to highlight the correct things?

Re: Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

#13

Post by tuyiown »

ktpsns wrote: post #11
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #8

The old maps had way better contrast, it seems.

Modern Google/Apple maps are incredibly low contrast and I don't know why. Seems like they want to have streets and land stand back to make room for features such as pin locations, buisness markings (advertising) or dedicated layers such as traffic. I really don't get it. Here in Germany, in the last century, "road atlases" were a thing, big maps with great overview and detail maps which were basically at maximum con…

One explanation would be that roads are not the useful information on modern map, you search for you POI or address, and then query an itinerary, and then you have a very contrasty road, the one you need.

I suspect just looking at maps to find your way is a more and more cornered case.

Re: Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

#14

Post by xxswagmasterxx »

ktpsns wrote: post #11
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #8

The old maps had way better contrast, it seems.

Modern Google/Apple maps are incredibly low contrast and I don't know why. Seems like they want to have streets and land stand back to make room for features such as pin locations, buisness markings (advertising) or dedicated layers such as traffic. I really don't get it. Here in Germany, in the last century, "road atlases" were a thing, big maps with great overview and detail maps which were basically at maximum con…

OsmAnd has a German Road Atlas style: http://docs.osmand.net/docs/user/map/vector-maps#road-style

And the OSM map also has different stlyes, like this traffic style which highlights important roads: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/52.4205/10.7808&layers...

Re: Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

#15

Post by Pinus »

ktpsns wrote: post #11
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #8

The old maps had way better contrast, it seems.

Modern Google/Apple maps are incredibly low contrast and I don't know why. Seems like they want to have streets and land stand back to make room for features such as pin locations, buisness markings (advertising) or dedicated layers such as traffic. I really don't get it. Here in Germany, in the last century, "road atlases" were a thing, big maps with great overview and detail maps which were basically at maximum con…

Cartographic generalization is an AI-complete problem. It is doable for a human to decide what to show or not, in order to get a useful map without too much clutter. It is much harder to program a computer to do it. It is very tempting to turn down contrast to make a cluttered map less "loud".

Re: Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

#17

Post by pbowyer »

gelatocar wrote: post #5
pachico wrote: post #4

I've always been fascinated by old cartography. How did they even have such precision? Which tools did they have? And how did they store the information?

just in case you haven't already seen it, David Rumsey's website is the most amazing collection of historical maps. https://www.davidrumsey.com/

Also https://maps.nls.uk/ is a great place to explore old maps

Re: Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

#18

Post by qwertox »

It's interesting to see how segmented Antwerpen was back in 1777, what the author describes as hedges.

These were usually the result of inheritance, when the land of one owner got split into pieces and each child then got one piece. They got smaller and smaller.

I didn't think that this was already so extreme in 1777, but comparing it to the other maps, only Antwerpen and Brugge seem to be affected.

Re: Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

#19

Post by pieno »

tuyiown wrote: post #13
ktpsns wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern Google/Apple maps are incredibly low contrast and I don't know why. Seems like they want to have streets and land stand back to make room for features such as pin locations, buisness markings (advertising) or dedicated layers such as traffic. I really don't get it. Here in Germany, in the last century, "road atlases" were a thing, big maps with great overview and detail maps which were basically at maximum con…

One explanation would be that roads are not the useful information on modern map, you search for you POI or address, and then query an itinerary, and then you have a very contrasty road, the one you need. I suspect just looking at maps to find your way is a more and more cornered case.

This was indeed a very deliberate choice by Google, and they have been blogging about it since at least 2011[0]. There are quite some blog posts by Google and others discussing the evolution in online maps from the high contrast design focused on roads and cities, to more “fluid” designs where there is a bit more room to show buildings, forests, waterways and other landmarks that are more suited for exploration rather than navigation.

[0] https://maps.googleblog.com/2011/07/evolving-look-of-google-...

Re: Using QGIS to apply a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data

#20

Post by dspillett »

tacker2000 wrote: post #16
hjjjjjje wrote: post #10

Dragging the sliders doesn't work when viewing on a mobile device.

Works fine on my iphone 12 with ios 14.5.1

Extra anecdata in case the creator is reading: sliders failed for me on Android Chrome this morning. I made no effort to check if this was due to a script failing to load or some other bug.
Post reply on HN