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OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

osmand.net

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Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#11

Post by pwg »

brendyn wrote: post #8
XorNot wrote: post #6

At this point I prefer OsmAnd navigation over Google maps. Maps reliably does stupid things like route through winding residential streets because it thinks that's faster and can obviously be done at the full posted speed limit. OsmAnd on the other hand builds routes I would build: get on the main road and get close, then get to the destination.

I use osmand for privacy but I think it just emphasises main roads. In Melbourne it always suggests turning off cemetery road west because it doesn't know it's congested and will get me stuck for 20 minutes. And there are some missing slip roads. And navigation constantly fails to start. I wonder, how difficult is it to make minor edits to the map data?

> I wonder, how difficult is it to make minor edits to the map data?

The map data is OpenStreetMap, so you can make edits via the standard OSM methods:

Web: https://ideditor.com/

Local: https://josm.openstreetmap.de/

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#12

Post by pavon »

A while back I was using OsmAnd on a ~700 mile route, and it was taking over 10 minutes despite most of the route ending up being on a single highway. I tried that same route just now and it took 7 seconds. Such a great improvement!

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#13

Post by macintux »

XorNot wrote: post #9
greenavocado wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you lower max speed for your chosen transportation method osmand will alter your routing very significantly

I mean, sure? But I don't do that. For city driving OsmAnd makes a sensible route which sticks to main roads whereas Google Maps was getting so bad me and my wife stopped using it because it's choices were bafflingly weird, and would do things like "make 8 turns down residential streets, then obviously make a turn across the busy 4 lane main road you could've already been driving on". Google Maps for whatever reason…

Not only annoying for the driver, but also for the residents.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#14

Post by lejalv »

For those of you using OSMAnd - do you think there is any chance that they will offer public transport routing?

I would at once get the 15-year XV plan if they got this, but perhaps it's at odds with their motto “Offline Maps and Navigation”?

(even if I personally could live with schedule-based routing, i.e. not real-time routing, at least for a while).

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#15

Post by RunningDroid »

wtallis wrote: post #4
tencentshill wrote: post #2

Did they add any form of functional nautical navigation? It always jumps to the nearest road on LAND. The feature should be removed if it doesn't work.

I've had the nautical navigation work fine when canoeing on rivers and streams where you're following linear features on the map. What it lacks is the ability to plot a sensible course across a polygon of open water.

Rumor has it that routers have the same issue with highway areas so best practice is to add a "spine" to them

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:area:highway#Routers

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal:Area_highway/ma...

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#16

Post by technothrasher »

XorNot wrote: post #6

At this point I prefer OsmAnd navigation over Google maps. Maps reliably does stupid things like route through winding residential streets because it thinks that's faster and can obviously be done at the full posted speed limit. OsmAnd on the other hand builds routes I would build: get on the main road and get close, then get to the destination.

OsmAnd has the annoying quark of suggesting that I drive off my retaining wall, through some woods, and then across some wetlands, in order to get to the road behind my house, rather than directing me down my long driveway to the road a little further away. This is because the driveway is marked as private in the OpenStreetMap data, because it is private. Obviously I know to just go down my driveway, but anybody trying to get directions to my house would be sent to the incorrect road behind it and then just abandoned. I contacted the OsmAnd folks and was told it was an OSM problem. But other apps using OSM data don't have this issue. I gave up with OsmAnd after that.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#17

Post by szewachvice »

I don't know how everyone is getting these faster speeds. I set my navigation to HH x C++ and it still takes several minutes to calculate routes of just a couple km. I love Osmand, but bugs like these are par for the course with the app. Going back to online Graphhopper routing.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#18

Post by yaomtc »

technothrasher wrote: post #16
XorNot wrote: post #6

At this point I prefer OsmAnd navigation over Google maps. Maps reliably does stupid things like route through winding residential streets because it thinks that's faster and can obviously be done at the full posted speed limit. OsmAnd on the other hand builds routes I would build: get on the main road and get close, then get to the destination.

OsmAnd has the annoying quark of suggesting that I drive off my retaining wall, through some woods, and then across some wetlands, in order to get to the road behind my house, rather than directing me down my long driveway to the road a little further away. This is because the driveway is marked as private in the OpenStreetMap data, because it is private. Obviously I know to just go down my driveway, but anybody tryi…

Settings > Driving > Navigation settings > Route parameters > Allow private access

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#19

Post by yorwba »

lejalv wrote: post #14

For those of you using OSMAnd - do you think there is any chance that they will offer public transport routing? I would at once get the 15-year XV plan if they got this, but perhaps it's at odds with their motto “Offline Maps and Navigation”? (even if I personally could live with schedule-based routing, i.e. not real-time routing, at least for a while).

You can enable the "public transport" profile in OsmAnd, today. It might not support your local area, though.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#20

Post by n4r9 »

Some of those objections to Contraction Hierarchies are possibly a little out of date. Modern variants of the technique allow for rapid live traffic customisation, see e.g. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.10519 . I suspect that the "nested dissection" approach also allows for regional maps.

It's been a while since I looked at OSRM's implementation, but I don't think they've been keeping up with the cutting edge here.

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