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

Organic Maps

organicmaps.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 493 posts

Re: Organic Maps

#191

Post by ijustlovemath »

gorbypark wrote: post #160

I use Organic Maps for hiking specifically because it's not a "hiking app". There are way too many apps out there that expect you to just hike a trail that someone else has already hiked. Want to combine intersecting trails? You're out of luck. Want to use a trail you didn't explicitly pre-download without a data connection? You're out of luck But with Organic Maps, I find it has all the trails (at least on two separ…

You can tell the grade of a trail by doing Route To / Route From and selecting the walking option. After computing the route it shows you a fairly accurate elevation profile, as well as the length and total elevation gains/losses.

If you're using imperial units, you can also quickly estimate difficulty by doing the following:

- take the total elevation change, in hundreds of feet, eg 900ft = 9 * 100ft

- take the total distance, in tenths of a mile, eg 2.1 mi = 21 * .1 mi

- divide the elevation by the length and convert to a percentage: 9/21 ~ 43%

- grades are like so:

0-40%: relatively easy

40-70%: moderately big elevation, may be hard to sustain

70-100%: steep terrain, may involve some scrambling

>100%: very steep, technical terrain. Sometimes involves ladders or a static line in particularly steep sections

For example, there's a pretty lengthy trail near me called Shining Creek, that's very sustained, but I wouldn't call it steep. It's got 2300ft of elevation change over 3.9mi, which corresponds to a 58% steepness, aka the upper end of a moderately difficulty hike if sustained.

Re: Organic Maps

#192

Post by Vinnl »

orbital-decay wrote: post #150
zikduruqe wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a cyclist, I use Organic Maps to add drinking water sources, shelters, repair stations, fix biking routes and lanes using just a mobile app to update OSM when I am out and about.

Thanks for that! Editing the map on a bike can be a hassle though. I tried many options and came to conclusion that a 360° camera on the helmet and a physical Bluetooth button to take audio notes is the easiest possible setup.

If you both don't know about StreetComplete yet, you should check it out: https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/#readme

Re: Organic Maps

#193

Post by LifeDesigner »

Hey guys! So happy to vote for Organic Maps. As a part of the team (when it was MAPS.ME) I'm very happy to see new life of MAPS.ME in Organic Maps. Good luck and all the best for you guys! Use your product with a pleasure. Alex Matveenko

Re: Organic Maps

#194

Post by Vinnl »

gaazoh wrote: post #120
Leo_Verto wrote: post #49

Organic Maps really nails the use case for a minimalistic, no-nonsense mapping app with great UX design. Whereas OsmAnd tries to accommodate all use cases with full configurability, which results in a mess of nested options menus, OM goes for reasonable defaults and short menu paths. Unfortunately that minimalism comes with some downsides. While OM has a great metro map, it doesn't show bus lines (which would probabl…

I agree, including other guided transit (trams, urban gondolas...) on the metro layer would greatly improve public transit routing. But bus routes are a harder problem to integrate, especially in larger cities. In Paris, there are more than 200 bus routes (more than 1000 including the greater suburbs), map readability would take a probably big hit if they were displayed on the map, or at least it would require a lot…

That's actually one of the few areas where I really like the way OsmAnd approached the UI. When you tap a bus stop, it shows you which bus lines stop there, and only after you tap one of the lines do you actually see the route for that particular line, and it has buttons to focus the next and previous stops.

Re: Organic Maps

#195

Post by davelondon »

My friend is a heavy iOS maps.me user, and has hundreds of bookmarks all over the world. She isn't a fan of the new maps.me, and would love to use Organic Maps.

I've tested the import / export function, and it looks like we can transfer all her bookmarks over and preserve the colour information...

The only thing we're missing is an auto-backup function to store the bookmarks online. She's not a techie, so it has to be free from settings and automatically enabled.

As soon as that feature is added you'll have another user!

Re: Organic Maps

#196

Post by rob74 »

ex-googlemaps wrote: post #180
aix1 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We had a really nice solution but privacy considerations made it extremely difficult and limited. Would you be willing to elaborate a bit more on those privacy considerations? (I guess what I'm struggling with is how cycling is different in this regard from other modalities.)

There are significantly more people using the other modes, especially in active navigation. For example, it’s well known that Google detects traffic through the movement of active users (there was the wagon of phones traffic jam experiment). Imagine trying to do something similar with the amount of cyclists actively using Google with the necessary privacy settings enabled on any given route. It would be noisy but pos…

This sounds a bit American to me honestly - I would think that in Europe (and especially in Amsterdam) there would be enough cyclists to make the data usable. OTOH, they may not have the necessary privacy settings enabled (I think that's a minority among car users too). Of course it's also a vicious circle: if Google Maps is bad for cyclists, few cyclists will be using it, so you won't get the data you need to make it better. Additionally, I think the proportion of cyclists using any kind of navigation solution is lower than with car drivers...

Re: Organic Maps

#197

Post by rakoo »

aix1 wrote: post #175
palata wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find it "pretty good", I guess you have never tried an OpenStreetMap-based app like Organic Maps. I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases).

> I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases). This is the first come I come across Organic Maps but I do use OSMAnd. I'm wondering how the two compare and would love to hear more about the use cases you have for each of them.

I use organic maps most of the time but osmand has much better support for hiking trails: you can see them (not just a path, but the name of the route, with a different color to separate it), I can tell the app to prefer it when building an itinerary, and the altitude info is way more detailed. You can spot the exact altitude and gradient at any spot. You can add a second map as an overlay, and I typically use a contour maps to quickly see where the peaks are, where the route will be flat, etc...

OSMand is slightly too powerful for everyday use, organic maps is the perfect good-enough, less-is-better example.

Re: Organic Maps

#198

Post by OfSanguineFire »

orbital-decay wrote: post #150
zikduruqe wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a cyclist, I use Organic Maps to add drinking water sources, shelters, repair stations, fix biking routes and lanes using just a mobile app to update OSM when I am out and about.

Thanks for that! Editing the map on a bike can be a hassle though. I tried many options and came to conclusion that a 360° camera on the helmet and a physical Bluetooth button to take audio notes is the easiest possible setup.

I collect info on the bike using a Garmin eTrex GPS. Because this has physical buttons, and not a touchscreen, you don’t have to take your eyes off the road so much. You rarely have to stop at all if you just make your own personal system of abbreviations.

For example, I will save a waypoint titled "RLPGW" or "RRPGW" to specify at intersections that the road to my left or right is paved and ends in a give-way sign. Or "DWL" or "DWR" for drinking water to my left or to my right, respectively, etc. Then, when I get home, I just connect the Garmin to my laptop and comfortably upload everything using the powerful JOSM editor.

Re: Organic Maps

#199

Post by matkoniecz »

technothrasher wrote: post #183
matkoniecz wrote: post #54

Note that if some data is missing or wrong - you can fix it by editing on https://www.openstreetmap.org/ as they use OpenStreetMap data Such help is really welcome! If you are on Android then I recommend StreetComplete which asks questions and edits OSM based on answers (disclaimer: I wrote parts of it) (Organic Maps has some limited editing capability, but for example you will not change road geometry or add forest…

I started using StreetComplete a few months ago. It's a good "time waster" when I'm sitting somewhere in my car waiting for somebody, or I'm out for a stroll somewhere. I did laugh though when I was recently in Europe and was filling in data with it, and it kept wanting to know how wide the streets were in meters. I had visions of annoying motorists by putting a tape measure across the streets to get an answer.

There is a separate app to install with VR tool that is capable of measuring it without tape measure :)

See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.westnordost...

(initially it was bundled in one app, later it turned out that Google was lying about license of arcore repository, see https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/4289 )

Re: Organic Maps

#200

Post by imp0cat »

matkoniecz wrote: post #59
Tee3993 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps has pretty good support for offline maps. Select rectangular area, download, it expires after year. I am in Europe, maybe you have different copyright on data?

With Organic Maps (and Osmand and mapy.cz) I am able to download entire Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic and Slovakia. This was useful in my recent trips and can download more if needed. I definitely can not do this with Google Maps.

Another vote for mapy.cz and their off-line capabilities.

Too bad their navigation does not care about traffic outside of Czechia. You can still use them for directions in a car, but no traffic jam avoidance.

Post reply on HN