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

431–440 of 493 posts

Re: Organic Maps

#431

Post by mcv »

mcv wrote: post #293
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really interesting test case - thanks! cycle.travel's scoring for the two routes differs by 0.4% so it's very close. In OSM data terms, the challenge is that there's no particular special tagging for the Sarphatistraat - it just gets classed as a "cycleway", same as the route along Mauritskade. Plus there's a couple of very slight advantages for the Panamalaan (which is tagged as part of a designated longer-distance…

It's true that Mauritskade is besides water, but it's also next to pretty heavy car traffic. Is it possible to give it a downgrade for that? > I doubt the longer-distance bike route consideration should be relevant in this case Or maybe it is, but then it's relevant for all routes involved, including the Sarphatistraat (which is short distance for cars, but long distance for bikes).

Also worth pointing out: the very first part of the Sarphatistraat that's skipped is a bike path between a grassy tramline and water, with the zoo on the other side of that water. Can't get much more scenic than that. It's significantly greener than the corresponding bit of Mauritskade.

Re: Organic Maps

#432

Post by biodranik »

nerdponx wrote: post #291
biodranik wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSM Public Transport schemes support for buses and trams is not implemented yet, and it's not an easy task. Any volunteers to lead the development are welcome! Here is the entry point to the current subways validator with wiki links at the bottom: https://cdn.organicmaps.app/subway/

Is there any corporate funding for this work?

The original subway validator was created by the original (before the second sale) maps.me team. Now it is supported voluntarily.

Re: Organic Maps

#433

Post by raylad »

Organic Maps has the best walking directions.

It's always picking interesting routes and has never led me astray.

Also, if you go in a different direction, it automatically remaps from where you are at the moment to where you told it you wanted to go, unlike Google maps and most others that I've used.

Re: Organic Maps

#434

Post by JeremyNT »

palata wrote: post #82
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 use both Organic Maps and OsmAnd, I see both your descriptions as features: - Organic Maps is minimalistic, easy, great for what it does. - OsmAnd does everything. Whenever I want to do something more advanced that is not in Organic Maps (typically I like the GPX stuff for hiking, or the ski maps, etc), I turn to OsmAnd. I just need both.

I use both as well, we are lucky to have such great options for both use cases!

Re: Organic Maps

#435

Post by dbtc »

vintagedave wrote: post #55

This was the first time I’d heard of the app, but due to comments in this thread I downloaded it. * Website, ethos: straightforward. “Old internet” vibes, love it. They seem very active, have a presence on every platform, very impressive * The app seems very nice. Simple clear UI. Lots of features. I need to experiment for more than a few minutes but I get the impression it could replace Google Maps for me, especiall…

Used organic maps recently in central WA without cell service: fantastic app.

Re: Organic Maps

#436

Post by llbeansandrice »

brianpan wrote: post #399
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is about an offline maps app which is maintained by volunteers, so it can't be that hard for the likes of Google.

Supporting offline would take design, effort, and testing. Anything can be done. But you can't do everything.

Sure but Google could surely do this.

Re: Organic Maps

#437

Post by xethos »

samschooler wrote: post #417
oregoncurtis wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you fix the routes? I just checked out the suggested route from my work to home and it doesn't stick to the bike greenways or streets with bikelanes. It actually suggested I take a very dangerous road with no bike traffic at all. How can I help improve that?

A lot of the routing comes down to pressure around the tag `bicycle`. If there is a road illegal to bikes, tag it `bicycle=no`. But if it is unsafe, the best way to fix it is to better document designated routes, as well as cycleways. OSM's philosophy on routing is you should not try to fix routing by trying to translate your opinion that it is unsafe to ride on the street into to tags. Instead the routing algorithm…

> Instead the routing algorithm should improve

Where's the feedback to the routing algorithm? I thought graphhopper / OSM was sent to users without feedback.

Re: Organic Maps

#438

Post by llbeansandrice »

shaftway wrote: post #366
rqtwteye wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can. But you can’t download a large region like a whole state which makes long road trips a pain. Apple Maps is even worse because it has no offline mode at all.

I've generally been really impressed with it. Would it be nice if I could pick a bigger area? Yeah. Would it be nice if I could choose the dimensions of my rectangle, or a non-rectangular shape like a state? Yeah. But the fact that I can download a map that has all of New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, and sizable chunks of 4 other states in that area for 890 MB is pretty awesome. Especially when it c…

There’s no walking directions. But they can definitely do it. I was able to start a walking route on a hiking trail in Rocky Mountain National Park at 12k feet. Then switch into airplane mode and see exactly how far we had left.

All of that impossible if I didn’t have signal to start the walking route.

Re: Organic Maps

#439

Post by culi »

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…

What exactly makes the challenge of cycle so much harder than walking? Also is there really 0 ways you could use pedestrian mode data for biking directions? Even if marginally or to confirm hypotheses mostly based on cycling data

Lastly, is there anything stopping you from contributing potential innovations to open source alternatives?

Re: Organic Maps

#440

Post by culi »

kseistrup wrote: post #303
johannes1234321 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many cyclists use Google Maps to navigate? I guess (with no true facts) most cyclists know their primary routes and when going somewhere new have a rough idea and just check for the last part. Whereas car drivers often use navigation all the time to see traffic and alternatives, which are non-issues for cyclists. Thus even with many cyclists the information they collect is less.

> How many cyclists use Google Maps to navigate? The Cowboy bike company have started using Google Maps for navigation in their app, which is a bummer: Before the change, the navigation would reliably take direct me to use roads that a bike friendly. Now it does just the opposite: it wants me to take big roads that are only friendly to cars.

Google Maps was a nightmare at the top 100 US News university I went to. It'd constantly be unaware of bike routes and try to take me an absurdly wrong way around. Even as I was taking the bikable shortcut paths it would just keep rerouting telling me to turn around 180° even when I was more than halfway near the other road. You'd think there's be sufficient data on a major university campus...
Post reply on HN