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OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

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Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#61

Post by maxerickson »

amdavidson wrote: post #56
c0nsumer wrote: post #5

I do a lot of mountain bike trail mapping work using OpenStreetMap, and it's really bugged me that more public-service mapping projects (eg: MTB Project) don't build on OSM. They all tend to instead build their own mapping set which requires stuff to be re-entered... It's kind of a pain.

How are you finding is the easiest way to do this? I would love to be able to add more trail information.

Where are you starting from?

If you have never contributed to OSM, the process can be pretty easy:

Go walk/hike/bike the trail so you remember what it looks like, perhaps taking notes and recording a GPS trace of it.

Go to openstreetmap.org, make an account, move the map to the area where the trail starts, click "Edit".

If you recorded a trace, drag it into the editor so it can show it as a reference (hopefully it's a GPX, it might be necessary to convert it).

Using the "line" tool, trace the trail, combining the information from the GPS trace, notes and imagery. Make sure to select the finished trace and mark it as a walking/biking/hiking trail. Then click save.

So there is a lot to do, but none of the individual steps are hugely complicated.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#62

Post by schoen »

jdmichal wrote: post #49
awqrre wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wi-Fi also does works in airplane mode, on Android at least...

Your phone is not in airplane mode if it's making any kind of signal. You're just using Wi-Fi with the cellular modem disabled. Since GPS is only reading the satellite signals, it works fine.

I thought there was some kind of aviation safety rule against using radio receivers on board commercial flights, maybe because of retransmission of signals on the receiver's intermediate frequency?

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#63

Post by monknomo »

hodwik wrote: post #24

I wish it didn't show Philadelphia as Trenton/Camden. That is so incorrect.

I'm not being facetious, don't take it the wrong way, but you could fix it. It's surprisingly easy.

I fixed a bunch of stuff wrong with my home town and found it pretty gratifying

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#64

Post by maxerickson »

schoen wrote: post #57
maxxxxx wrote: post #54

The only drawback I see with OSM that none of the apps I have tried has good search capability. I would like to be able to enter "11077 Wilshire, Los Angeles", instead I have to click through state. city and then street which is tedious and sometimes impossible. The maps themselves are very good.

What kind of work has been done publicly on a data model for resolving this kind of query? I was just wondering about that because I was noticing a little of how Google Maps responds in terms of different language names for places and features. Could this model be built automatically from existing OSM data, or would someone else have to manually add some kind of additional hierarchy information? Has this been studied…

Photon builds nice, find as you type, free text search on top of OSM data:

https://photon.komoot.de/

I wonder if GP is talking specifically about on device apps, Photon needs a pretty big index (31 gigabytes compressed):

https://github.com/komoot/photon

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#65

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

ancymon wrote: post #58
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Plenty of people, myself included, route with OSM data. Address searches are possible though, as ever, it depends whether contributors have added those addresses to OSM.

The flag OSM geocoder is Nominatim. It turns out it won't work if you provide only part of street name (if OSM contains full street name) or when you provide full name (if OSM contains only part of the name) [1]. So in my opinion searching for addresses is not reliable. That's one thing, another is that addresses are quite often duplicated. There's no automatic check for that and such duplicates exist for years. [1]…

There are several geocoders available for OSM. To say that "the database is inconsistent [and] contains many errors", and then back that up solely with a criticism of one piece of client software, makes no sense.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#66

Post by awqrre »

jdmichal wrote: post #49
awqrre wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wi-Fi also does works in airplane mode, on Android at least...

Your phone is not in airplane mode if it's making any kind of signal. You're just using Wi-Fi with the cellular modem disabled. Since GPS is only reading the satellite signals, it works fine.

Maybe not from a legal standpoint, but you can put your phone in airplane mode and then re-activate Wi-Fi and it will still be in airplane mode... unless they changed the behavior on newer Android OS

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#67

Post by c0nsumer »

amdavidson wrote: post #56
c0nsumer wrote: post #5

I do a lot of mountain bike trail mapping work using OpenStreetMap, and it's really bugged me that more public-service mapping projects (eg: MTB Project) don't build on OSM. They all tend to instead build their own mapping set which requires stuff to be re-entered... It's kind of a pain.

How are you finding is the easiest way to do this? I would love to be able to add more trail information.

This isn't super-detailed (it's more a framework) but here is my general mapping workflow: https://nuxx.net/blog/2012/06/05/mtb-trail-mapping-workflow-...

The end goal for this is printable PDF maps, with good data ending up in OSM one of the stepping stones.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#68

Post by XorNot »

schoen wrote: post #57
maxxxxx wrote: post #54

The only drawback I see with OSM that none of the apps I have tried has good search capability. I would like to be able to enter "11077 Wilshire, Los Angeles", instead I have to click through state. city and then street which is tedious and sometimes impossible. The maps themselves are very good.

What kind of work has been done publicly on a data model for resolving this kind of query? I was just wondering about that because I was noticing a little of how Google Maps responds in terms of different language names for places and features. Could this model be built automatically from existing OSM data, or would someone else have to manually add some kind of additional hierarchy information? Has this been studied…

The short answer is yes: OSMand (note, not OSM - but a fairly popular mapping/nav android app using its data) has users who build "full address maps" for entire countries, but it has to be put together as a downloadable bundle and mostly hasn't.

The other problem is OSM tends to have good street maps, but very limited door-to-door coverage.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#69

Post by maxerickson »

monknomo wrote: post #63
hodwik wrote: post #24

I wish it didn't show Philadelphia as Trenton/Camden. That is so incorrect.

I'm not being facetious, don't take it the wrong way, but you could fix it. It's surprisingly easy. I fixed a bunch of stuff wrong with my home town and found it pretty gratifying

Prominence is hard to do automatically, so it may not be trivial to get the system that renders the osm.org tiles to prefer Philadelphia (it does things like look at population, but that data is present for Philadelphia).

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#70

Post by incanus77 »

yellowbkpk wrote: post #53
ancymon wrote: post #48

From programmer's point of view working with OSM is quite annoying. OSM is being considered more as database than drawn map. But that database is inconsistent, contains many errors and its data structures are not good to represent non geographical items. On top of that mechanical edits of map are very discouraged. I think that OSM would only be good for simple stuff like showing on your website where's your business…

I think you'll find that there are plenty of companies making lots of money selling services on top of OSM's "inconsistent" data. Mapbox sells an extremely powerful map styling system, geocoding/searching, and routing. Mapzen sells similar services. MapQuest offers services using OSM data. Apple Maps uses OSM data in areas where commercial data isn't available. I think you'll find that OSM is great for more than just…

Mapzen isn't selling anything.
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