Why do maps that use OSM as a backend have more detail that OSM? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/openstreetmap@lemmy.ml

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Where is it coming from? Are there other open sources of map data?

I've seen multiple mapping websites that provide business solutions that seemed to be sourcing their data from OSM. However, when I zoom in to known problem areas, I find a lot more detail. They're not getting it from Google, Bing, or Apple, and I find it implausible that these small specialized companies are sinking tens of thousands of hours into adding fine map detail. So where are they getting it? If it is open source is there a way to merge it back into OSM?

For example this website, maptiler, cites open street map as their source. Compare it with the official site. I have found multiple examples of the same thing. Can anyone explain to me what's going on here?

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[-] pootriarch@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 27 points 8 months ago

OSM has a lot more data inside than the website shows - in dense shopping areas you can't zoom in far enough to see all the POIs, much less business names.

I've read before that using cached previews was done to stay accessible to less-powerful mobile devices, which would have smaller CPUs that would be taxed by rendering the native vector data. I view it as a branding disadvantage that OSM appears, from desktops, to have less info than alternatives. But that's a battle that's been had many times before, one might as well argue over paper vs plastic.

[-] llii@feddit.de 12 points 8 months ago

They’re currently working on vector based maps for openstreetmap.org

[-] Vincent@feddit.nl 3 points 8 months ago

Source: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2024/02/11/2024-announcing-the-year-of-the-openstreetmap-vector-maps/

[-] llii@feddit.de 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Thanks! I didn't remember where I've read that.

[-] lemmy_user_838586@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I definitely realize it increases the complexity of the codebase, but I would think a solution would be to add a toggle for underpowered devices to use the cached approach, and if unchecked display all info available.

[-] infeeeee@lemm.ee 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Beside what @pootriarch@poptalk.scrubbles.tech wrote, maptiler and other map providers started to display osm with overture maps.

Overture maps is started by corporations to present their gibberish data to their shareholders. It's mostly AI generated building footprints with varying quality and location of pages and businesses from facebook.

The corporate sponsors of osm couldn't add this data to osm, because it's against our rules. The license of overture maps is compatible with osm, so you copy from there freely, you can use it as a source, and it's legal for providers like maptiler to mix them.

The problem with overture is it's quality is not checked, while it's datarich, you can't be sure if it's true at all. Looks nice, but not more usable.

[-] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Interesting! This makes a lot of sense.

[-] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 3 points 8 months ago

Couldnt you use it a source and then ask people who live near it if the data is accurate? That way you wouldnt need to manually add stuff to the map and you could still help osm.

[-] infeeeee@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That's a good usecase, but finding something based on incomplete or wrong data is harder than just surveying what's on the ground.

If you look for something and you find it, it's good and easy, you just copy it to osm. But what if you can't find it? If it's not on the ground you can't be sure why and what to do next:

The location of the element on overture was just simply wrong. So you shouldn't delete it, but move to the correct location. So now you have to look for it on a wider area to find the actual location.
The element does not exist anymore, so you it shouldn't be on the map at all.
The element actually never existed, it was just a joke of a teenager, there were never any QA run on these nodes, so you just lost a lot of time from your life searching for something never existed.
And what if you just missed it accidentally or something similar.

The problem is you cannot really edit the source of overture. You cannot ask fb to delete someone else's page because it's out of business, or update its address. You cannot tag it as invalid, because currently we have only read only access to overture, you cannot contribute data there.

But overture is relatively new, and I hope the tools will get better, and maybe it will be a bit more usable for the wider community in the future.

I did similar things on osm, tried to find unnamed hostels made by anonymous maps.me users, it's awfully hard to find something when your only info is it's a hostel, and it should be somewhere in this neighborhood. Because you can only delete the wrong hostel if you checked all the surrounding buildings if there isn't an untagged hostel hidden somewhere.

And if you can ask people who live near, why not ask them to simply add the POI? We don't need overture for that, and it's about the same amount of work, and it's much more fun. There are genial and easy to use tools for adding new places to osm aimed at casual mappers: StreetComplete, Every Door, OnOsm.org just to name a few.

[-] pietervdvn@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

You forgot https://mapcomplete.org in your list!

[-] llii@feddit.de 4 points 8 months ago

Maybe they got data from other sources that they combine with the osm data.

this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024

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