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?
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.
They’re currently working on vector based maps for openstreetmap.org
Thanks! I didn’t remember where I’ve read that.
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.
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.
Interesting! This makes a lot of sense.
Maybe they got data from other sources that they combine with the osm data.
