I've tried it and it's a hit and miss. In some places it worked perfectly. In another place it's like a drunk driver who ignores roads. Hehehe.<br><br>Merkaartor plans to incorporate this tool, experimentally, in the near future. I'm sure some JOSM person is also creating a plug-in for this since this tool's API is extremely simple.<br>
<br>Here's an email by the Microsoft researcher who helped create the tool to the main OSM mailing list:<br><br><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">
<p class="MsoNormal">Hi Guys,</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">I am a researcher at Microsoft and I am currently working on the road detector.</p><p class="MsoNormal">I joined a bit late and can’t post answers in the
existing road detector thread, but I might be able to provide some
additional info regarding the road detector.</p><p class="MsoNormal">It is *<b>FAR</b>* from being perfect, but in our
experiments it may produce a lot of value (== save time) if you use it
correctly. When use it correctly means don’t expect too much, so here
are some practical tips:</p><p><span>1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>It is currently uses the two end
points as example and tries to find a path that is similar to those
examples, so it is recommended to use the tool at a zoom level that will
let you make sure you click on a road
and not near a road (we will probably loosen that restriction in the
future).</p><p><span>2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>Don’t try to challenge the detector
too much, it will probably fail, instead if you have a very complicated
winding road break it into a few sections and let it detect shorter
legs (it will still save you most
of the clicks…)</p><p><span>3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>One of the main features used is color, so if the road changes its color a lot, break it again into shorter legs.</p><p><span>4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>We currently only compute one path
(road) between the points and cannot provide a meaningful score for that
path. Defining a score is a difficult problem (but we are open to
ideas…).</p><p><span>5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>To speed things up, we are using a
bounding box that is in many cases smaller than the bounding box
provided by the client (we take constant margins around the bounding box
defined by the two end points). This
means that if you click on the two end points of a U shaped road we
might truncate the lower part of the U and find a “shortcut “ through
buildings, fields, etc. And again you’ll need to break the query into
shorter legs… (I am currently working on speeding
things up and I hope to get rid of this limitation in a week)</p><p><span>6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>The algorithm is currently ignoring junctions, but I should be able to add them very soon (early next week)</p><p class="MsoNormal">That is for road detection. The other mode we will
provide is road exploration which will enable finding all the roads in a
certain bounding box (well, you’ll probably need to click once or
twice…) I am not sure if there is an exposed version
of this service (I hope not, since so far it is really a bunch of
experiments…) but we should have it really soon (a week or two). For the
road exploration we will probably have some kind of certainty level for
each road segment.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">I will be very happy to hear of any
complaints/requests/places where you think the detector should work but
it fails/any other feedback.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Thanks,</p><p class="MsoNormal">Ido</p></blockquote>
<br><br><br>On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 10:19 AM, maning sambale <<a href="mailto:emmanuel.sambale@gmail.com">emmanuel.sambale@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>> Not yet useful. I tested both the silverlight and openlayers demo. I<br>
> can't create a nice road trace both for straight grids and curvy<br>> baguio type roads. Since the algorithm depends on imagery color, I<br>> think tracing quality will depend on the image contrast, which varies<br>
> for different areas.<br>><br>> It would be nice if the app can manipulate the base imagery like<br>> setting image contrast to highlight the roads before tracing.<br>><br>> Once the basic code/api is released by Bing, I'm sure osm-geeks can<br>
> develop the algorithm much better. ;)<br>><br>> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 8:40 AM, Eugene Alvin Villar <<a href="mailto:seav80@gmail.com">seav80@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>>> Here's something somebody whipped up to play around with things:<br>
>> <a href="http://maps.qualitystreetmap.org/bingtracing/">http://maps.qualitystreetmap.org/bingtracing/</a><br>>><br>>><br>>> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 8:37 AM, George Tujan <<a href="mailto:gtujan@gmail.com">gtujan@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>> now that's pretty cool!<br>>>><br>>>> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 2:23 AM, Eugene Alvin Villar <<a href="mailto:seav80@gmail.com">seav80@gmail.com</a>><br>>>> wrote:<br>>>>><br>
>>>> See this blog post:<br>>>>><br>>>>> <a href="http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2011/02/03/automatically-detect-roads-with-bing-aerial-imagery.aspx">http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2011/02/03/automatically-detect-roads-with-bing-aerial-imagery.aspx</a><br>
>>>><br>>>>> And this YouTube video:<br>>>>> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR0WV2dGIRc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR0WV2dGIRc</a><br>>>>><br>>>>> _______________________________________________<br>
>>>> talk-ph mailing list<br>>>>> <a href="mailto:talk-ph@openstreetmap.org">talk-ph@openstreetmap.org</a><br>>>>> <a href="http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ph">http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ph</a><br>
>>><br>>>><br>>><br>>><br>>><br>>> --<br>>> <a href="http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com">http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com</a><br>>><br>>> _______________________________________________<br>
>> talk-ph mailing list<br>>> <a href="mailto:talk-ph@openstreetmap.org">talk-ph@openstreetmap.org</a><br>>> <a href="http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ph">http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ph</a><br>
>><br>><br>><br>><br>> --<br>> cheers,<br>> maning<br>> ------------------------------------------------------<br>> "Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden<br>> wiki: <a href="http://esambale.wikispaces.com/">http://esambale.wikispaces.com/</a><br>
> blog: <a href="http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/">http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/</a><br>> ------------------------------------------------------<br>><br><br><br><br>-- <br><a href="http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com">http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com</a><br>
<br>