[Osmf-talk] Tiles

[Allan Mustard]

> In summary, technological advancements have made vector tile rendering 
> and hosting more affordable for individual developers, reducing the 
> need for the OSMF to support style development financially. While 
> there are still technical challenges, it is debatable whether it is 
> the OSMF's responsibility to address them, given the many other 
> competing priorities.
This is a relief to hear, since the 2021 community survey sent a clear 
message to the Board that the OSMF should stay out of the vector tile 
business and leave it to the doocracy.[1]  I should also point out that 
OSM as a project has never devoted much attention to how the map is 
rendered, aside from the website's map; focus has been on collecting and 
entering data into the geospatial database so that users may download 
the data to generate maps or other geospatial products. Bucking vector 
tiles to the doocracy would be fully consistent with OSM's historic 
practice.  The 2021 strategic plan outline did envision OSMF's hosting a 
server for others to use for developing vector tiles, but that was never 
done, and it seems it's no longer necessary.[2]

cheers,
apm

[1] https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/2021_Survey_Results
[2] 
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan_Outline#providing_tools_mappers_need_to_collect,_enter,_check_quality_of,_and_use_data


On 6/1/2023 11:04 PM, Brian M. Sperlongano wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 1, 2023 at 10:09 PM Mikel Maron <mikel.maron at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     The upside to vector tiles is flexibility in rendering for various
>     mapper use cases, aiding data creation. One idea I heard recently
>     was to show a map where older features fade from the map. Pretty
>     cool idea. Of course ultimately  depends on what tags and metadata
>     are included within the tiles (you can do everything) but
>     something like last edit time seems sensible property potentially.
>
>
> I'm a big proponent of vector tiles.  After all, I helped kick-start a 
> vector-tile-based community map style[1].
>
> I've also observed that the idea that the OSMF needs to bankroll 
> vector tile technology to jump-start style development hasn't aged 
> well. When the idea was first proposed, rendering vector tiles took a 
> long time and serious hardware. We needed the OSMF to host vector 
> tiles because it was unreasonable for a casual developer to pay for a 
> high-end server to do the rendering or rent a cloud server to do it.  
> However, technology has changed, and it was because 
> individual software developers solved problems they had and not 
> because the Foundation kick-started anything.  It's now possible to 
> render a planet vector tile server for $1-2 of cloud compute time and 
> about $10 a month to store and host it online.  This is how I host a 
> vector tile server[2] for my map style for the cost of a couple of 
> cups of coffee a month.  Of course, if it gets too popular, bandwidth 
> costs money, and I'd be forced to cut it off. However, these same 
> economic considerations apply to anyone wanting to dabble in 
> vector-tile-style development and they'd be able to spin up their own.
>
> Another observation about vector tiles is that if the tile schema is 
> not tailored to the style, you waste A LOT of bandwidth serving up 
> tile data that isn't displayed to the users.  Sometimes that's okay, 
> such as serving tiles with multiple languages so the user can switch 
> the display in their browser. But if the tiles have certain data at 
> zoom X, but the style doesn't begin displaying that data until zoom Y, 
> or not at all, that's a waste of bandwidth, not to mention unnecessary 
> slower load times in the client. So, the idea of a centrally-hosted 
> "general purpose" tile set becomes questionable for non-trivial styles.
>
> I acknowledge that there are technology gaps to address.  For example, 
> minutely vector-tile updates are not there yet (full planet renders in 
> about 30 minutes have been demonstrated), and I understand that there 
> are folks working on it. If the Foundation focused on closing 
> technology gaps like that, I'd be more interested, though I'm not sure 
> that would be the best use of limited funds.
>
> In summary, technological advancements have made vector tile rendering 
> and hosting more affordable for individual developers, reducing the 
> need for the OSMF to support style development financially. While 
> there are still technical challenges, it is debatable whether it is 
> the OSMF's responsibility to address them, given the many other 
> competing priorities.
>
> [1] https://zelonewolf.github.io/openstreetmap-americana
> [2] https://6ug7hetxl9.execute-api.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/
>
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