[OSM-talk] Yah** imagery

[Nick Black]

On 2/6/07, 80n <80n80n at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/6/07, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
>
> > Quoting lewispusey <lewispusey at earthlink.net>:
> >
> > > "With the yahoo
> > > photography, OSM could have maps that are vastly superior to those
> > > supplied by other web-based mapping services"
> > >      Not so. I'd invite you to check out those other "services" and
> > > see how they do things. It might speed up your developement process
> > > considerably.
> >
> > ?Que?
> >
> > If I go to maps.google.co.uk (the market leader, apparently) and
> > search for "Clun", then zoom in a bit, Safari tells me it's loading
> > 272 items. WTF? I only want 15 map tiles.
> >
> > The A road through Clun is shown as a thick deep orange line. The B
> > road is shown as a thick yellow line. Anyone used to typical UK
> > mapping will mistakenly recognise these as a B road and an
> > unclassified road respectively. On Google, amazingly, neither actually
> > has the road number on.
> >
> > There is nothing illustrating the character of the landscape, not even
> > any hill shading derived from freely-available SRTM data: just a grey
> > background with the odd cased white line. There are no icons to show
> > where the pubs are, or the Youth Hostel, or to tell me a little about
> > Clun and the surrounding countryside. Nearby villages are depicted by
> > just a centred (centred! FFS) placename, with no grey shading to show
> > the extent of building. No pubs. No rights of way. No long-distance
> > paths. No National Cycle Network routes. No historic places. Nada.
>
> I suspect that the style Google uses was deliberately chosen - in many cases
> less is more.  For a car user google maps are clear and easy to use
> (ignoring the road label issue).

I guess that it has a lot to do with the data they had available -
Navteq don't do footpaths, and again, there is OSM's opportunity.

>
> For every other user (foot, cycle, train, boat, tourist, etc) they are
> completely useless.  But therein lies OSM's big opportunity...
>
>
> > Tell me again, what exactly is it we're meant to be learning?

One thing I noticed with Google the other day, is that European
countries have their names spelled in the local language.  Whilst this
immediately annoyed me a bit, I soon remembered that there *are* other
languages in the world (a rare realisation for an English speaker).
Its quite cool that they adopt a kind-of localised approach, but I
guess that is what gmaps is all about - localising the internet and
advertising.

I guess OSM can go different ways on this one.  At the moment we apply
two different cartographic styles (Mapnik and Osmarender) to all of
the world's data.  Perhaps something to look at would be to localise
the cartography so that each country has a representation that is self
defined.  A paper for SOTM maybe...


> >
> > I think you'll find most of us have used other webmaps pretty
> > extensively. Some of us were even involved in developing them. Many of
> > us are already aware of OSM's shortcomings and some of the things we
> > have to do to overcome them - but, as per the original quote, can also
> > see the potential for OSM to produce some of the best maps ever
> > unleashed upon the web. Please don't patronise us.
> >
> > Richard
> >
> >
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> >
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> >
>
>
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>


-- 
Nick Black
--------------------------------
http://www.blacksworld.net