[HN Gopher] OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in ... ___________________________________________________________________ OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities Author : clarecorthell Score : 201 points Date : 2021-02-09 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (eng.lyft.com) (TXT) w3m dump (eng.lyft.com) | exabrial wrote: | Except my street. No matter how many times I email Lyft support, | it always sends them the wrong place. Most Lyft drivers don't | read the directions on pickup either explaining the problem. | | /sigh #FirstWorldProblems | randoramax wrote: | Have you tried fixing the map yourself? It's easy, just like | Wikipedia. | clarecorthell wrote: | No bothersome problem is too small! If you'd like to share, we | would be eager to look into this. Reach us through the app or | at osm-questions [a] lyft.com. | Acrobatic_Road wrote: | And I helped with that. :) | npteljes wrote: | Me too :) feels great to see the changes online, and then as | they propagate to different providers. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | On the other hand, I wonder if OSM's accuracy in Europe has taken | a hit in the last year. The lockdowns have led to a wave of | bankruptcies of restaurants and fitness centers in several | countries, but because mappers are forced to stay home and aren't | circulating in the city doing their business, they aren't | noticing so much what has changed and removing those POIs from | the map. Also, the extremely strict lockdowns in some countries | have prevented people from going out for mapping expeditions in | the surrounding regions to add missing infrastructure. | angott wrote: | This is an issue with all map services, really. I see the same | thing happening on Google and Apple Maps, lots of places that | are permanently closed haven't been updated yet. | petre wrote: | Apple, Amazon, Facebook and MS have been lately contributing | a lot to OSM, so what you see on Apple Maps might very well | be OSM data. | | https://joemorrison.medium.com/openstreetmap-is-having-a- | mom... | guntars wrote: | Lyft has access to some pretty good data on where the roads | actually are and if there are any closures. Looks like they are | already contributing back, which is awesome. Something I've never | heard being done, but could be very helpful for cities, is | tracking the bumpiness of roads as a metric for road quality. The | city could have near real time access to information on where the | potholes are. I'd think they'd be willing to pay for it. | dewitt wrote: | "Road directionality" being only 98.9% accurate seems to be a | huge problem for a navigation app! | throwaway2245 wrote: | Road directionality is variable over time. I'm not sure at what | rate it changes but I bet it's a lot more than 1.1% per year. | qwerty456127 wrote: | I've just checked (some years have passes since the last time) | and it seems improved a lot for Europe too. | | I personally am not really interested in geospatial precision, I | mostly use public transport so I need all the bus/tram/etc stops | placed and named accurately. | advisedwang wrote: | I'd be really interested in a comparison to other mapping | providers. 95% doesn't sound that great in the abstract, but | perhaps that's better than the competition? | clarecorthell wrote: | Lyft study shows crucial OpenStreetMap road attributes are fresh | and high quality in 30 North American cities, as compared to | groundtruth. Blog post and paper detail the process, methodology, | and results. | Ayesh wrote: | Good that OSM is accurate in cities as well, because in hiking, | skiing, or even some ferry routes, OSM simply wins because that's | often the only mapping provider to even have _any_ data. Some of | my first hand experiences: | | - French GR-20 routes. Google maps are laughably empty, while OSM | has you covered with almost the same information as the hiking | maps you can buy on the trail. | | - Anapurna - similar to GR-20 situation. This route gets changed | often due to landslides, but there is always some person doing a | great job updating information not too late after. | | - Volcanoes - OSM maps often contain camping grounds, water | sources, etc. This is something I actively contribute too. The | level of detail is amazing. Some guides in fact lose potential | clients because of this. | | OSM is a wonderful feat by all its contributors, and isn't | appreciated as much as it deserves. | thitcanh wrote: | Is there an easy way to contribute from my phone? If I could | just turn the GPS on and let it track my path I'd be able to | contribute all of my random hikes that might not be on OSM. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | OSM discourages adding raw GPS tracks to the map, rather they | should only be uploaded to a sort of waiting room hosted on | OSM's infrastructure. A GPS track from a phone or unit is | something that needs to be carefully examined, compared to | other GPS tracks from the region or aerial imagery, and then | tweaked and refined. You need to be able to use specialized | mapping software properly in order to contribute tracks to | OSM. The good news is that the barrier to entry is fairly low | for people like you and me on this "news for nerds" site. | diggan wrote: | There is bunch of suggestions on how to contribute to OSM | with your mobile here: https://learnosm.org/en/mobile- | mapping/ | | On the left side you have a list of apps/devices with guides | and summaries | nichos wrote: | Street complete (fdroid/playstore or GH) is a very easy way | to use your phone to quickly to edits or validate data. | https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete | [deleted] | maxerickson wrote: | You can directly upload GPS traces: | | https://www.openstreetmap.org/traces | | That won't get them into the OpenStreetMap database, but it | makes them available (if you set them to public) for anyone | looking to add the trails. | | There's also apps like StreetComplete. It has 'challenges', | where it prompts you for answers to questions and updates | OpenStreetMap accordingly (so what is the surface type of a | road, things like that). | | Vespucci is a full featured editor for Android. | reaperducer wrote: | Interesting thought. | | I have GPS traces for a number of Amtrak routes across | America. I wonder if those would be useful. | npteljes wrote: | After registering, it took me only like an hour to have my | track up and mapping it with their brilliant online editing | tool. There are some gotchas, but the interface is really | friendly and their wiki is vast with info, references and | tutorials alike. | benjaminclark wrote: | These experiences are interesting, but I think Annapurna might | not be the right benchmark to evaluate against. One of the | least climbed and most deadly mountains on Earth seems rather | far from OSM's core use case. | | It is cool that OSM has the data, but I hope anyone attempting | the summit is getting information more directly from other | climbers. | [deleted] | dharmab wrote: | The other great mapping resource is CalTopo | (https://caltopo.com). Outside did an article on how CalTopo is | used by people who work and play outside: | https://www.outsideonline.com/2229756/your-navigation-outdat... | seism wrote: | That story (from 2017) is fantastic. CalTopo - and OSM, at | best of times - a project of passion. Thanks for sharing! | ghaff wrote: | OSM isn't perfect--especially on trails that aren't official in | any way. (Although there are some totally informal trails | literally out my door that are far better than you could | reasonably expect. And the missing sections are probably on | private land which is one reason I haven't filled them in.) But | Google seems to have pretty much zero interest in mapping even | popular official trails in many cases. | CivBase wrote: | I've been looking to replace Google Maps with OSM on my | smartphone. OSM itself is great, but I've been having a harder | time finding a good app to use it with. Is anyone familiar with a | good option? I mostly use a maps app for location searches and | real-time GPS navigation, but offline maps and location sharing | are nice-to-have features. | | I've been using OsmAnd and it's okay. The interface is pretty | good. It supports offline maps, but not location sharing. Map | tiles are kind of slow to load compared to Google Maps, which is | odd since the tiles have to be downloaded to local storage. The | location search often includes redundant results and whatever | database they use to store place data is sparse on details like | pictures, hours, or reviews. I'll keep using it to stay de- | platformed from Google as much as possible, but I'd be willing to | pay a bit for something more responsive and polished. | ashtonbaker wrote: | I think Gaia GPS has a free tier? The base map is OSM. I've | seen changes that I've made in OSM pulled in within a couple of | days. I've gotten a lot of use out of my subscription. | | I can't speak as much to the location searching capability. | npteljes wrote: | I previously had good experience with Maps.me. OsmAnd is great | with its myriad settings and such, but somehow is a huge | battery drain on my phone. I use it just fine in the background | though, because it still provides turn by turn navigation that | way. I think OsmAnd doesn't use generated tiles, but rather | generates the map on the fly, hence the slowness. | blendergeek wrote: | > It supports offline maps, but not location sharing. | | Are you on iOS or Android? | | On Android there is the OsmAnd Online GPS Tracker [0]. | | [0] | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand.tel... | Nrbelex wrote: | Check out mapy.cz [1] or an ad-free version from Windy [2]. | | [1] | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy... | | [2] | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.wind... | einpoklum wrote: | I'm using an app called Maps.Me, which seems to be OSM-based. | It's kind of commercialized, which I don't like, but it's | usable. | | I'd be interested in something more FOSSy, myself. | spurgu wrote: | Maps.me was on HN a couple of weeks back. | | MAPS.ME is gone. We must bring it back: | https://telegra.ph/What-happened-to-the-old-MAPSME-12-20 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25515004 | xorcist wrote: | There used to be a free fork of Maps.me called simply Maps on | F-Droid here: | https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.axet.maps | | Very nicely designed. It seems to be gone now however, maybe | someone else knows why. | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | I love MapOut (iOS only). It's an outdoor-focused mapping app | with easy offline downloads and really beautiful cartography. | nbar wrote: | What is the barrier to adding more data? Do they need funds to | purchase it from satellite providers? | Acrobatic_Road wrote: | they need more contributors... | sneeuwpopsneeuw wrote: | My experience with OSM is limited I only contributed a few | times to the data in a local city in the Netherlands. I also | used the xml data export only a few times for small | experiments a long time ago. but from my experience is see | the following: | | * If many people enjoying or live somewhere they will update | it very fast and accurate. Way beyond google and apple will | ever have. (If a bench is placed somewhere else on a school | campus then it will most likely be update within a few days, | from my experience at least) | | * Small structures are detectable on air and satellite images | but it is really hard to know what kind of structure it is. | | * Data from the dutch local governments do, from what I see | on OSM, often contain good updates on new buildings. But if | something old is changed. (Like a temporary school building | is removed then that change is not reflected by a data update | from the goverment, and it is often removed by a user after a | while) So getting better data from the governments is | probably a thing. | | * A lot of layers are build on top of OSM. For example if a | building is easy to use as a person who uses a wheelchair and | if there toilet is wheelchair friendly. My ex-girlfriend was | in a wheelchair so I used a app for that a lot. But she never | used It. They app was very slow and had a strange UI. So | changing the data of custom layer on top of OSM with better | tools is hopefully going to be a thing. | | * Users use is mostly because they like to contribute. Google | has the power to send many people notification questions | about places where they have been. OSM does not have this | power. | | * I would dare to say that OSM is already way more precise | then google or apple maps. But users do not always care about | that. The big driver for me to keep using google maps is that | I often just want to go somewhere, and to go somewhere means | that I want to travel by using the train or bus (after | covid). In the case i'm in the city I want to know how long | it takes to go somewhere by bike or by foot. In the case i'm | going to a new city I often want to see how something looks | and Google streetview or general images are better then a | map. Google prioritizes all that information above having a | more accurate map. | | So no I do not think i't about getting more people involved. | I think it's more about what kind of user does the platform | want to have. | 1-6 wrote: | Satellite probably won't give you highly detailed models. | There'd be some ML going on to detect features. Plus, your | image will lack ortho-rectification. Imaging is still primarily | a ground-based/very low orbit operation with photogrammetry and | lidar. | sneeuwpopsneeuw wrote: | knowing what kind of structure a rectangle on your satellite | image is, is also a big problem. A shed or car looks roughly | the same. So I would say it's more about getting better | Satellite and plain images + combining that with knowledge | about the area and government. | Cshelton wrote: | Unfortunately, working in the Commercial Real Estate world, OSM | is no where close when doing a forward geocode... around the | block is not close enough. | | Only ones accurate _enough_ are Google (won 't use) and Mapbox. | olejorgenb wrote: | I thought mapbox used openstreetmap data? | maxerickson wrote: | Not exclusively. They probably dump OpenAddresses data (or | something similar) into their geocoder. | | https://openaddresses.io/ | juliansimioni wrote: | Hi, founder of Geocode Earth (https://geocode.earth), | another geocoding service that _does_ use OpenAddresses and | only other open data sets. | | Mapbox purchases data from, I believe, TomTom, and other | proprietary sources. That's why they have cheap(er) pricing | if you want to get results without the legal ability to | store them, and much more expensive pricing if you do want | to store it. I'm sure negotiating that arrangement with the | proprietary address data vendors was...fun. | maxerickson wrote: | That seems like it could just be an up charge. | | (or a discount for the ephemeral results if you want to | look at it that way) | Cshelton wrote: | Yup, we pay them quite a bit to be able to store it. | grecy wrote: | I used OSM as turn-by turn loaded into my Garmin [1] for my three | year drive around Africa, and then to cross North America six | times in 2019. | | I have been utterly _staggered_ how accurate and complete it is | in every conceivable scenario - dirt street villages in Sudan and | Mali, capital cities in same, capital cities in South Africa and | all over the US and Canada. | | I also used it to drive down through Southern Europe, to cross | parts of the Sahara and Namib deserts and even in the mighty | Congo it had more detail and info than any other mapping source | I've ever seen. | | My hat is off to the OSM team. | | [1] loading OSM into a Garmin is a nice easy way to get free | routable maps on your dashboard for the entire world - | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRQrG6bC3k | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | I am glad to hear that you found it accurate and complete. I | know a lot of mapping of sub-Saharan Africa has been done by | foreign armchair mappers working from aerial imagery for e.g. a | HOT effort. I myself did a great deal of aerial mapping West | African villages in preparation for a trip through the region | that I ultimately had to cancel, and I was nervous that without | being able to actually verify my edits firsthand, I was | introducing some errors. | not2b wrote: | I used an OSM-based map on my Garmin on trips to India; did | five trips to Bangalore and often played tourists on | weekends; I had a particular interest in the ancient temples | of Karnataka. I used a driver who knew the sites well, but | not always perfectly, and the map was a huge help; coverage | of roads in rural areas was quite good, not perfect but | several times got us around closed roads the driver was | familiar with and onto good alternate routes. | | Not sure how much of the mapping was done from aerial imagery | and how much was actual GPS tracking, but it was better than | I expected. And this was about 5 years ago. | Acrobatic_Road wrote: | There's a lot of humanitarian groups contributing to OSM. | Usually they get to work after natural disasters, so that | emergency workers can get around easier. | nix23 wrote: | A friend and i where once on a mission, making bike-tours in the | swiss mountains every weekend, and map every forgotten water- | fountain in villages we crossed, great fun! | dawnerd wrote: | Now if only there was a sensible way to self-host OSM data. From | what I've found you either have to build a dedicated server to | continuously building the tiles (which takes a ton of storage and | processing power) or pay for it at an insane monthly price. I | wish OSM would directly make their tiles available to mirror. | (Maybe they do, but I haven't found it yet) | simonw wrote: | I built a tool for downloading tiles last week - but with a | warning in the README to make sure you are following the | OpenStreetMap tile downloading policies. | | https://simonwillison.net/2021/Feb/4/datasette-tiles/ | npteljes wrote: | I just looked it up and apparently, all tiles would take up 54 | TB[0], and even just the important tiles are around 1TB. I now | understand why just downloading them isn't an option. | | [0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_disk_usage | n4r9 wrote: | You can download tiles directly from openstreetmap.org, | although bulk requests are obviously discouraged. | | Running your own tile server isn't too bad. The tiles are | cached so that not much processing power is needed after a | while of usage. Yes it requires storage but so would any self- | hosting solution. | flukus wrote: | It really depends on your requirements, but if you only need | one city then you're hardware requirements are in the raspberry | pi territory: https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/ | | The site linked already provides docker images, I'm tempted to | build a pi one. | jqpabc123 wrote: | Apparently, I'm not in the 30 cities that are accurate. | | Used Magic Earth on my phone which is based on OSM. The very | first address I input was off by about a mile. Didn't exactly | inspire a lot of confidence. | emj wrote: | That is actually a good point, what happens is that many | streets does not have any address points, and your search puts | the marker on an arbitrary end of the street, so a mile off | sounds about right. Address points are really cumbersome to | crowd source, you really need either open data or buy a | geocoder. Not easy to do if need to allow everyone to download | the data and do what ever they want with it. | ryandrake wrote: | To be a little pedantic, converting an address to a location is | more of a function of a geocoder, not a function of the map. | Software could have a very accurate map, while at the same time | using a poor geocoder, so addresses are located incorrectly. | npteljes wrote: | Not even pedantic, I think it's an important realization. | Before knowing OSM, I though of Google Maps as a single | service. Not realizing at all that mapping, addresses, POI | entries, directions, navigation, etc are huge, separate | problem domains. I think parent has the same perception. | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | Address search (geocoding) isn't what this article is about. | OSM by common agreement has a long way to go on that. | not2b wrote: | Right, but if you're Lyft you have to find people and | locations from their addresses. | einpoklum wrote: | Google Maps is funded by corporations who want to mine your data | and sell you stuff, whether you need it or not. | | OpenStreetMaps is funded by... well, actually, it's complicated. | There are lots of individual donations, but there is also money | by Amazon, Facebook and Apple. And some other corporations. | | Regardless - consider making a donation: | | https://donate.openstreetmap.org/ | | I would also entreat you to ask OSM to get off corporate funding. | And of course, if you can, contribute map data about where you | live. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-09 23:00 UTC)