OpenStreetMap and Alternative Navigation

[Dual X99]

If you still rely on Google Maps you are missing out on a lot. Here is a comparison between Google Maps and OSMand with the "offroad" map style at Fort Pickens.

Notice the points of interest have an actual shape and form. Google renders historical WWII artifacts as a teardrop pointer like pointing to a trendy cafe. OSMand gives you a much better idea of the size, entrances, parking, and trails. At the campground, OSM shows you every campsite number so that you don't have to drive in circles or rely on a paper map the ranger gives you. Sure, Google Maps shows you a convenient link with reviews. But who actually needs to read about city slickers complaining about the weather and mosquitos? On the Florida Trail, OSM shows you the color of the blaze that is marked on trees so that you know how to follow the trail.

OpenStreetMap is a database that has a lot of information packed into every single object. Every trail, building, and road has a list of data called "tags" that contain a variable (key) that can be assigned values. For example, a bench can have the key "seats" and be assigned how many people can sit on that bench. However, it is not practical to show all the tags at once on a map. Just like projecting the Earth on a 2D map, renderers pick which data should be thrown out and highlighted.

Default Renderer OpenStreetMap.org hides many precise details. They have a built-in editor and you can see map notes, GPS traces, view all tags under "query features", good for beginner.
Campsites opencampingmap.org highlights all campsites from database. This is useful in combination with freecampsites.net and iOverlander.
Trails with blazes waymarkedtrails.org many renderers do not show trailblazes as they are stored in a relation, but this one highlights national to local routes.
Details and options osmand.net their website map sucks and only their mobile app allows custom map styles. Open source and free on F-Droid, costs on Google Play and Apple. Has offline viewing and packed settings to tailor the renderer to your preference. For desktop, any Android emulator like Waydroid works well enough.
Trail reviews www.alltrails.com requires account, highlights trails from database and provides reviews/pictures from users. Nags a lot for subscription money but free plan works.

For live navigation in a car, OSMand works well for suburban/rural driving. For complex urban freeways, the navigator tells you way too late for lane changes and struggles to only get the information across. For now, Waze is best for urban traffic and routing around accidents/construction. For speeding on long trips, use highwayradar.com that has a historical heatmap of Waze police reports and better notifications of police ahead.

Is there something missing from the map? If you don't want to go through the effort of editing the database, you can contribute GPS traces and map notes on the default renderer and eventually someone will add your information. Use GPSLogger on Android, set to highest logging frequency, and upload the .gpx file. For advanced editing, JOSM gives you complete control over all tags and nodes. There is a bit of a learning curve, but I found their introduction to be very succinct. The OSM wiki is the bible for all tags and standards. Plus, the wiki gives deeper explanation of nodes, ways, and relations if you need more examples.

I made this thread because I am interested in keeping track of development and improvements of the renderers. I like OSMand but they really need a desktop version or a website that doesn't suck. Many renderers lack native implementation of pictures and other information like hours or price of entry without inspecting the tags. The whole project feels like Linux desktop where the idea and versatility is good, but the lack of user-friendly implementation and standardization makes some basic tasks much more difficult than it needs to be.

 

[jray4559]

I made this thread because I am interested in keeping track of development and improvements of the renderers. I like OSMand but they really need a desktop version or a website that doesn't suck. Many renderers lack native implementation of pictures and other information like hours or price of entry without inspecting the tags. The whole project feels like Linux desktop where the idea and versatility is good, but the lack of user-friendly implementation and standardization makes some basic tasks much more difficult than it needs to be.

The user-friendliness isn't what's keeping OpenStreetMap down, it's the fact that people expect more from a mapping service than a road network. I myself edit OSM quite often with the website, they have many tags and most of the time it's not that hard to fill things in, but it's just a slog to go through no matter how easy it's presented. (For me, my autism makes it not so unfun to do, but even I can't sit there 9-5 on it).

If you want to find any local business, especially if you don't live in a major urban center, they simply won't be there. Lots of important things such as opening hours or floor level in a taller building aren't gonna be there. Even the road network itself is honestly at best a virtual tie with Google Maps from my experience, if not worse due to the fact that on OSM it's more likely to be outdated by a decade plus. Traffic, too, is another one as you said. Google Maps has traffic alerts (and Waze itself is also owned by Google), by far the best street view network integrated in, and, probably the killer, business reviews. Having the ability to look for a new restaurant, see their ratings, and see their menu/hours all in one place is a convenience that no OSM-related project will ever match and it makes any other mapping service period a non-starter.

It is the same as Linux, really, because almost all of the same design decisions apply to them
- mainly run and used by tech nerds
- constant fucking around with wiki standards and such instead of actually contributing something that could actually be useful to a majority of people
- only can be really usable if you copy what the corporate competitor already has onto your place
- splintered ecosystem
- often has holes in basic features that are integrated perfectly elsewhere

I like the idea of an open-source map of the world but there's no way that anyone with a social life will ever open up anything other than Google Maps.

 

[Rogue AI]

I've never used OSM but use Organic Maps which is based off of OSM. You need to download the map but you can use it offline so it's great if you're hiking or just generally someplace without wifi.

 

[monk]

OSM is great, I've been using it for years. It sucks for finding local businesses though, I look up their address and search for the address instead. It also doesn't find a lot of rural addresses (at least in our country), like in the mountains and hills where it's sparsely populated it often won't find addresses or even entire streets are missing. For that I have to look up the coordinates in a different map and then put the coordinates in OSM to find it.
I've also been using OSMAnd which is a fantastic, very well made and full-featured map and navigation app. It's so good that I keep waiting for the day they'll paywall it or go closed source and pull it from F-droid but so far that hasn't happened. I don't know how they manage to pay the people to develop it and yet release it for free, they must have an angel investor or sponsor or something. All the same limitations that apply to OSM maps also apply to OSMAnd. It also has a driving navigation mode which usually works really well (only rarely it takes you down gravel roads or weird routes, but usually not), calculates the approximate ETA relatively well (as well as it could without having the Jewgle botnet that feeds on every users' location to know where congestion and roadblocks are in real-time, OSMAnd can't do that, so the calculated ETA is a best-case approximation with no congestion). It has real-time direction narration and map centering, everything that you'd need for a navigation app.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

The biggest issue I've had with OSM/Organic Maps is that it often doesn't include numbers on the street addresses. It can find a street just fine, but has trouble with individual numbers. This can be an issue when using it for navigation. This isn't just in some one horse town either, I've had this problem in some mid sized cities.

Otherwise it works fine though.

 

[Premium Dog Food]

Organic maps is great for hiking, decent for on foot directions, "eh" for anything else. The map has a lot of trails and markers for river falls, vistas, water fountains and other points of interest. What I liked most is that you don't have to unlock your phone to see directions. Good for hiking since you don't have to fumble around too much, good for city centers so a nignog doesn't swipe your unlocked phone.
It has offline maps for when you are in the middle of nowhere, whereas google maps will refuse to give you directions entirely, even if you downloaded its offline maps.
It hardly lags on my old (2017) phone, while google map stutters fairly often.

 

[sodaboard]

osmand used to be really fucking bad but in the last couple years it's gotten better. one time i was trying to get to a golf course and it couldn't figure out how to get me to the entrance since i just selected the golf course instead of the clubhouse adjacent to the road. so it told me to swerve off the highway, drive through a ditch, through a brick wall, across the back nine and into the clubhouse dining room. most of the time businesses or addresses aren't even there, they aren't even legally allowed to include building addresses so i have to used third party maps with street/house numbers patched in, and most of the time they aren't there either so i just have to find the closest road and guess where it might be based on the few street numbers that are there.
libreshit has to be on par with proprietary software for it to be usable, because for something as critical as navigation where you could be in a foreign city with no fucking idea where you are you cannot rely on some freetard to get you where you need to be.

 

[Polock]

For speeding on long trips, use highwayradar.com that has a historical heatmap of Waze police reports and better notifications of police ahead.

I like the idea of this, but apparently you need this SABRE plugin for it to work and you have to register for a forum account and get through the onboarding process and I just can't be bothered now.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

they aren't even legally allowed to include building addresses

Explain further.

 

[sodaboard]

Explain further.

all the other big apps pull their data from proprietary databases that have all this info already but you need to pay for it, so osmand/OSM relies on users to enter all the info manually, which means if nobody in your area is contributing there will be a lot of gaps or deadzones with no address info.

 

[Dual X99]

I like the idea of this, but apparently you need this SABRE plugin for it to work and you have to register for a forum account and get through the onboarding process and I just can't be bothered now.

SABRE is used for fetching live updates from Waze and allowing you to report new hazards. The historical heatmap is maintained by a 3rd party so it's still possible to view the heatmap without the plugin.
For the download link theres a public download at https://wzsabre.rocks/ Right now only Android supported, iOS in beta. Some phones might have issues with it too https://dontkillmyapp.com/ Also the map relies on google play services which might affect some Graphene OS users.
Highway Radar really works best on rural interstates, because they get enough traffic to get Waze data and the heatmap shows jurisdictional blindspots really well (like crossing a state border where the nearest state trooper is miles away) I wouldn't trust it on regular two lane highways just because if there are less users it shows low risk, but that is only because there is not much data to go off of.

Also sometimes I browse the OSM wiki looking for strange tags. One such tag is LGBTQ where you can identify a business as being trans, a bear, or cruising? Maybe Rekieta's house could use the "swinger club" tag. Now the gooners are trying to get a fetish tag implemented with support for conditional restrictions in case a business allows "fisting" during certain hours for certain people but not during regular business hours.

 

[jray4559]

all the other big apps pull their data from proprietary databases that have all this info already but you need to pay for it, so osmand/OSM relies on users to enter all the info manually, which means if nobody in your area is contributing there will be a lot of gaps or deadzones with no address info.

There are some cases where OSM can import data from government databases, and Organic Maps/CoMaps (a fork of that app) recently put in US Government address points, so you'll see numbers at least on there in the US. Will they be in the right spot, well, that's questionable because sometimes the gov data is ass, but it's the best that can be done other than manually making all the buildings and putting address information on them. Those deadzones definitely don't help usability either.