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OpenStreetMap's New Vector Tiles

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480 points marklit | 2 comments | 19 Nov 24 12:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.546s | source
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Someone ◴[19 Nov 24 14:16 UTC] No.42183666[source]▶
> Imagery should appear much sharper and switching the language of the labels should become possible.

I expect that to work sub-optimally. Label dimensions are far from guaranteed to stay the same if you change language, and label dimensions interact with map layout, even influencing what to show.

If your labels grow larger, they may end up covering too much of the map or even overlapping. If they grow smaller, users may wonder why a city that was omitted before because of space constraints doesn’t show in the empty space created.

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dheera ◴[19 Nov 24 14:23 UTC] No.42183722[source]▶
I hate it when city and street names disappear on Google Maps as you zoom in and out. Sometimes a street or business name only appears at one particular zoom level and not higher or lower. Just show the name of every street damnit. I don't care about crowding. Standing at an intersection staring at an unlabelled map is a useless map.
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c0nsumer ◴[19 Nov 24 15:05 UTC] No.42184175[source]▶
On a couple recent trips I ran into this when trying to figure out what river I was near / crossing. Multiple times I basically said "lemme get a better tool for this" and flipped to OsmAnd. Google Maps just basically/barely showed there was a channel of water and didn't show the name.
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1. dheera ◴[19 Nov 24 15:29 UTC] No.42184528[source]▶
Also not to mention while navigating Google Maps stupidly hides all the business names en route. I want to see every single business along my route, damnit, so that I know where I could possibly go to eat or stop for a rest along the way.

The Google Assistant is also the most useless piece of crap ever. "OK Google show me all the businesses on the map" doesn't work, and neither does "OK Google zoom in" for that matter. Most useless UX ever.

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2. c0nsumer ◴[21 Nov 24 02:06 UTC] No.42200344[source]▶
That's something that REALLY irked me when visiting a new city this past weekend.

We were trying to find somewhere to eat... And a labeled map of the city blocks around us would have been perfect. We didn't really care what kind of food we had, we aren't picky folks... We just wanted to know the options to see what sounded good at the time.

But nope, can't see that either.