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OpenStreetMap's New Vector Tiles

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479 points marklit | 2 comments | 19 Nov 24 12:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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PrismCrystal ◴[19 Nov 24 14:39 UTC] No.42183908[source]▶
Younger generations are much less likely to navigate by comparing a map to the street names at an intersection. Instead, people navigate by searching for a particular destination and then following the line that the router generates.

When Google Maps is a one-size-fits-all product, you can't blame them for choosing an approach like this. Fortunately, the OSM ecosystem lets you choose (or develop for yourself) whatever approach you prefer.

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hackmiester ◴[19 Nov 24 14:44 UTC] No.42183957[source]▶
That method just doesn't work in Manhattan, where due to buildings, you're lucky if your GPS is working, much less the compass to tell you which direction to face.
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PrismCrystal ◴[19 Nov 24 14:57 UTC] No.42184091{3}[source]▶
The vast majority of Google Maps users are capable of using A-GPS data, they are not reliant on a clear GPS satellite signal alone. And Google’s A-GPS data for Manhattan is extremely detailed. Again, this makes sense for a one-size-fits-all product like Google Maps.
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astrange ◴[19 Nov 24 17:36 UTC] No.42186064{4}[source]▶
That's not good enough, AGPS doesn't work near skyscrapers. The issue isn't that the signal isn't "clear", it's that it reflects off the buildings and the GPS receiver will get a clear but wrong signal.

To correct this you need something like QZSS or accurate models of the buildings to compensate for it.

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1. PrismCrystal ◴[19 Nov 24 19:11 UTC] No.42187004{5}[source]▶
The term "A-GPS" in common practice includes also wifi and, as I mentioned, Google's data for this is very detailed in Manhattan, too.
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2. astrange ◴[19 Nov 24 20:11 UTC] No.42187581[source]▶
Yeah, it doesn't work for this. I've tried it in the last few months and talked to people working on location about it out of curiosity. Not in NYC specifically but in other cities.

Even short buildings have issues here - if you walk down a wide street in Tokyo, which are pretty common and often surrounded by 3-4 story buildings, with the map open and look at it closely, you will often show up on the other side of the street. (Which surprised me, because it's literally why QZSS exists.)

Afaik, the issues with WiFi are that if you're traveling at any speed there isn't much time to do scans, and the position of the WiFi networks themselves isn't clear enough because of multipath (reflections), because it is crowdsourced from other devices that don't have real ground truth locations, and because the other devices gathering info are at different heights above ground or are indoors.

The main advantage of A-GPS with WiFi is that it starts up faster and that it mostly works indoors or when you can't see any satellites.