vector maps

jusc · June 09, 2011, 10:01:47

THIS POST IS NOT FOR MENION, BECAUSE HE DOESN´T WANT TO TALK ABOUT VECTOR MAPS BEFORE JULY :mrgreen:

Playing with the very new feature "vector maps" with our favourite app :mrgreen: I see some funny or strange behavior.

On my Defy (Android 2.1) the same screen or zoom level differs from my Galaxy PT-1000 Android 2.2.
Please scroll the screenshots down for more differences. With Defy there is another attribution as on PT-1000 (no Openstreetmap)

And the germany map seems to have a bug !!not Locus!! ==> goto Köln (Cologne) an please try a few zoom levels.
J.

durian · June 10, 2011, 15:16:25

I saw the Köln problem - but strangely it disappears again when you zoom in more.

I was wondering - did anyone else try to make maps with osmosis/mapsforge?

-peter

Menion · June 12, 2011, 13:24:50

attribution fixed but what is problem with scale at bottom? It's screenshot from different phones right?

jusc · June 13, 2011, 13:16:15

yes, that are two different phones. Galaxy Tab 7" and Defy 3,7".
But I wonder if the same map zoom (19) shouldn´t show exactly same screen? So the scale should the same too?

I played a little ==>
zoom 17 Scale Galaxy 30 km but Defy 20 km
zomm 18 Scale Galaxy 10 km and Defy 10 km :?:

J.

Menion · June 13, 2011, 13:34:52

looks you're confused

scale depend on screen size, so galaxy tab has probably more pixels on width so scale is a little bit longer. Anyway scale is now rounded to nice numbers so, you can check that scale 10km should show same width on map on both phones even when you take some measure, it will be different, if you understand

frige · June 21, 2011, 14:56:44

not sure if my question relates mor to vector maps or file format - so put it in both discussion threads:
With the upcoming option of using vector maps (tried yessterdy the testvertion - already great !): following maps could be a good option:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_ ... n/Download
For example at: http://downloads.cloudmade.com/ there arte lots of actual cards based on OSM in this format.
Used this data when i was stil on Windows Mobile device using "Glopus" program. Glopus could read gmapsup.img files.
Gave a lot of nice options - e.g. there werde overlay files for having altitude lines for europe,...
Started to play with osmosis - but not so easy with small PCs ... and not so easy to generate subsets of countries (e.g. plan a vacation in Canada - but whole country will be very large file - with cloudmap i can download just a state like NovaScotia..)
Not sure if this format can be used / easily converted to the mapsforge format - but would help a lot to avoid having all maps for the world beeing on servers in differetn formats , but based on same OSM data..

But having vector data is a big big step forward ! Thanks a lot !
frige

ppiter · June 21, 2011, 21:34:20

Using the garmin vector format would be great because there are a lot of maps from openstreet map in garmin format i.e. wanderreitmap. It is not illegal to use *.img the format from garmin. The user has lots of possibilities to use standard osm maps. So please think about support of garmin format.

Menion · June 22, 2011, 06:06:40

hmm unfortunately this is currently not in my time and power to quickly write vector map renderer. I use mapsforge library to render vector maps now, so it depend on support from their side

Menion · June 22, 2011, 12:51:46

OK, it's probably time to move on with vector maps, what you think? And here is nice topic from Jusc that should be used now

So, the main thing that block releasing of vector maps in actual format, which I think is enough useful, is source for maps data. I was asking on MapsForge web if they do not want to create some shared place with generated maps, but they don't.

I was also planning to create own server that will generate maps and some downloading tool in application for direct loading. Only problem here is that I'm experienced mainly with Java (desktop, mobile, andoird), but not with server J2EE, or some other stuff that are useful on server. One my friend (that already created addon for FourSquare) may help with creating server on cloud system (probably here http://www.virtualmaster.cz/en/. Anyway still is missing one big part. Some automatic downloading prepared osm maps (probably from here http://download.geofabrik.de/osm/) and generating required maps. This all should be done probably automatically once a month (should be enough? - depend on CPU and RAM it will need). So question is, if anyone here should help (and help a lot because I'm not also experienced with these OSM stuff - so doing it by myself should delay whole process for next month) and create on empty server what is needed. This should be of course done as payed job because I expect that this will take some time.

I also plan to create two versions of vector map support. Free usable version (again with some limitations) and payed with some extra settings. Money from payed version should be then used to paying server (I expect that it will cost a lot mainly due to big bandwidth needed to map distributing), anyone who will take care of server stuff and i was also thinking about sending some percent of income to authors of MapsForge as thanks for their work ...

So ...

that's all for now ...

wvb · June 29, 2011, 21:17:01

Hi,

I just started using Locus a few days ago and converted a vector map from the geofabrik.de website for my country (Belgium)
it works really great!
the vector map allows me to have all zoomlevels in one tiny map thus taking away the need to download zoomlevels from OSM

I really look forward to expansion of this feature!
Also you did a very nice job in creating Locus, it's a well layed out application with a lot of options + it's stable!

A few questions about vector maps (it's all new to me)
- do they store streetnames in searchable format and will this allow us to search for a place and navigate to it by compass without internet connection?
- do vector maps allow layout customisation (like OSM, you have Mapnik etc..)

thanks in advance for your time!

ppiter · July 08, 2011, 16:27:15

Thankx for vector map download offer! One problem for me specially with vector maps is following: I'm moving along the border from two german states f.i. bayern and baden-wurttemberg. But I can check only one vector map for viewing in my android. How can I see both maps on screen at the same time?

Thank you!

berkley · July 11, 2011, 09:05:44

Same here!

Image you life in a 3 country corner. Happens for example with Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. It is probably very annoying, if you have to switch your vector maps very often.

Did I miss it or is it already implemented in Quick Map Switch?

Menion · July 11, 2011, 09:10:29

no it's not implemented in quick map switch. Here is one think that I'm very worried. That everyone will want some more functionality to vector maps. But should be fine if all consider that I just use external library and if any functionality isn't in this library, best is post issue on code.google.com of this lIbrary here and then just wait if anyone do it. And then wait again till I implement it

berkley · July 12, 2011, 06:40:47

Hi there,

so I created Issue 150: http://code.google.com/p/mapsforge/issues/detail?id=150
If anybody wants to support this issue, please don't write things like "+1", "same here" or "great idea". Just rate it and subscribe. The higher the subscription rate, the higher the priority, the better the chances they make the library. And that's finally what we want.
:mrgreen:

Some short question to all the great mappers in this forum:
(1) Are the vector maps based on OSM because of licensing issues or because of technical limitations of other map sources?
(2) Are the boundaries of vector maps given by some server or is it possible to create your very own OSM vector map?
(3) Is it at least theoretically possible to use some other map source than OSM (Google, OutdoorActive) to create a vector map?

Cheers, berkley

durian · July 12, 2011, 07:32:10

Quote from: "berkley"Some short question to all the great mappers in this forum:
(1) Are the vector maps based on OSM because of licensing issues or because of technical limitations of other map sources?
(2) Are the boundaries of vector maps given by some server or is it possible to create your very own OSM vector map?

Mostly licensing I think, plus the fact that the OSM data is documented.

You can easily create your own. If you downloaded the whole of europe for example, you can use osmosis to cut out the bit you want, and save the data in a file. Then run the vector map creator. If you just download a country from for example cloudmade, then these have also been extracted from the whole of the planet OSM data.

Quote from: "berkley"(3) Is it at least theoretically possible to use some other map source than OSM (Google, OutdoorActive) to create a vector map?

Data is data

if the format is described, then it should at least in theory be possible...

-peter