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OSM gives people the tools to create their own map rather than offering them a simple, out of the box solution On this point and the main part of the first arg

OSM gives people the tools to create their own map rather than offering them a simple, out of the box solution On this point and the main part of the first argument, I kinda disagree; the OSM project should specifically aim to do that: providing means for one to create a service. However, providing an actual map service would cost much, much more in bandwidth and I doubt a free software project like this has that kind of funds - actually serving tiles can add up to large costs pretty fast if enough people use the service. So if you want an actual service, you either do the hosting yourself or go see mapbox/whatever.

Avamander 9y ago
Time to move away from awful raster maps and to vector maps?
- duozerk 9y ago
  That would definitely help a lot (and osmdroid at least does support vector map sources); I imagine the traffic would still be significant though.
  - Avamander 9y ago
    Locus (not FOSS) supports vector maps and it's price is way cheaper than an external 1TB drive would cost, just for good map coverage of a few countries.
- sydd 9y ago
  There are some, e.g. OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow. I wonder why no one has written a proper, fast Opengl renderer for osm
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    > [like] OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow On my Galaxy Note 2 (2012), you're right. I've ordered a new phone yesterday because it's getting quite bad after five years of daily use. My girlfriend bought a phone for €300, and the one I ordered (now, a year later) for €250 actually has the same chipset. It runs great on that. I consider ~250eur to be the bottom of the smartphone market unless you're going for a potato to call and text with (not even browse the web). Given that it runs smooth on that... I'm not sure what you're running OsmAnd on with expectations of fast rendering.
    - zokier 9y ago
      > I consider ~250eur to be the bottom of the smartphone market That's ridiculous statement in itself. The bottom of the market are those <$100 china wonder phones, and you have a selection of low-end, but actually branded, devices in the <150eur category. Surprisingly enough, those <150eur devices look like they might be perfectly usable, with specs comparable to my current daily driver (which is couple of years old). As a random example, Huawei Honor 6A [1] currently retails for 99eur around here [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_honor_6a_(pro)-8700.php#europe https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_honor_6a_(pro)-8700.php#euro...
  - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
    They have. It’s called Mapbox GL, it’s fully open source and there’s a whole open source ecosystem around it.
    - sorenjan 9y ago
      Are there any sites where you can use it with current data? As far as I know Mapbox only sells it as a service to other companies, they don't have a site where users can browse it. The only site I know that use Mapbox is Strava, and they (or Mapbox) are slow to update the data. I made edits months ago that aren't available yet. Still, the data is much better than Google's for runners and cyclists.

Avamander 9y ago

Time to move away from awful raster maps and to vector maps?

duozerk 9y ago
That would definitely help a lot (and osmdroid at least does support vector map sources); I imagine the traffic would still be significant though.
- Avamander 9y ago
  Locus (not FOSS) supports vector maps and it's price is way cheaper than an external 1TB drive would cost, just for good map coverage of a few countries.
sydd 9y ago
There are some, e.g. OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow. I wonder why no one has written a proper, fast Opengl renderer for osm
- lucb1e 9y ago
  > [like] OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow On my Galaxy Note 2 (2012), you're right. I've ordered a new phone yesterday because it's getting quite bad after five years of daily use. My girlfriend bought a phone for €300, and the one I ordered (now, a year later) for €250 actually has the same chipset. It runs great on that. I consider ~250eur to be the bottom of the smartphone market unless you're going for a potato to call and text with (not even browse the web). Given that it runs smooth on that... I'm not sure what you're running OsmAnd on with expectations of fast rendering.
  - zokier 9y ago
    > I consider ~250eur to be the bottom of the smartphone market That's ridiculous statement in itself. The bottom of the market are those <$100 china wonder phones, and you have a selection of low-end, but actually branded, devices in the <150eur category. Surprisingly enough, those <150eur devices look like they might be perfectly usable, with specs comparable to my current daily driver (which is couple of years old). As a random example, Huawei Honor 6A [1] currently retails for 99eur around here [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_honor_6a_(pro)-8700.php#europe https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_honor_6a_(pro)-8700.php#euro...
- Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
  They have. It’s called Mapbox GL, it’s fully open source and there’s a whole open source ecosystem around it.
  - sorenjan 9y ago
    Are there any sites where you can use it with current data? As far as I know Mapbox only sells it as a service to other companies, they don't have a site where users can browse it. The only site I know that use Mapbox is Strava, and they (or Mapbox) are slow to update the data. I made edits months ago that aren't available yet. Still, the data is much better than Google's for runners and cyclists.