4 ms·

I may misunderstand how P2P at this scale works. How are map changes authorized and distributed if it's decentralized/P2P? Does this initiative focus exclusivel

by usui 5y ago

I may misunderstand how P2P at this scale works. How are map changes authorized and distributed if it's decentralized/P2P? Does this initiative focus exclusively on physical mapping and forego the extras like national borders/country naming (import your own GeoJSON)? What about street corrections? If it is a dynamically changing data set, is it reasonably plausible that the map data you get back could be poisoned?

georgyo 5y ago
They are just distributing OSM data, which has many things including park, city, nation borders. And even includes more data then google, bing, and apple maps in some cases. However while business and store data is there, it is also the most incomplete. OSM is basically a wiki where anyone can edit. I use it for about 20% of my mapping needs, especially when in a park. There are plenty of great offline OSM clients, such as OsmAnd. I don't see any real value in the P2P here, particularly for mobile. However having more clients that render great maps is always a win.
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  I think the idea is that distributing tile data is pretty expensive? Especially for embedded web map views.
  - georgyo 5y ago
    pre-rendered tiles is expensive, vector data less so. The entire OSM working data set for NA is ~12GB. NY State is ~500MB. Most countries and states are under 100MB. Daily deltas are usually well under 1MB. Tile servers are great for web apps, as you can pre-compute all the rendering and then cache the tiles. But there is no need to store terabytes of image data in an offline mobile app.
    - kiwidrew 5y ago
      I'm very happy with OsmAnd+ on Android. I'm not sure which server(s) are being used by the app when it downloads the map data, but the transfer rate from the server leaves much to be desired. It's probably a significant burden to host the entire collection, both in terms of storage space and in available bandwidth. So I can see how hosting the data as a series of torrents would help make this more sustainable. But it's a bit silly to implement an entire torrent stack inside a web browser just to display a few static image tiles...
- jqpabc123 5y ago
  There are plenty of great offline OSM clients, such as OsmAnd Personally, I prefer Magic Earth. I keep 7 surrounding US states downloaded on my phone and I get notification of updates (every few months). Average file size per state is about 450MB stored on SD card. It is how maps should be done in my opinion. The only difference here is how the distribution is handled. Not sure P2P is the way to go since most peers are likely to be mobile devices where data transfer can be disruptive and expensive.
  - Tijdreiziger 5y ago
    This app looks really great, but I have a few questions... (1) Where does the online map data come from? From Magic Earth servers or somewhere else? (2) Where is the 3D data sourced from? (3) Where is the satellite imagery sourced from? OSM definitely doesn't have this. (4) Where are transit directions sourced from? AFAIK OSM also can't do this. (5) Who is behind this app? The privacy policy just refers to them as 'Company'. All in all, the functionality looks great but I'm quite skeptical about the lack of transparency.
    - jqpabc123 5y ago
      I suggest looking at www.magicearth.com and contacting their support.
- usui 5y ago
  I see. I misunderstood that all of it depended on OSM. I thought that OSM would have been one of the possible data providers. Doesn't this kind of reduce the efficacy of it being P2P? If the goal is to reduce the load on OSM's servers, I suppose it makes sense, but from the standpoint of a free web, it doesn't seem to add much. > Peermaps is a distributed, offline-friendly alternative to commercial map providers such as google maps. Instead of fetching data from a centralized tile service, your computer fetches map data from other peers across the network. I think the wording is what confused me. It would be more descriptive to say "Instead of fetching data from a centralized tile service, your computer fetches OpenStreetMap data from other peers across the network". OSM is still centralized.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Organic Maps deserves a mention here https://organicmaps.app/ https://organicmaps.app/ It's a free and open-source reboot of maps.me. Probably the best FOSS mobile front-end for OSM to date.
  - jqpabc123 5y ago
    Looks good but routing is very slow.
NHQ 5y ago
If there is ever a robust, truly P2P web, your peers will be your filters. IOW, your filters will anneal and morph according to the canonical filters created by your trust network—a delegation of peers, filtered via parameters of your choosing. This goes for everything from search to spam block. It is not all about scale. Much of P2P web development is idealistically about designing a more subjective internet.

by usui 5y ago

georgyo 5y ago

They are just distributing OSM data, which has many things including park, city, nation borders. And even includes more data then google, bing, and apple maps in some cases. However while business and store data is there, it is also the most incomplete. OSM is basically a wiki where anyone can edit. I use it for about 20% of my mapping needs, especially when in a park. There are plenty of great offline OSM clients, such as OsmAnd. I don't see any real value in the P2P here, particularly for mobile. However having more clients that render great maps is always a win.

FeepingCreature 5y ago
I think the idea is that distributing tile data is pretty expensive? Especially for embedded web map views.
- georgyo 5y ago
  pre-rendered tiles is expensive, vector data less so. The entire OSM working data set for NA is ~12GB. NY State is ~500MB. Most countries and states are under 100MB. Daily deltas are usually well under 1MB. Tile servers are great for web apps, as you can pre-compute all the rendering and then cache the tiles. But there is no need to store terabytes of image data in an offline mobile app.
  - kiwidrew 5y ago
    I'm very happy with OsmAnd+ on Android. I'm not sure which server(s) are being used by the app when it downloads the map data, but the transfer rate from the server leaves much to be desired. It's probably a significant burden to host the entire collection, both in terms of storage space and in available bandwidth. So I can see how hosting the data as a series of torrents would help make this more sustainable. But it's a bit silly to implement an entire torrent stack inside a web browser just to display a few static image tiles...
jqpabc123 5y ago
There are plenty of great offline OSM clients, such as OsmAnd Personally, I prefer Magic Earth. I keep 7 surrounding US states downloaded on my phone and I get notification of updates (every few months). Average file size per state is about 450MB stored on SD card. It is how maps should be done in my opinion. The only difference here is how the distribution is handled. Not sure P2P is the way to go since most peers are likely to be mobile devices where data transfer can be disruptive and expensive.
- Tijdreiziger 5y ago
  This app looks really great, but I have a few questions... (1) Where does the online map data come from? From Magic Earth servers or somewhere else? (2) Where is the 3D data sourced from? (3) Where is the satellite imagery sourced from? OSM definitely doesn't have this. (4) Where are transit directions sourced from? AFAIK OSM also can't do this. (5) Who is behind this app? The privacy policy just refers to them as 'Company'. All in all, the functionality looks great but I'm quite skeptical about the lack of transparency.
  - jqpabc123 5y ago
    I suggest looking at www.magicearth.com and contacting their support.
usui 5y ago
I see. I misunderstood that all of it depended on OSM. I thought that OSM would have been one of the possible data providers. Doesn't this kind of reduce the efficacy of it being P2P? If the goal is to reduce the load on OSM's servers, I suppose it makes sense, but from the standpoint of a free web, it doesn't seem to add much. > Peermaps is a distributed, offline-friendly alternative to commercial map providers such as google maps. Instead of fetching data from a centralized tile service, your computer fetches map data from other peers across the network. I think the wording is what confused me. It would be more descriptive to say "Instead of fetching data from a centralized tile service, your computer fetches OpenStreetMap data from other peers across the network". OSM is still centralized.
NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Organic Maps deserves a mention here https://organicmaps.app/ https://organicmaps.app/ It's a free and open-source reboot of maps.me. Probably the best FOSS mobile front-end for OSM to date.
- jqpabc123 5y ago
  Looks good but routing is very slow.

NHQ 5y ago

If there is ever a robust, truly P2P web, your peers will be your filters. IOW, your filters will anneal and morph according to the canonical filters created by your trust network—a delegation of peers, filtered via parameters of your choosing. This goes for everything from search to spam block. It is not all about scale. Much of P2P web development is idealistically about designing a more subjective internet.