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Even before the current design change, it was almost impossible for me to navigate using Google Maps. With OpenStreetMap, it's easy for me to extract the featur
by TonyTrapp 3y ago
Even before the current design change, it was almost impossible for me to navigate using Google Maps. With OpenStreetMap, it's easy for me to extract the features of my surroundings:
- The shape and size of houses. Yes, you can see individual buildings in Google Maps, but they are almost indistinguishable from the background.
- It tells me at a glance whether some area is a forest or just a field. Everything's just the same color in Google Maps.
- Streets that I should probably not set a foot on (highways) have a distinct color. This is really bad now with the redesign.
- No problem figuring out if an area is serviced by trams or trains, you see their tracks clearly and don't need to zoom in looking for individual stations. Again you can extract this information from Google Maps if you squint, but tram tracks next to streets are almost invisible.
Especially with this update, prominent colors are given only to streets, which may make sense if you use Google Maps in your car. But as a pedestrian or cyclist, all the other information about my surroundings is much more important to me.
- widerporst 3y ago>It tells me at a glance whether some area is a forest or just a field. Everything's just the same color in Google Maps. Thank you. Everyone is talking about the color of the water or the roads, but this doesn't even bother me. But having all vegetation of any kind in the same color is an absolutely mind-bogglingly stupid decision. I can't be the only one who uses Maps to check the extents of a forest, for example. Or who uses shapes of different land uses to quickly orient oneself on a map.
- andromeduck 3y agoYeah, it's quite clear the designers have never lived outside lived of a car sewer. Every justification they've given thus far circle back to contrast for road features and while driving. It's peak car brain.
- 4wsn 3y agoCar sewer? Car brain? Wow, didn't know we had zealotry and disparagement over _choice of transport_ of all things, generally a matter people have little choice in; it's determined by where you live and what sort of life you have.
- silvestrov 3y agoI think the map view is missing a mode view. Directions has mode because they are very different for car, bike, walking and public transportation. Map view for biking should be very different from map view for cars as high ways are not usable for bikes and bike paths should be more prominient (while useless for cars). Ditto for walking that also have different paths. Using the map for "getting somewhere" is a very different purpose that "seing what's here". They need different modes.
- gr__or 3y agoIt's not missing it, it's called "Layers" and they can highlight transit, traffic and biking.
- TonyTrapp 3y agoUnfortunately the biking Layer also doesn't fix any of this. It only appears to highlight "cycling-friendly" streets here, but the results look random at best here.
- mminer237 3y agoSounds like a data problem over a software problem.
- TonyTrapp 3y agoThe fact that what the cycling layer shows to me is useless is a data problem, yes. However, As I mentioned in my comment above, as a cyclist I care about seeing a visualization of my surroundings. OSM tells me at a glance if an area I want to cycle through is a forest, if there is public transit, etc. None of that is part of Google's cycling layer, or any other layer - apart from transit. But the faint lines added by the transit layer are not helping, either. The maps are an unreadable low-contrast mess.
- footy 3y ago> Especially with this update, prominent colors are given only to streets, which may make sense if you use Google Maps in your car. But as a pedestrian or cyclist, all the other information about my surroundings is much more important to me. I wrote an entire thesis about how much google maps sucks, particularly for non-drivers, and it still manages to shock me when I (very rarely) open it.