Happy Birthday, OpenStreetMap

https://www.tomtom.com/blog/maps/tomtom-openstreetmaps-mapmetrics-map-editing/

by kikibobo69 • 5 years ago

324 42 5 years ago

ocdtrekkie• 5 years ago

It's great to see corporations contributing to OSM. There's only a couple top contenders for mapping data, and the best way to compete with them is to collaborate on a shared resource.

detaro2• 5 years ago

It's a complicated relationship, since companies often struggle with respecting community norms and the overall goals of the project, but I tend to agree.

tonyedgecombe• 5 years ago

You can see why they might not want to share data they had to spent money to gather when their competitors would then get access for free.

thegeomaster• 5 years ago

In what way? I'm interested to know more about this.

kassah• 5 years ago

I find this a good way, where they expose their resources via tools that makes improving OpenStreetMap data with data they have access to easier. This isn't exposing their maps directly, so it does not come with their assumptions.

dpcx• 5 years ago

It seems that the MapMetrics data mentioned either isn't available everywhere or (less likely) their site is being crushed. The data only loads for California and Colorado.

jiehong• 5 years ago

And France, weirdly.

It also is quite low resolution in many areas, making it not super useful at the moment.

wongarsu2• 5 years ago

And the Netherlands and Albania.

Truly an odd selection.

lucb1e3• 5 years ago

Here too, it seems to be available for western Netherlands, parts of northwest Flanders, all of France, California, Colorado, Albania (fewer trace density it seems though). Maybe they're still importing/processing? Calculating routes for all over the world is a lot of data processing.

There is also a layer named OSM202106 (the default is OSM202103) with even less coverage (e.g. not France), but covering all of the Netherlands rather than just a part of it and covering the USA east coast.

alFReD-NSH• 5 years ago

TomTom provides mapping data to Apple maps, Bing maps and they power many automotive in-dash navigation systems: https://www.tomtom.com/customers/

Very likely they use OpenStreetMaps to enrich their data and it's nice to see that they contribute back.

marcodiego• 5 years ago

Years ago Tomtom was bullied by microsoft on a patent regarding the use of extended file names on fat-based filesystems. Of course, a popular well-designed device running linux instead of windows CE at the time was not in ms' best interest. Tomtom stood by their position as much as they could and, as time passed, microsoft's bully behavior cooled out.

Congrats for your courage Tomtom! If I ever plan to buy a GPS or navigation device, I'll certainly consider your history.

tomfanning• 5 years ago

Many of the red areas I see on the map, particularly in France, are fairly obviously where someone's been running a TomTom while on a train or a boat. Of course that's not going match OSM roads. I'm a little surprised this is not mentioned in the blog post - it seems a bit obvious.

Nrbelex• 5 years ago

"As you can see above it’s a work in progress: MapMetrics flags, in red, Colorado ski areas and the Denver Airport. Neither of these are bad per se, but ski run and taxiway routing isn’t a thing yet! Over time, MapMetrics will filter these out to focus on just the roads."

KingOfCoders• 5 years ago

Some years ago you had to pay for updates and they were very slow to add new streets. Has this changed with OSM?

blowski• 5 years ago

Depends on the package you buy. I have a "lifetime subscription", so theoretically I'll never need to pay for an update.

...but then newer devices only work with newer versions of the service, for which you haven't got a lifetime subscription. Eventually, your old TomTom stops working and your subscription is now worthless so you have to buy a new one.

throwaway128374• 5 years ago

If you look at the data that the MyDrive smartphone app shows for each device, you'll notice that the "lifetime subscription" has a fixed expiry date. It appeared to be ~10 years for the devices I looked at. I could not see this information any other way except via the MyDrive app.

agumonkey• 5 years ago

Osmmaps + leaflet.js = luv

SteveCoast3• 5 years ago

Woo!

Happy to answer any questions...

mongol• 5 years ago

Where is this supported? Seems only a few selected areas?

SteveCoast3• 5 years ago

The aim is globally, we're working on speeding it up and cleaning out trains and water... We'll probably finish the US within a few days and move on to the EU or other places.

RicoElectrico2• 5 years ago

What does TT ultimately intend to do with OSM data? Do they intend to:

- provide OSM as a second option in their map products

- gradually switch over from proprietary data to OSM

- switch to OSM but only in select countries

- do something else entirely?

tinus_hn• 5 years ago

What is the business case for this? I don’t understand how TomTom has an advantage by improving openstreetmaps.

vanderZwan2• 5 years ago

TomTom relies on maps for many of their products. OSM provides maps. Doesn't exactly sound like rocket science to me.

fencepost• 5 years ago

TomTom has GPS traces, but if those traces lead to OSM crowdsourced corrections without rolling a vehicle then they get better data faster. This may be particularly relevant for highway changes with no associated street addresses.

lucb1e3• 5 years ago

If I may be so bold, scrolling around the Netherlands and what is covered of Germany, it seems pretty useless.

- The resolution is so low, it's really hard to tell if there might be missing roads/routes or if this concerns water/rail.

- There are so many water/rail mistakes, there is red everywhere also in areas where I know every road in existence is on there. You have to evaluate each tile manually for all of the covered landmass.

- Just taking out air/rail/water might not solve the problem. Looking in residential areas with no water or rail nearby, there are still yellow tiles popping up at random with no indication as to why. Having the offending trace(s) would be really helpful here, but those are of course not shareable for privacy reasons. Perhaps short cutouts could be shared that are between 25 and 75% of the route (so not near the source or destination)? That would make it very clear if the person is on a bus (that obviously won't follow the shortest path in most cases) because the trace would go past the bus stops and often linger there, or if it was a cyclist for example.

As a frequent OSM contributor I love such initiatives and I'm very happy to see TomTom getting more involved. TomTom's map quality is so far behind OSM (globally), I was wondering who'd even still considering buying from them so it makes a lot of sense to combine forces instead. User data is the main advantage Google has over OSM, for both live traffic and purposes like these, so I'm very happy to see innovation here! I'll definitely be checking out updates to the site.

wongarsu2• 5 years ago

Looking at the places I'm familiar with, there's also a pattern of places like high traffic intersections (probably lots of people avoiding those?) and places with lots of foot/bike traffic, where people don't travel along the shortest path but along the most beautiful or the one with the slowest elevation change.

I guess there's lots of useful information for improving routing algorithms in the raw data. I too am skeptical about its usefulness for mapping.

antattack2• 5 years ago

Can anyone recommend good interface to OpenStreeMaps? I installed OsmAnd on my Android Radio (9" 720p) and find menu options/icons are too tiny (and too many) to operate while driving.

zaik• 5 years ago

How about Organic Maps? https://f-droid.org/packages/app.organicmaps

antattack2• 5 years ago

Thanks, I'll definitively give it a go.

mdp2021• 5 years ago

Surely warmly recommendable: OruxMaps.

I think you can find the apk at oruxmaps.com

to OpenStreeMaps

Can I suggest you also try DerStefan's OpenTopoMap, at opentopomap.org .

Also, through the GitHub based instructions from DerStefan, you can build your own maps (tiles). It is an job requiring equipment and time, but it can lead to amazing results (well above the maps you can find around).

apnorton• 5 years ago

This is cool data! ...however, I must ask --- where does the data come from?

HN certainly has a side that loves open-source data, but it also has a privacy-loving side. Focusing on the privacy aspects, has TomTom given any consideration to how it respects the privacy of its users/does it allow for opt-out of storing and analyzing its users' GPS traces?

simonw• 5 years ago

Worth noting that Steve Coast - the author of this post - was the founder of the OpenStreetMap project in 2004 (he joined TomTom in 2019).

svalee• 5 years ago

OpenStreetMap is a great product. It's such a shame that they've got licensing wrong. Now a lot of FAANG level companies can abuse it and sell free product with a bloat and trackers.

Happy Birthday, OpenStreetMap

Related Stories