Also check out Pure Maps for Linux phones!
You contribute to OSM to have an open source database free to all
I contribute to OSM so my local Pokemon GO scene has accurate biome mapping
We are not the same
What tags does pokemon go use to determine biomes? I occasionally contribute updates around my local area, that would be a neat thing to apply
Lots of them! Pokemon go has a few main biomes with lots of other factors to determine what spawns. Main biomes are grass, city, mountain, and water.
Then you have other tags for things like parks and paths, which give special spawn points. Parks have rotating habitats for one particular species and can have EX gyms. Paths will spawn Pokemon along them with a few unique species.
Regional spawns occur as well, with some continents or countries having one or more special species unique to it. And rather than a strict limit, some species are much more common in certain latitudes.
Beyond that are some tags that prevent spawns, like military bases or wetlands, places you aren’t encouraged to just walk around.
A list of tags from Reddit
Blocked Spawn areas http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/r42
Nest Locator http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/r43
Nests that require paths http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/r44
OSM Influences Nests and Blocked Spawns (a work in progress)
Nests
Confirmed
leisure=park
leisure=garden
leisure=golf_course
leisure=recreation_ground
boundary=physiogeographical
landuse=grass (may need secondary tag to be a nest)
Possible
landuse=recreation_ground
leisure=playground
landuse=village_green
leisure=pitch
boundary=national_park
Paths
highway=footpath
highway=path
highway=cycleway
highway= sidewalk
highway=footway
route=bicycle
route=hiking
route=foot
network
Creates Nests if Paths present
Confirmed
landuse=farmland
landuse=farmyard
natural=scrub
natural=heath
landuse=meadow
Possible
natural=moor*
natural=grassland
natural=fell
natural=bare_rock
natural=scree
natural=shingle
natural=sand
natural=mud
natural=valley
natural=rock
natural=stone
natural=arete
natural=beach
landuse=greenfield
(*Deprecated or incorrect tag)
Blocked Spawns
Blocks Spawns without Paths
Confirmed
natural=wood
landuse=forest
natural=forest*
Possible
landuse=orchard
(*Deprecated or incorrect tag)
Blocks all Spawns
Confirmed
landuse=construction
landuse=military
landuse=quarry
landuse=railway
landuse=landfill
aeroway=runway
aeroway=taxiway
amenity=school
highway=motorway
highway=trunk
highway=primary
highway=secondary
highway=tertiary
Water tags, unknown if surrounding spawns are water influenced
natural=wetland
wetland=
natural=glacier
natural=marsh*
(*Deprecated or incorrect tag)
Possible
amenity=daycare
amenity=kindergarten
Water
Effects biomes on edges. Blocks spawns away from land unless crossed by route=ferry?
Confirmed
landuse=basin
landuse=reservoir
natural=coastline
natural=spring
natural=water
water=lake
water=pond
water=reservoir
water=basin
water=canal
water=river
natural=waterway
waterway=river
waterway=riverbank
waterway=stream
waterway=canal
waterway=drain
waterway=ditch
man_made=water_tower
Possible
landuse=salt_pond
natural=bay
waterway=wadi
waterway=drystream
waterway=fairway
waterway=dock
waterway=boatyard
waterway=dam
waterway=weir
waterway=stream_end
waterway=waterfall
waterway=lock_gate
water=lagoon
water=reflecting_pool
water=fish_pass
water=oxbow
water=lock
water=moat
water=wastewater
water=stream_pool
Possibly Effects Biomes Only
natural=peak (Mt Moon biome forms around peaks)
landuse=industrial
landuse=commercial
landuse=residential
landuse=retail
Does not block spawns or create nests but otherwise unknown
landuse=cemetery
landuse=port
landuse=depot
landuse=garages
amenity=grave_yard
Boundaries
May influence all nests needing paths to spawn within that area
boundary=administrative
boundary=historic
boundary=maritime
boundary=political
boundary=postal_code
boundary=religious_administration
boundary=protected_area
boundary=national_park
boundary=physiogeographical
Unknown Effects
Area
natural=hot_spring
natural=volcano
natural=sinkhole
natural=tundra
landuse=brownfield
landuse=allotments
landuse=greenhouse_horticulture
landuse=plant_nursery
landuse=vineyard
geological=moraine
geological=outcrop
geological=palaeontological_site
Lines
natural=ridge
natural=cliff
natural=saddle
natural=tree_row
Nodes
natural=geyser
natural=tree
natural=cave_entrance
Some tag info from Reddit regarding paths and spawn blocking:
- Lines tagged
highway=footwaythat also carry the tagbridge=yesdo not generate additional spawn points. Critically, this encompasses all boardwalks, which are correctly taggedbridge=boardwalk. - Lines tagged
highway=footwaydo not provide a spawn point exception through the area blocked bynatural=wetlandas they do fornatural=wood. It’s possible that this is an extension of the issue withbridge=yes– I have no local examples without both tags. - Areas tagged
landuse=basinblock all spawn points, despite being used correctly to tag the contemporary practice of building a stormwater retention system beneath a city park. These areas are rendered as water in-game, but do not seem to influence Water spawns, although more data would be helpful in determining this. (OSM also has issues rendering basins.) - Areas tagged
leisure=nature_reservedo not nest. Could be intent, could be oversight, but seems like an odd exception, as the distinction between a park and a preserve is fluid – at least in the US. The same is true for areas taggedlanduse=winter_sports, the correct tag to describe a ski resort, and areas taggedleisure=dog_park. - Areas tagged
amenity=prisondo not block all spawn points. Since this is the correct way to tag a prison or jail – which is to say, a high-security facility where people probably shouldn’t be chasing Pokémon – this seems wrong. - Lines tagged
waterway=river,waterway=stream, andwaterway=ditchare not rendered on the map despite influencing Water spawns in nearby spawn points. The same is true for areas taggednatural=wetlandand points taggedamenity=fountain. - Lines tagged
power=lineandpower=minor_linedo not influence Electric spawns in the way that streams do with Water Pokémon. More of a missed opportunity than anything. You could say the same withrailway=railand Steel or any of the more specific OSM building tags the game references to seemingly no effect:leisure=stadium,amenity=cinema,tourism=hotel, and so on. - Lines tagged
highway=trackshow up visually as paths, despite being intended to represent vehicle tracks that fall short of the qualifications for being an unpaved road. They do not generate additional spawn points, so this is assumed to be an error with the in-game renderer. - Lines tagged
highway=serviceandservice=drivewayrender as roads on the map, which are not to scale. This is especially glaring if houses and garages are mapped. Ideally, there probably should be a thinner style of road for all service roads, tracks, living streets, or any other highway designation where vehicles are likely to encounter pedestrians.
Waouh. Gather such knowledge is some dedication to a game. Congrats!
The Silph Road community goes hard lol
- Lines tagged
The only thing it’s missing is live traffic, I would switch in a heartbeat. It’s my main goto for biking and walking, just not the car for that reason.
For me it’s the reviews that I’m missing the most. Mapy.com has reviews so I’ve been starting using that, CoMaps for saving my favorite/want to go/etc places, and HereWeGo for navigation by car. I wish those three would combine as a perfect alternate too Google Maps.
I find OSM is better than Google maps as Google are missing some paths
It reaaaaaaally depends on how active people are in the area
You can have one city with every pavement stone mapped and the town over just be “yup, there’s a street here”
UK also has ordnance survey maps that are just the best maps. Found out our local library has a shit load of them too. But it probably helps OSM a lot more too if you used them as a source.
Lots of communities use official mappings, actually. But some places put them under a license that can’t be used for OSM
Germany had a case somewhat recently where a bunch of stuff had to be reverted, because the licence wasn’t clear enough
Yes, OSM is by far superior when on foot or bike basically everywhere I have been to.
I have no idea why but I love contributing to OSM. it’s relaxing to me while also being productive.
I absolutely agree. To me it feels like putting together a puzzle where each piece I grab fits om the first try.
Great way of explaining it. And seeing the progress after doing an area is so satisfying
i spent my summer last year filling all the street names on a caribbean island i was going on holiday in december, so i could use Co-Maps offline during my trip (aka Maps.me and Organic Maps before enshitification)
osm is the best!
Wait did organic maps enshitify?
Thw open letter describes it best, but in short: shareholders doing things behind the devs’ backs
I see. Deleted organic maps and installed comaps on my phones.
I think the replacement is CoMaps
Read my reply again.
Doh!
I’ve been stuck in a loop for three hours. I only escaped because someone slapped the phone out of my hands.
shareholders doing things behind the devs’ backs
That’s a story as old as time (or at least as old as the concept of shareholders).
I’m glad to have seen your comment. It’s unfortunate people start these good projects and get taken in by the money. Using community donations to fund a personal holiday is shameful. I won’t be using Organic Maps any longer.
It’s more a feud between the founder of Organics Maps and people from the FOSS community, with the apparent inclusion of proprietary code into Organic Maps, and issues regarding to the governance of the project. Here’s an article from someone who will be better at explaining all this: https://news.itsfoss.com/organic-maps-fork-comaps/ :)
What is desperately needed by all the open source navigation apps on Android is traffic info. You just can’t plan a half decent route without it. Speed limits info is not enough to know the time a route will take. You need the actural average speed of the roads. Especially on old European roads.
But how to do that reliably and with up-to-date info if not invading the privacy of people?
Legally forced sharing from all platforms with onion routing and no ID? Government road data fed by all those cameras? Seams a solvable problem if done with privacy in mind not as yet another opportunity for mass surveillance.
As far as I know HERE WeGo app is based on OSM and also includes life traffic info
To be fair, we all did just fine before Waze existed.
Nope. I was frequently late when using any number of open sat navs without traffic info. I end up reverting to close Waze or Google Maps.
Yeah, it’s hard to overstate what a big deal real-time traffic data was/is. And I have to wonder, how many traffic jams are prevented - or at least reduced - by it. How did we manage before Waze et al.? We were just late a lot more.
How did we manage before Waze et al.?
I (and i suspect most people who cared to know) listened to a local radio station who reported on traffic during high (or abnormal) traffic periods of the day.
Can people not scrape other platforms and train their
AIopenstreetmaps on publicly available informationDoubt it. OSM doesn’t allow contributors to rip from Google and alike, scraping would be included in that presumably. Google has the copyright here.
How would Google realistically prevent it from happening slowly organically from real people who happen to look it up
If incorrect data gets copied thats quite a good indicator that we are copying google.
If it’s one person, maybe google doesn’t care, but frankly I think we should want to get the data in such a way that google doesn’t even get to make a noise about it.
Traffic isn’t like that. Sure there are patterns and constants, but there is accidents and road closures, etc.
@Sunshine I’ve been helping with Open Street Map for years. I contribute to it all the time. Currently I’m #303 globally.
976 here, #22 in my country!
My kind of heroes. People who seek to better the world without seeking attention while doing it.
And there’s an app to help contributing to openstreetmap.
Here’s a link to it on f-droid…
Also OpenDoor. Doesn’t look as pretty but you if you read a bit about tags on the osm wiki you can add and edit a lot in this app
Oh, cool. Need to check it. I never heard of it before.
OpenDoor. Noted. Thanks.
They were thinking of EveryDoor. There’s also MapComplete, a bit more niche- focused on deep diving in specific themes without having to learn all the specific tagging for that topic.
How does this compare to OsmAnd, which is what I currently use?
Isn’t OsmAnd primarily a navigation app?
StreetComplete is an app that gives you tasks to complete, like “Does the bus stop have a light? Can blind people use the cross walk? What’s the house number? How many bikes can use the bike parking lot?”
It’s a bit like Pokemon Go, but without a for profit company behind it and the result helps other people.
Try it out… It’s free.
Well, I am convinced. Thanks for explaining the difference. I usually use the app for navigation and then add spots that I see are missing when I get home on the website.
Can recc Street Complete as well, so much fun. I do use Osmand to add cafes or websites to places, works quite ok for that as well.
StreetComplete… Global Rank: #1567 Local Rank: #131 Days Active: 370
You’re welcome 😉
@Cyber Global rank of #303 on StreetComplete. I’ve been doing this for years. It’s a passion.
Nice! Ok, I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, but I think SC just shows actual number of days something was entered
But… #303… I’ve got a looong way to go
(I bet you’re a delivery driver 😉)
@Cyber Nah, I just walk around alot (especially on the weekends), and I fill in a lot of maps on the OSM iD interface.
Errr global rank #5770 checking in. To be fair I’m just not out a lot.
#4412 here… Damn… We could hold a community meeting on Lemmy…
Every little bit helps to improve the maps for everyone else…
That’s so cool they have ranks!
Yeah, you get Quests and “unlock” things - which is mostly links to sites that use OSM data for interesting things.
It’s fun for a bit, but I’m glad that after a while you don’t see them anymore…
I’m happy just recording the opening times for a decent friendly restaurant… and the name of a bustop… and house numbers… and street lighting… and…
Edit: Oh and I’ve covered 7 countries by the look of it. Canada and EU mostly…
Global rank #4997 reporting for duty 🫡
#1693 here!
How does OSM handle conflict resolution? Different info, multiple listings, spam, etc.
There are folks who review the changelogs, and when there are mistakes users can make pins on the maps.
I’m checking out Street Complete, but I can’t seem to modify or contribute info for the apartment I’m living in. I don’t want random quests, I want to be and to key in and / or verify info for places I’m familiar with. What app should I be using?
Edit: Google says Vespucci, gonna give that a try
Vespucci is great but it has a high learning curve and some awful default settings. Stay with it and tweak the settings!
Unlike Street Complete, you can actually see and edit the tags directly.
I use street complete. You can edit nodes if you need to, but sometimes it’s just easier to edit on the computer in the website.
I use Every Door. It allows to add information to various types of features (shops, buildings and more) and I find it easy to use.
If you need a good navigation app take a look at magic earth
It’s proprietary, though.
As a resident of Salt Lake City, host of the 2034 winter Olympics, I want to wow the Europeans that visit. We will not be limited by our national politics. I will continue to throw my time into OSM because I believe it will change the world beyond it’s ambitions. I’m stuck on the idea of a community map.
I hate to break it to you, but nobody is going to come lol
Really ☄️wish☄️ comaps was available on accrescent instead of organicmaps
I totally forgot to start doing this again. Just moved from the US to a tiny town in Sweden, I’ll play my part!
I’m glad you made it to safety!
Thank you me too! And I’m only a week in but so far I’m crushing it at school. Been having a great time here everyone is so kind and I don’t have to worry about things like getting killed for using public bathrooms!
