ChristianK

September update released

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In short:

 

The resolving of the SuperRoutes for the hiking trails is finished – similar to the cycle superroutes, which takes us into the waters of the route rules of Lonvia/Waymarkedtrails sind, as far as possible.

The resolution of the super routes has been rewritten to the best of my knowledge and belief – but I have to say that not every creativity in the OSM data mischmasch can be taken into account.

 

An interesting development is the new class of long-distance/rapid cycle routes
The internal discussion with all background information (mixed German/English) can be found here.

 

Also the render themes by Tobias = Elevate/Elements (Forum)
and those from
JohnPercy = VoluntaryUK (Forum) and Website

have been further improved – e.g. the contour lines are now rendered as curves.

 

In addition, it should be said that very extensive changes in the map structure were necessary and that it is possible that small errors have crept in. Please do not hesitate to report such errors in the forum.

 

We wish you beautiful tours in autumn
the team of OpenAndroMaps

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ChristianK

Outlook for the September update

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What’s coming up at OAM:

The resolving of the SuperRoutes for the hiking trails is finished – similar to the cycle superroutes, which takes us into the waters of the route rules of Lonvia/Waymarkedtrails sind, as far as possible.

 

An interesting development is the new class of long-distance/rapid cycle routes that are being built in NL/DE/BE/USA and also mapped in OpenStreetMap as cycle_highway=yes. These expressways are less for leisure than for commuting/commuting/shopping.
Therefore, in future we will display the two types of cycle paths (leisure versa commuting=rapid cycle routes) independently from each other and, if applicable, on a separate layer, depending on the render theme.

 

The preparations for this from our side are already in the late beta stage and we will, if everything runs well, put a new map set with the corresponding render themes online at the beginning or mid of September.

The internal discussion with all background information (mixed German/English) can be found here.

 

Have a nice summer
The Team of OpenAndroMaps

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ChristianK

Updates are done

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All maps are now re-rendered and available for download.

The Taiwan map has now also been updated, the programmer of the Mapsforge library was so kind to adapt the map writer to the enormous density of data there.

 

The next update will be available at the beginning of September.

 

For us the development of OpenAndroMaps is going on, there are plenty of things to think about.

 

We wish you a nice summer and pleasant trips with the OpenAndroMaps.

Greetings, Tobias, Michael, Christian

/3 Comments/by
ChristianK

New Maps / New Features

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And there we go,

 

As all those who have ever met me probably guessed, my sense of order is stronger than my frustration and I have written a script for the resolution of the screwed-up super routes and integrated it into the process.

 

And because I enjoyed that typing so much, I changed the generation of the REFs (= short names of the routes).
Until now, the REF – if there were capital letters in the NAME and no REF-Value – was formed from these.
So e.g. “West Coast Trail” = WCT
Unfortunately, there are also relations which, especially in Scandinavia, had the path name_+vegur +vegen etc. in the NAME. This ended up in a REF that only consisted of the first capital letter.

From now on, the capital letters only become effective when at least TWO of them are recognised.
If there is only one capital letter, the first 5 letters of the NAME are used to form the REF.
So “Fjärilsleden” was REF=”F” until now, from now on REF=”Fjäri” – looks much, much better.

 

I did allow myself a new POI, namely the “E” charging stations relevant for EBikes without the obligation to consume (Pub,Restaurant…).
These can be found in the POIs under hike/bike, I think this is also of interest to one or two of you.
Here is the exact implementation: https://www.openandromaps.org/oam-forums/topic/ebike_charging_public-2

 

Perspective: In the course of the discussion about the ICN/IWN + super routes, it came up again that the “big” routes cover the small, local cycling/walking routes too often – we are currently discussing possibilities to switch off the international routes, but this is an essential intervention in the structure of the maps and must be considered = this will take a little time.

 

So, I wish you a pleasant Summer

Best regards,
Christian

/8 Comments/by
ChristianK

Updates suspended

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Dear OAM community,

 

I am forced to suspend further updates of the maps = there will be no more updates for the time being.

Reason: A mapper has begun to “normalise” hierarchies of wheel relations that have been carefully maintained over the years.
This means that the previously common consensus – that the individual cycle relations, such as the Eurovelo routes, consisted of a hierarchy of main (super) relations with individual sub-relations (the countries), each containing all the necessary information – has been destroyed.

Now there are super-relations that are based on other super-relations, relations that cross-reference other relations, etc….
Unfortunately, this cannot be resolved with the hand-programmed tools of the OAM for the time being, as there is no way to resolve the possible cross-nesting of the super/relations 100% conclusively.

For the time being, the Scandinavian maps are affected – but it is foreseeable that this cancer will spread further.

Up to now, I have been able to iron out such improvements to the OSM database relatively quickly and without any major complaints, but now it’s time to take a break.

 

I am real terrible sorry for the community, my comrades-in-arms @Tobias and @Michael and all those who have contributed to this project in any other way, but at the moment I have reached the point where I simply don’t want to chase after every nonsense like Don Quixote against windmills.

Should something similar to quality control be introduced to OpenStreetMap at some point, I would be happy to become active again.

 

Have a nice summer
Your Christian

PS: Of course I will remove the donate buttons.

/19 Comments/by
ChristianK

New hybrid maps of England/Scotland/Wales under the Christmas tree

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Anyone who has ever been hiking in the UK is familiar with the fantastic Landranger maps by OrdnanceSurvey(c).
For many years the dataset of these maps was under strict copyright – this has since changed and large parts are now freely available and can be added to other map series.

Details can be found in this thread from the forum:
https://www.openandromaps.org/oam-forums/topic/ordnance-survey-crag-detail-for-uk-maps

You can find this dataset from OrdnanceSurvey here:
https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-government/products/vectormap-district

Specifically, the OrdnanceSurvey layer with the cliffs/rocks is now integrated into the OpenAndroMaps maps, a milestone in terms of the visual appearance and usability of the OAM in this area.
The integration of complete foreign layers was quite a challenge, but – if you look at the result – it is worth every single work hour.

The now integrated crags-layer require the latest version of the Elevate Theme:
https://www.openandromaps.org/en/legend/elevate-mountain-hike-theme

Highly recommended is the Voluntary-Theme by John Percy whose look is very, very close to the OrdnanceSurvey Landranger maps it looks really fantastic.
https://www.openandromaps.org/oam-forums/topic/ordnance-survey-crag-detail-for-uk-maps#post-51501

 

This layer is now available for the following maps:

Great-Britain
UK-LakeDistrict
UK-Scotland
UK-Shetlands
UK-Wales

 

Thence…..

Another year has passed. This year even with largely open borders again, so my long planed Trip to Norway was without a headache this time.
I enjoyed it and in the hope that we will make 2023 a good year again let’s start planning our activities for 2023 over the Christmas holidays.
For this purpose you will find a completely new set of maps in the download section.

 

Thank you again for supporting the OAM
and I wish all of us a happy and peaceful 2023.

The team of OpenAndroMaps
Tobias, Michael, Christian

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ChristianK

USA+CDN now with 1″ Contourlines

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Viewfinderpanoramas.org has released high resolution 1″ elevation data for North America.
This means that for the USA and Canada a new OpenAndroMaps map set with more accurate contour lines is now available.

The file sizes have of course increased but the added value of information for hikers and cyclists outweighs this by far.
Especially ditches and ridges can be estimated much better with the 30m grid of the 1″ data than with the previous 90m grid of the 3″ elevation data.

The following maps were split to keep file sizes in reasonable limits:

BritishColumbia complete > BC/North + BC/South
UtahColorado > Utah + Colorado
CarolinaGeorgiaFlorida > CarolinaGeorgia + Florida

 

Best regards, Christian

/1 Comment/by
ChristianK

No longer need for “downloads.openandromaps.org”

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The download.openandromaps.org has been disabled and should not be necessary anymore since all links lead directly to the actual download server
https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/openstreetmap/openandromaps/

This subdomain was a relic from the early days of OpenAndroMaps before the University in Göttingen took over the hosting of the maps. In those days the download sources changed regularly (Megaupload, GDrive, etc..) and to provide a constant URL the downloads.openandromaps.org was set up – which itself never hosted any files but only forwarded to the actual hosters.
With GWDG as our longtime, free!!! map hoster, the subdomain has not been needed for quite some time.
If GWDG should ever withdraw their support for the OSM project, there is no alternative anyway, since the monthly traffic volume for OAM alone is in the terrabyte range.

So, no more downloads.openandromaps.org.

Please just use the links from the website and update your bookmarks

If any links on the OAM website are dangling in the air and still point to downloads.openandromaps.org – please post a message.

 

LG, Christian

 

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ChristianK

Problems with new webserver, Sorry

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Issue solved for now.

However, such a VPS is a maintenance-intensive, unstable, insecure thing.
… we need a performant webspace, managed by Professionals …

It would be my next goal to find a financially feasible solution.

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ChristianK

OAM Website moved to new server

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We have moved our site over to a VPS (again..)

I try to make the serviceability of this project as simple as possible in order to ensure a smooth handover to my CO-admins in case of….
However, a simple webspace for a website with 4000-6000 page views per day plus BBPress plus multilanguage is just too flimsy.

The delivery of the pages via cache was quite OK, but an important point – namely the interaction with our community, i.e. you, via forum was simply unbearably slow.

A managed server or a premium enterprise webspace is impossible to finance, so we decided to go for a VPS – with all its pitfalls.

Same time the major autumn update of the OAM maps is running, which will be uploaded one by one the next days.
And, by the way: Subscribing to forums and forum topics is working again!
If you have problems with the site please clear browser-cache and cookies for openandromaps.org

We wish all enjoyable tours in the hopefully sunny autumn.
Best regards, your OAM team

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