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

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

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ChristianK

New LIDAR Contourlines Europe

A quick info for you:

Most maps have better LIDAR contour lines again.
Unfortunately, there is currently a problem with a tile in the border area Germany/Poland – I will solve this as soon as possible…

General: Please re-download all maps otherwise there are ghost lines where new and old contour lines overlap.
… or disable the automatic loading of maps.

 

Have a nice springtime
Christian

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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

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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ChristianK

It’s Summer ….

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… which also means for the OAM team that the sports gear will be taken out and various projects planned for the winter will be tackled – be it with the bike, in the mountains or whatever.

The main thing is to get out into nature again!

You will probably meet me in June/July in Norway/Sweden/Finland, my beloved Scandinavia, on a white scooter. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to cycle for health reasons – anyway, never mind.
The Eurovelo NR1 leads through Norway along the most beautiful back roads along the coast, and thus also on the scooter, to the Nordkapp – of course also on this tour with the OpenAndroMaps and the BRouter.

The major summer update will therefore be rendered 2-3 weeks later, in mid/late July.

I am leaving on this holiday with a healthy conscience because…
The OAM project is on solid ground:

  • I have eliminated all programme fragments
  • many scripts have been rewritten from scratch and made clean
  • cleaned up the structure
  • the all tools have been changed towards licence-free
  • simplified the web hosting and paid for it 2 years in advance
  • all changes are _immediately_ transferred to a backup box at Hetzer via RSynch
  • Tobias and Michael, my two companions, have all the access data and a completely set-up test system.

Have a nice summer
the OAM team

 

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ChristianK

More maps with 10m Contourlines

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The elevation data for Europe are now very accurate in many areas thanks to flight laser scanning.
Wherever these data are freely available, @Sonny collects them, checks them and interweaves them with Jonathan de Ferranti‘s Viewfinder panoramic elevation data in the areas not yet scanned.

The result is a constantly growing set of elevation data, the best that could be achieved without paying licence fees at the moment.
The accuracy is good enough to make sense for contour lines at 10 meters vertical distance. (which was definitely not the case so far).

To make a long story short:
The following maps are now available with 10m contour lines (more will follow):

Alps, Alps_East, Alps_West, Pyrenees, Austria, CanaryIslands, Corse, Czech_Republic, Great_Britain, UK_Scotland, Ireland, Madeira, Mallorca_Ibiza, Malta, Sardegna, Sicilia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, UK_Wales, UK_LakeDistrict, UK_IsleOfMan, UK_Shetlands

Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria

 

 

New and updated Maps:

The Alps-West now also includes the neighbouring Rhone Valley.
New map: BalticStates (Estonia, Latvi, Lithuania as complete map)

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ChristianK

New Country and State-Borders

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More and more boundaries are grouped in relations and thus cannot be reliably processed by the MapsForgeWriter. In the meantime this is like a TikTokChallenge = who manages to create as many completely unnecessary relations as possible. At the islands of the Canary Islands and Madeira, every beach on even the smalest islands is occupied by countless border relations – these have to be filtered out with great effort.
That’s why I have now written this relation resolution from scratch for

boundary=administrative and Admin_Level=1 to 4
Means: national borders and federal states.
…and try to filter out the nonsense relations…

Extreme improvements were made for maps of South America, here even national borders were missing.

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