Imagery update

More updates, with more recent imageries in Ipoh, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu (they put some hint on this image). Not sure about when it was taken - but Mapbox said that they were “captured within the last few months”.

Sadly, I didn’t get the requested coverage for Dungun and Kemaman/Chukai area despite asking twice already. Oh well…

BTW, Selangor/WP/Klang valley mappers… could some of you check out the OSM Notes regarding highway exit names for the highways? Those notes are all over Klang valley expressways. I do believe that many, if not most, don’t have exit names, just a ref number (especially on MRR2). However, somebody did open many Notes putting in exit names. Perhaps, we can close those Notes with a reject note since those exits don’t actually have any names. Time to cleanup the mess…

=kucai=
p/s moved out of Selangor a year ago, so the comment is from my own recollection.

If the whole of Penang Island didn’t manage to get any (I’m surprised with that to be honest)… then we should know the fate for minor places. Well, Mapbox is a startup company, so it has its own focus to expand its business.

Now, speaking about Bing. I believed March last year was the last major imagery update. Then Microsoft hands over its staff and technology related to Bing Maps to Uber in June. No idea whether or when will Microsoft would update the Bing imagery… hopefully they would update things outside the US.

If I recall correctly, I have seen some MRR2 interchanges feature those special EXIT signs much like this:

without exit name and exit numbers! Soooo… like it or not, it has to be surveyed. Or at least, hoping someone records and beams the pictures into a Mapillary stream.

Well, the notes can be closed to reduce clutter.

EDIT: the request fresh imagery link has been 404’d.

exit number and name is stored in the node and not display on the exit road segment.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dmotorway_junction

example: Unresolved note #242858, exit Pedas…seem OK to me as its already have the exit tagged.

Only God knows when they’ll actually figure out when and what to fill on those EXIT signs… the responsible department(s) regarding this matter almost seems to be in permanent disarray.

For example, in Terengganu, there seems to be a change coming. Exit signs and road name signs started popping up, but… the main highway (trunk or primary or whatever) from Kuantan to Kuala Terengganu have 3 different (official?) names. It has those old inter city names; Kemaman -Dungun, Dungun-KT etc… and add to that the superset Kuantan-Kuala Terengganu name. Nobody has determined yet where the start and end points are.

Hopefully, things will get sort out one way or another.

Which should be the correct practice. IMHO, suitable for the Federal Highway, MRR2, etc which have (grade-seperated) interchanges. If there are no exit numbers or exit names, the destination tag can be useful.

But for (at grade) intersections with traffic lights, I prefer to use name tag on traffic_signals unless there are reference numbers.

Mostly the case, when the note was added nearly two years ago, if I’m not mistaken. If I seen it, I’ll simply “resolve” the note. This happened twice in the northern peninsular (well, actually it’s the whole west coast)… no idea who did this because it was made anonymously. Quite frustrating actually.

Haha! That’s why the do-ocracy of OSM is to map whatever is on the ground. No reference numbers or exit names? Fine, there’s no need to include that. I have seen sometimes Waze contributors put up things (of course in Waze’s database) that are not really can be seen on the road… sometimes road names are really like… whatever. Some would follow what’s on the police’s database and the others may take what’s available from JKR.

I have seen it in Kelantan too (as of January 2015), exclusively on the federal routes 3, 4 and 8. Exit signs too, but not that much.

Road names however… ha, I’m not really sure about that. At least Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang are getting those. Kedah (and Seberang Perai to an extent), however, nowhere to be seen. There’s only road signs being put up in the towns, by the local councils. Perlis, if I am not mistaken, its JKR put up road signs across the whole state!

Official road names has been put up, I have discussed with the legal mailing list, they say we couldn’t use this due to some legal implications. But I could try asking MAMPU if they would be just fine to be listed on the Contributors page on the Wiki. The license implicitly mention that (sort of like this) all third-party app using OSM data must attribute the government - if any piece of data from the portal is included in OSM. Bah!

Everyone, check two new imagery layers, courtesy from DigitalGlobe!

Mixed bag of surprises: my area (Alor Setar) has some from 2012, but the rest is mainly from 2015-ish.

From the import mailing list,

For the time being, this tool can be accessed to know the year of the recorded imagery.

Unrelated, the AI-Assisted Road Tracing thing may be delayed until Facebook gets the thumbs up from Thailand’s OSM community. The updated imagery, hopefully, helps a lot to verify the AI output; but always remember that ideally, ground truth surveys is the best.

Finally got to see the new imagery for a few towns in Terengganu. Wonderful!

However, the usual problem will come for newly available imagery for cities where none was available before - imagery offset. Not everybody uses JOSM with that specific plugin, so that means those people will find that the roads (gps traces) are off by some distance from the imagery.

My proposal for this situation is for us to just trace from the imagery the way it is. After let’s say 90% of the roads in the area have been traced, only then somebody comes and align the whole imagery to available gps tracks. It would be a much easier single step to do…

And you all can notice Hulu Selangor Imagery also avaible now, That some user had been trace for Kuala Kubu Baru and Rasa.Maybe Klang Valley suburban area can be trace by using DG.

Bing imagery, however, is sourced from several partners (for example, Airbus). If they happened to update their imagery, I would say that (probably major) cities would get them first, if not the whole country. At least one can hear them first through their blog or Twitter account.

DigitalGlobe is going to update the Premium layer anyway sooner or later, but I value the diversity of having multiple imagery. Because from that way, new OSM users are aware that there are offsets - or how much the satellite layer deviates away from actual things in reality.

Bing imagery has minor offsets sometimes but DG ones is more noticeable. For example, DG Standard has 10, 10 (degrees?) offset south of Alor Setar. A little bit north, then it is around 0, 5.

(re)

Also, at least we could tell them to tick this and see how much roads are not in line (lari, tak centre) with GPS traces:

I usually do them manually, step by step, bit by bit. Ya lor, not many people yet in my focus area. Unlike in KL, Klang Valley or Penang - had headaches while aligning building in Penang. Also, building height is different, so I better do it one by one (if I have the time…).

P.S. The JOSM editor has a direct access (but must be activated first) to use the Strava heatmap, but iD and Potlatch has access using Custom imagery. Surprise, surprise, some places may not have uploaded GPS traces, but there may be tracks recorded by Strava users.

I’m seeing updates on the DigitalGlobe Premium layer. For some places, it used to be roughly the same as the low-res black and white Mapbox layer, but today, they are being replaced with high-res, coloured one.

Can’t really say whether they are the most recent ones, but IIRC at least the Premium layer is less cloudy than the Standard layer.

From Thailand’s forum:

1 Like

Mapbox Satellite also has updates, but they’re more or less like the DigitalGlobe Premium layer. Probably useful because from what I read, the Premium layer might get updated more often.

P.S. Why Penang seemed like didn’t get the love of updates? Strange. :roll_eyes:

What a pity, but we have DG to use too.

Seberang Perai has three updated imageries. Three! Bing from 2012/13, DigitalGlobe Standard and DigitalGlobe Premium (probably the latest, you might know better). George Town only has DigitalGlobe Premium only, and new OSM contributors are very likely to see the Bing layer first (that’s from 10 years ago). That makes me a little bit worried.

Yes SPT is more clearly now but SPS stiil blur.:rolleyes:I will try to cover Seberang Perai suburban area first in this year…

Another imagery layer is made available courtesy of ESRI.

DigitalGlobe Standard imagery has been updated near my place. Probably from late last year or early this year!

Yes, for now the Esri map is the clearest in the Seberang Perai. Now I will update for Bandar Perda one…
The Seremban Bandar Seri Sendayan also got a lot of changed…

I like both ESRI & DigitalGlobe, is it possible to change the default to other instead of Bing?