Newbie questions about OSM

General talk
1

Hi. I have been using OSM now for couple of years and have been impressed about quality of data which seems to be more fresh and detailed than Google Maps or other commercial Maps in where I live (Espoo, Finland). I would want to learn more but I find it difficult to use in many parts (and I am an engineer). So first batch of newbie questions here :):

  • Google Maps has My Maps feature where you can do your own maps on top of Google Maps. Is there a similar feature for OpenstreetMaps? One that is as easy to use. Below are some example maps I have created. Some of them are for my private use or only for friends and some are public:

    • map where I have all friends living nearby as dots/house pictures.
    • map of a festival where there is lines for the surrounding fence, dots for camps of friends, different kind of dots for bars, showers, etc… With a scale visible so that you can visualize the distances
    • map of underground parking lot in a city with dots for entrances/exits.
    • map with certain type of event venues in a city center.
    • map of best routes for bicycle between points A and B, where routes are visualised as lines connected with points. And different color line for each route with title text for each route.

As I have understood submitting this kind of data to general OSM database is not really a good idea because it is a general map.

Q2: can you tell me more about indoor mapping? I have really not found any indoor mapping data for areas where I live (Helsinki, Espoo in Finland).

Q3: is there any opensource client for using OSM on android? I have been using now Locus maps but it seems to not be an open source project.

Q4: is there any satellite pic or air pic data in OSM? The satellite pics in google maps of our cities is very old and still show construction sites that have been completed years ago.

2

Hallo, welcome to OSM

Q1: take a look at umap.openstreetmap.fr
Q2: Our wiki should have the information you need : https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Indoor_Mapping
If not, there is a dedicated forum for indoor mapping: https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=67
Q3: OsmAnd is open source: https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand
Q4: No, OSM nor OSMF does not have airplanes or satellites. They are owned by governments and private companies. The imagery we can use is offered by those parties for tracing. Never use Google maps to add data to OSM, please. Ask your government whether they release imagery as open data for use by OSM. Or go out, make a GPS trace, take pictures for Mapillary or OpenStreetMap and map based on that info.

3

Escada covered most of your questions, but just to expand on Q4 and background imagery for tracing. You can see the main available sources for your area by using an editor. If you use the default online editor (ID), accessible simply by hitting the Edit button, look for “Background setting” in the icons on the right of the screen. You will see there is quite a long list. I had a quick look at Espoo and it looks like there are a few sets of maps and photos from MML which I gather is an official Finnish mapping agency, as well as the usual commercial providers Bing, Esri etc.

Apologies if you already knew this as you say you have been using OSM for a couple of years. In any case it might be worth trying to contact other mappers in your country to get an idea of which background imagery is most reliable and up to date as this tends to vary by country.

4

Question 3:

see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android