Searching for points with free view in a cardinal direction

Hello,

I’m trying to find overlook points with a free view over x kilometers in a certain cardinal direction (what I’m looking for is good spots to view sunrise/sunset).

Is there a way (a search engine, something else) to do such a search in OSM?

Thanks & cheers
Oliver

Unfortunately, I don’t think OSM will have the data you are looking for in most places.

OSM does have a tourism=viewpoint [1] tag for places with views. And one of the meanings of the direction=* tag [2] is for the bearing a feature points. So, in theory, you could search for a node (point) that is tagged as both a view point and faces the direction you are interested in.

However, most view points don’t have a direction tag on them. I have mostly seen the direction tag (using this semantic) on cave and mine openings.

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:tourism%3Dviewpoint
[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:direction

Hi Oli,
But remember that the surrounding trees, still grow and will spoil the view in time even if its marked as viewpoint. As N76 suggested search the available viewpoints POI and survey them your self…

Thank you both for your answer. I’ll have a look into the viewpoints.

The story behind my question is as follows. I know very good from where to peek at sunset in my home area (Albtrauf in Germany). But since the course of the schwäbische alb is roughly South-West to North-East the “North Rim” doesn’t have that many spots with a free view to the east. I learned that last year when I was at https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/48.3546/9.0982 which in principle has a nice view to the east. But the next hill to the east (https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/48.3606/9.1061) blocks the real view to the east. It’s a very nice spot on sunrise nevertheless.
So I’ll pursue my personal quest to find some good sunrise-viewpoints in Zollernalb region ;).

The PeakFinder app (Android, maybe iOS) might help. It uses OSM data (peak names) + elevation data to show a wire-frame outline of the skyline from your current location, or from a location you choose. It also shows the sun path with sunset time. :slight_smile:

Viajero Perdido, you nailed it!

Thanks a lot for this hint, I didn’t know this app before. And it has a webinterface.

:slight_smile: