Drop railways from z6/z7

[matthijsmelissen]

Zoom level 6 and 7 are currently very crowded. Both railways and some types of roads are rendered with a gray line. It would probably improve the legibility of the map if we drop railroads from these zoomlevels.

[matkoniecz]

Like in #1119 I am against this idea. Railways are not making it ugly - it is rather caused by displaying administrative entities lower than countries and rather ugly rendering of nature reserves at z7.

[matthijsmelissen]

Let's fix these problems first and see after that if it is stil necessary.

[dieterdreist]

2014-11-11 7:58 GMT+01:00 Mateusz Konieczny [email protected]:

Like in #1119
#1119 I am
against this idea. Railways are not making it ugly - it is rather caused by
displaying administrative entities lower than countries and rather ugly
rendering of nature reserves at z7.

I agree that these are similar issues. These are things that aren't
technical problems but very much deal with the topic of this style. Having
those borders and administrative names visible in these zoom levels and
displaying map features like roads and railways very narrow / faintly is
following from very conscious decisions (of the former map team, i.e. Steve
Chilton) I believe. I am not saying that we need to carry these decisions
with us forever, but we should be aware that changing what and how is
displayed will have strong impact on the appearance of the style (in these
levels) and will also somehow convey a political message (are we
emphasizing political boundaries, or are we focussing on infrastructure).

[matthijsmelissen]

+1, as I said in #1125:

We should probably first think which features we find important on low zoomlevels.

Having those borders and administrative names visible in these zoom levels and displaying map features like roads and railways very narrow / faintly is following from very conscious decisions (of the former map team, i.e. Steve Chilton) I believe.

Do you know if I can read the discussions from that time back somewhere?

[mboeringa]

but we should be aware that changing what and how is displayed will have strong impact on the appearance of the style (in these levels) and will also somehow convey a political message (are we emphasizing political boundaries, or are we focussing on infrastructure).

Considering most here seem to find the administrative boundaries to prominent at the low zooms, and considering the entire project is actually called "OpenStreetMap", less prominence for the administrative boundaries and more for the road network at these zooms, doesn't sound like a real bad idea.

[dieterdreist]

2014-11-12 13:24 GMT+01:00 mboeringa [email protected]:

Considering most here seem to find the administrative boundaries to
prominent at the low zooms, and considering the entire project from is
actually called "OpenStreetMap", less prominence for the administrative
boundaries and more for the road network at these zooms, doesn't sound like
a real bad idea.

personally I'd like to see landcover as well (but won't remove roads or
railways), so that the low zoom tiles gave a picture about general coverage
(yes, I know, this will mostly show imported areas and not necessarily the
"best" mapped areas). If rendering them from the db is too time consuming
for low zoom, we could use an approach to create lower zoom
("background"-only?) tiles by resizing higher zooms, as has done previously
Tiles@Home and also Frederik Ramm with mapnik some time ago:
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-June/067389.html

[matkoniecz]

landcover

Note that Humanitarian layer is rendering landcover from z4: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=4/49.72/-100.02&layers=H

[23cpo]

@mboeringa OpenStreetMap would be pretty worthless without admin boundaries. You can't do reasonable navigation without the knowledge in which administrative division the street lies.

I think administrative divisions on low zoom levels are pretty helpful for the orientation on the map.

[dieterdreist]

2014-11-16 23:14 GMT+01:00 23cpo [email protected]:

OpenStreetMap would be pretty worthless without admin boundaries. You
can't do reasonable navigation without the knowledge in which
administrative division the street lies.

Ah, this is an OT thread?

You could take that knowledge from a different source, no need to have
admin borders in OSM for that purpose, the data is all linked by position.

[mboeringa]

@mboeringa OpenStreetMap would be pretty worthless without admin boundaries. You can't do reasonable navigation without the knowledge in which administrative division the street lies.

I think administrative divisions on low zoom levels are pretty helpful for the orientation on the map.

I think no-one in this thread suggested to remove admin boundaries from OSM, and certainly not from the database... I doubt though, if the current admin boundary rendering at low zoom levels including provincial or region borders, is really helpful. Again, I am not suggesting removing it, just pushing the rendering to more logical higher zoom levels. Looking at the website, provincial or region boundaries, should probably start at Z7, not at the current Z4.

[matthijsmelissen]

Please stick to discussing railways in this thread. Admin borders are better discussed in #1125.

[matthijsmelissen]

I still think railways are causing unnecessary clutter on z6 and z7. It's practically impossible to follow an individual railway now in Western Europe, and it's hard to distinguish them from roads.

Note that nature reserves and admin borders have changed in the meanwhile.

Any further opinions?

[Rovastar]

Personally I don't mind the railways on this level.
Now I finally have a new capable computer I have started looking at OSM carto again.
Our low levels are a bit of a mess...
But if we say just compare this to Google maps they don't show their railways until z10. Which is far to late and just shows there road centric nature. We are more open here. It is not as the bloke from the UK HIghway Agency said to me "OSM is just about the roads, right?"
I would do z7 and maybe possibly drop z6.
But we are showing main flows of transportation links at this level and that includes railways. I doubt many will actually use osmcarto to visually plan routes on this level. Just get a general understanding of how thing work.

[mboeringa]

I still think railways are causing unnecessary clutter on z6 and z7. It's practically impossible to follow an individual railway now in Western Europe, and it's hard to distinguish them from roads.

I think it also partly depends on the cartography. Look at the image below, approximately at scale 1:2M or Z8 in OSM. Left is OSM Standard, right is from my OSM Renderer for ArcGIS in development. Please use the zoom in your browser to get the image at 1:1 for proper judgement at your personal computer display. The images are close, but I give more emphasize to the railroads, thus actually making the railroads visible and distinguishable. I must admit that I do exclude some types of railway=*, like subway and tram, because otherwise a city like London would be completely black... But main lines are clearly visible and can be followed. I will also probably make the railways slightly lighter than the current 70% black in the final rendering.

This at least shows that at Z8, there is some room for a possible useful rendering, allowing a pretty big overview, although I must agree with @math1985 that rendering at Z6 and 7 may not be that wise, as even the main lines will condense into a very limited space.

[matkoniecz]

I am withdrawing my objection. I admit that my previous comment in this thread was based too much on naive "lets render everything or at least as much as possible".

It is not merely hard to distinguish roads and railways on z6/z7, it is completely impossible. And expecting that somebody new to the map style will be able to do this is ridiculous. And it is not really solvable by changing road or rail style, at that zoom level both must be narrow single-colour lines.

Google maps renders railways from z11, HERE map from z10, MapQuest and Humanitarian from z12, OSM mapnik de from z10, Stamen Toner from z14(!).

Railways are interesting but in that case placement of infrastructure is not the only important part - to get from point A to B using railway one anyway needs to check available connection.