Years ago Tomtom was bullied by microsoft on a patent regarding the use of extended file names on fat-based filesystems. Of course, a popular well-designed device running linux instead of windows CE at the time was not in ms' best interest. Tomtom stood by their position as much as they could and, as time passed, microsoft's bully behavior cooled out.
Congrats for your courage Tomtom! If I ever plan to buy a GPS or navigation device, I'll certainly consider your history.
Many of the red areas I see on the map, particularly in France, are fairly obviously where someone's been running a TomTom while on a train or a boat. Of course that's not going match OSM roads. I'm a little surprised this is not mentioned in the blog post - it seems a bit obvious.
>"As you can see above it’s a work in progress: MapMetrics flags, in red, Colorado ski areas and the Denver Airport. Neither of these are bad per se, but ski run and taxiway routing isn’t a thing yet! Over time, MapMetrics will filter these out to focus on just the roads."
It's great to see corporations contributing to OSM. There's only a couple top contenders for mapping data, and the best way to compete with them is to collaborate on a shared resource.
It's a complicated relationship, since companies often struggle with respecting community norms and the overall goals of the project, but I tend to agree.
It seems that the MapMetrics data mentioned either isn't available everywhere or (less likely) their site is being crushed. The data only loads for California and Colorado.
Here too, it seems to be available for western Netherlands, parts of northwest Flanders, all of France, California, Colorado, Albania (fewer trace density it seems though). Maybe they're still importing/processing? Calculating routes for all over the world is a lot of data processing.
There is also a layer named OSM202106 (the default is OSM202103) with even less coverage (e.g. not France), but covering all of the Netherlands rather than just a part of it and covering the USA east coast.
If I may be so bold, scrolling around the Netherlands and what is covered of Germany, it seems pretty useless.
- The resolution is so low, it's really hard to tell if there might be missing roads/routes or if this concerns water/rail.
- There are so many water/rail mistakes, there is red everywhere also in areas where I know every road in existence is on there. You have to evaluate each tile manually for all of the covered landmass.
- Just taking out air/rail/water might not solve the problem. Looking in residential areas with no water or rail nearby, there are still yellow tiles popping up at random with no indication as to why. Having the offending trace(s) would be really helpful here, but those are of course not shareable for privacy reasons. Perhaps short cutouts could be shared that are between 25 and 75% of the route (so not near the source or destination)? That would make it very clear if the person is on a bus (that obviously won't follow the shortest path in most cases) because the trace would go past the bus stops and often linger there, or if it was a cyclist for example.
As a frequent OSM contributor I love such initiatives and I'm very happy to see TomTom getting more involved. TomTom's map quality is so far behind OSM (globally), I was wondering who'd even still considering buying from them so it makes a lot of sense to combine forces instead. User data is the main advantage Google has over OSM, for both live traffic and purposes like these, so I'm very happy to see innovation here! I'll definitely be checking out updates to the site.
Looking at the places I'm familiar with, there's also a pattern of places like high traffic intersections (probably lots of people avoiding those?) and places with lots of foot/bike traffic, where people don't travel along the shortest path but along the most beautiful or the one with the slowest elevation change.
I guess there's lots of useful information for improving routing algorithms in the raw data. I too am skeptical about its usefulness for mapping.
This is cool data! ...however, I must ask --- where does the data come from?
HN certainly has a side that loves open-source data, but it also has a privacy-loving side. Focusing on the privacy aspects, has TomTom given any consideration to how it respects the privacy of its users/does it allow for opt-out of storing and analyzing its users' GPS traces?
Can anyone recommend good interface to OpenStreeMaps? I installed OsmAnd on my Android Radio (9" 720p) and find menu options/icons are too tiny (and too many) to operate while driving.
Can I suggest you also try DerStefan's OpenTopoMap, at opentopomap.org .
Also, through the GitHub based instructions from DerStefan, you can build your own maps (tiles). It is an job requiring equipment and time, but it can lead to amazing results (well above the maps you can find around).
Depends on the package you buy. I have a "lifetime subscription", so theoretically I'll never need to pay for an update.
...but then newer devices only work with newer versions of the service, for which you haven't got a lifetime subscription. Eventually, your old TomTom stops working and your subscription is now worthless so you have to buy a new one.
OpenStreetMap is a great product. It's such a shame that they've got licensing wrong. Now a lot of FAANG level companies can abuse it and sell free product with a bloat and trackers.
marcodiego|4 years ago
Congrats for your courage Tomtom! If I ever plan to buy a GPS or navigation device, I'll certainly consider your history.
alFReD-NSH|4 years ago
Very likely they use OpenStreetMaps to enrich their data and it's nice to see that they contribute back.
simonw|4 years ago
SteveCoast|4 years ago
Happy to answer any questions...
RicoElectrico|4 years ago
- provide OSM as a second option in their map products
- gradually switch over from proprietary data to OSM
- switch to OSM but only in select countries
- do something else entirely?
mongol|4 years ago
tinus_hn|4 years ago
tomfanning|4 years ago
Nrbelex|4 years ago
ocdtrekkie|4 years ago
detaro|4 years ago
dpcx|4 years ago
lucb1e|4 years ago
There is also a layer named OSM202106 (the default is OSM202103) with even less coverage (e.g. not France), but covering all of the Netherlands rather than just a part of it and covering the USA east coast.
jiehong|4 years ago
It also is quite low resolution in many areas, making it not super useful at the moment.
lucb1e|4 years ago
- The resolution is so low, it's really hard to tell if there might be missing roads/routes or if this concerns water/rail.
- There are so many water/rail mistakes, there is red everywhere also in areas where I know every road in existence is on there. You have to evaluate each tile manually for all of the covered landmass.
- Just taking out air/rail/water might not solve the problem. Looking in residential areas with no water or rail nearby, there are still yellow tiles popping up at random with no indication as to why. Having the offending trace(s) would be really helpful here, but those are of course not shareable for privacy reasons. Perhaps short cutouts could be shared that are between 25 and 75% of the route (so not near the source or destination)? That would make it very clear if the person is on a bus (that obviously won't follow the shortest path in most cases) because the trace would go past the bus stops and often linger there, or if it was a cyclist for example.
As a frequent OSM contributor I love such initiatives and I'm very happy to see TomTom getting more involved. TomTom's map quality is so far behind OSM (globally), I was wondering who'd even still considering buying from them so it makes a lot of sense to combine forces instead. User data is the main advantage Google has over OSM, for both live traffic and purposes like these, so I'm very happy to see innovation here! I'll definitely be checking out updates to the site.
wongarsu|4 years ago
I guess there's lots of useful information for improving routing algorithms in the raw data. I too am skeptical about its usefulness for mapping.
apnorton|4 years ago
HN certainly has a side that loves open-source data, but it also has a privacy-loving side. Focusing on the privacy aspects, has TomTom given any consideration to how it respects the privacy of its users/does it allow for opt-out of storing and analyzing its users' GPS traces?
antattack|4 years ago
mdp2021|4 years ago
I think you can find the apk at oruxmaps.com
> to OpenStreeMaps
Can I suggest you also try DerStefan's OpenTopoMap, at opentopomap.org .
Also, through the GitHub based instructions from DerStefan, you can build your own maps (tiles). It is an job requiring equipment and time, but it can lead to amazing results (well above the maps you can find around).
zaik|4 years ago
agumonkey|4 years ago
KingOfCoders|4 years ago
blowski|4 years ago
...but then newer devices only work with newer versions of the service, for which you haven't got a lifetime subscription. Eventually, your old TomTom stops working and your subscription is now worthless so you have to buy a new one.
svalee|4 years ago