Next stages of developing new road style are finished.

First changes all already present on OSM website as result clutter on mid zoom levels is now reduced (#1682, #1690 and #1676).

This version is the first one tested also for low zoom levels.

At the start of this preview of the new style I want to thanks everybody who offered feedback. Obviously, not every suggestion was implemented - but many were highly useful and some are used. Thanks to everybody! Special thanks to Paul Norman for simplified osm2pgsql database dump that allowed to test low zoom levels.

For start - rendering for osm.org/#map=10/50.8302/4.4769 both in current and the new style (note - missing data that is causing poor rendering of railways in Antwerp is now fixed).

… See full entry

“map styles: Default OSM vs Google Maps” included a comparison of OSM Default map and Google maps. Now I present a similar comparison at the same location. But now with a third version - current version of new potential road style.

From left: (1) with changes developed as part of road redesign (2) currently used rendering on the OSM website (3) Google maps

Maybe it would be a good idea to make landuse=residential darker on low zoom levels to better mark built-up areas, but overall I consider this change as a significant improvement.

Changes based on feedback:

Thanks to daganzdaanda for the idea of displaying highway=tertiary as a white line, wider than highway=residential/unclassified. As tertiary roads are no longer using yellow it made possible to display secondaries using this colour, what in turn allowed to move hue of primary toward yellow.

… See full entry

Render paved/unpaved

Rendering surface value should reduce prevalence of using highway=track for any unpaved road. Unfortunately currently this tagging for renderer is really popular.

There are various styles typically used to depict important low quality roads:

… See full entry

changes based on feedback (comments on diary and GitHub):

Reverted highway=footway, highway=path changes and restored currently used version. highway=motorway, highway=trunk rendering will be distinguishable. For oneway arrows old blue version also will be considered.

In addition feedback confirmed that it would be a good idea to: render motorway junction labels in red and rework widths of roads.

Example of the current rendering of pedestrian area (left - current rendering, right - proposed new rendering). highway=footway styling was rolled back, but highway=pedestrian/living_street is changed.

Request for a testing place

I am looking for a well mapped place where displaying highway=residential on z10/z11/z12 makes sense and is desirable. I am also looking for a place where rendering highway=unclassified at z10 is a good idea. According to my tests rendering these roads later improves situation, except places with badly mapped road types (highway=residential linking towns etc).

… See full entry

The first version of the road style is prepared. It is a work in progress and feedback is welcomed. I started work from designing z16 zoom level, currently I am expanding style to cover higher and lower zoom levels.

Current rendering (preview location from openstreetmap-carto readme)

… See full entry

Humanitarian map style is in some ways between current Default OSM style and Google maps style. It is not using so many colours for roads as openstreetmap-carto but still more than Google maps. The same may be said about how quickly minor roads are disappearing and some other choices unrelated to displaying roads.

As result Humanitarian style is also better at lower zoom levels than openstreetmap-carto - again mostly thanks to a subtler display of minor roads and not using all possible colours to display roads.

Not so wide roads also work better especially in areas with high road density.

It seems that main reason for really wide roads in a Default OSM style is to keep street labels within road area. But both Humanitarian and Google maps have labels sticking outside road areas and narrower roads what seems to work much better. Also in areas that are not so extreme.

… See full entry

Currently I am working on a GSoC project - improvement of styling of roads and paths in openstreetmap-carto, the default OSM map style.

I started from researching how other map styles are designed. I would welcome comments and feedback as it would allow to notice my biases. Feedback on general ideas will hopefully reduce amount of time needed to rework and tweak style that I will produce.

The first compared map style is probably the most popular one, used by Google maps.

At high zoom levels any OSM map is typically better than Google Maps as a result of more detailed and rich data. Quality of Google Maps is also decreased because one of its primary roles is to be used as a place to advertise businesses - what results in businesses appearing earlier than reasonable and leaving no place for more useful information.

But as one zooms out the situation is typically changing, with OSM rapidly losing - and the worst situation is in the cities, with roads as a major source of a problem.

For example, lets try with London.

First problems are noticeable at z16 - openstreetmap-carto has more information but is also less readable. The first road-related issue is that some oneway roads are without arrows (names are displayed instead making it one of many tradeoffs - not everything may be displayed).

z15 has much bigger problems for OSM - hierarchy of road importance is clearly more readable in Google maps. It is an effect of lower amount of displayed data and no using as many colours as possible in gmaps. openstreetmap-carto is using for displaying roads blue, green, orange, red, yellow and white. Google restricted palette to white, yellow and orange - what gives much better results.

… See full entry