Offline vector maps for whole country including altitude lines

[fuggi]

Hello everybody,
I've been looking for a vector map of whole Germany (first problem) which contains altitude lines (second problem) for some days now. On the one hand, there are only maps for each state what is quite unhandy keeping in mind that Germany's states are very small. And with respect to foreign countries (e.g. France) it might also be quite confusing if one doesn't know their states. On the other hand, I couldn't find respective maps containing altitude lines.
Anyway, I already tried to create my own complete vector map of Germany including altitude lines on the basis of an OSM map file (http://download.geofabrik.de/osm/europe/germany.osm.pbf) using the OsmAnd Map Creator, but it always crashes while importing the file when it is pre-indexing the POI and address data. Unfortunately, the error message box shows no error message. Only its title reads something like "Error in thread 4".

Any help is appreciated!

Best regards,
fuggi

[fuggi]

I forgot to mention:
I tried to download http://download.osmand.net/download.php?file=Germany_europe_srtm_elevation_contour_lines_1.obf.zip and http://download.osmand.net/download.php?file=Germany_europe_srtm_elevation_contour_lines_2.obf.zip which are listed in the OsmAnd Local Indexes List on http://download.osmand.net/rawindexes/, but both files are not available.

I would definitely prefer only offline accessible vector data.

Regards,
fuggi

[Victor Shcherb]

The download of them is possible only from osmand.

2012/6/20 fuggi <webm...@w-mf.de>

[fuggi]

Yes, I tried it. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve any of the mentioned problems as nothing is being shown when I activate this map.

Regards,
fuggi

Am Mittwoch, 20. Juni 2012 13:39:47 UTC+2 schrieb Victor:

The download of them is possible only from osmand.

2012/6/20 fuggi

I forgot to mention:

[Pavol Zibrita]

Can you check without and with native rendering?

You can switch it on/off in settings.

Best regards,

Pavol

[Shorty66]

You can use the "Inspector.bat" to combine the single state maps into one. Just merge the srtm-map to get altitude lines.

[Shorty66]

I would like whole country maps as the default download better though.

[Hardy]

Hello fuggi,

Please try the following procedure, and let me know if it does not
work:
(1) (In Osmand Offline Data Manager) load Germany's state maps as
needed (Please note that Germany has a lot of OSM data, so combining
them all into one file may be a file-size or performance issue ...)
(2) In _addition_, you need to load the
Germany_euorope_srtm_elevation_contour_lines file, also in Offlin data
manger (it contains _only_ the contour lines)
(3) In Osmand's settings, you need to select a minimum zoom level (e.g.
11) to display the contour lines, under Settings / Map settings / Show
contour lines (under Plugin 'Manger, 'Advanced Settings' need to be
activated to see this)

Thx, Hardy

[fuggi]

@ Pavol:
Unfortunately, disabling native rendering had no effect. However, Hardy found the problem as you can see below.

@Shorty66:
Ok, inspector.bat would be an option. Thanks for the hint! But I totally agree with you that whole country maps as default downloads would be much better (user-friendly), because using inspector.bat to merge maps is far too impractical for regular users.

@Hardy:
Step #3 in your list did the trick. Thanks! I wasn't aware of that before. So, at least I can see the altitude contour lines now.
But I do not agree with your opinion mentioned in step #1. On the one hand, I have got a cheap smartphone which is more than one year old and with all state maps and the altitude lines maps loaded I do not notice a significant performance drop. On the other hand, a 8 GB SD-card costs less than 10€ and would be enough to hold complete country maps of several countries. Hence, I think neither file-size nor performance are good reasons for this significant draw-back in user-friendliness.

Thank you all again for your quick answers! From my point of view, you should provide complete country maps in order to win more users.

Best regards,
fuggi

Am Mittwoch, 20. Juni 2012 14:38:13 UTC+2 schrieb Pavol Zibrita:

Can you check without and with native rendering?

You can switch it on/off in settings.

Best regards,

Pavol

[Manfred]

Hallo fuggi!

Und warum soll ich meine SD-Karte mit Dingen füllen, die ich nicht
brauche?
Mich interessiert Baden-Württhemberg und Bayern, der Rest Deutschlands
ist mir egal.
Früher gab es sogar die srtm-files pro Bundesland.

DAS war benutzerfreundlich!

Wenn du ganz Deutschland willst, dann kannst du das ganz einfach
erreichen, indem du beim Herunterladen 17 Häkchen setzt.
Dir scheint das aber zu viel Arbeit zu sein, und deshalb willst du
allen, die nur Teile der Deutschlandkarte brauchen, die ganze aufs
Auge drücken.
Halte ich für sehr kurzsichtig.

Gruß
Manfred

> >>>> I tried to downloadhttp://download.osmand.net/**
> >>>> download.php?file=Germany_**europe_srtm_elevation_contour_**
> >>>> lines_1.obf.zip<http://download.osmand.net/download.php?file=Germany_europe_srtm_elev...>and
> >>>>http://download.osmand.net/**download.php?file=Germany_**
> >>>> europe_srtm_elevation_contour_**lines_2.obf.zip<http://download.osmand.net/download.php?file=Germany_europe_srtm_elev...>which are listed in the OsmAnd Local Indexes List on
> >>>>http://download.osmand.net/**rawindexes/<http://download.osmand.net/rawindexes/>,

[Hardy]

Have you tried this:
Settings -> Offline Data -> Download -> in filter type "germany" ->
Menu button -> Select all ->Click Download button.

What's the big issue?´ :-)

By the way: Extra large files do not just fill your SD-card, but also
your memory - and may adversely effect how the app behaves, and if you
still have enough RAM to calculate a route at all. That is why we
introduced the concept of selectively "deactivatiing" maps, which
"parks" them in a different folder and makes them invisible while they
can quickly be re-activated any time.

But rather than arguing: Maybe someone simply wants to try to produce
the super-duper file (should be in excess of 1,5GB) and try it in
everyday use and report here?

Thx - Hardy

[fuggi]

@Manfred and Hardy:
Because you get card space for peanuts and the benefit for regular users is enormous. The cost-benefit ratio is perfect. Any foreigner traveling through a country does not think about which states he needs to download, but just wants the country map and be done with it. I mean, there seem to be good reasons why any other software provides complete country maps - except OsmAnd.

Anyway, if you really think that your way is user-friendly (which it isn't, but resource saving at most), why will you not provide both: state maps and complete country maps and compare the download numbers after half a year or so? Oh, just saw that Hard suggested this, too. So, go for it.

Best regards,
fuggi

Am Donnerstag, 21. Juni 2012 14:27:49 UTC+2 schrieb Manfred:

Hallo fuggi!

Und warum soll ich meine SD-Karte mit Dingen füllen, die ich nicht
brauche?
Mich interessiert Baden-Württhemberg und Bayern, der Rest Deutschlands
ist mir egal.
Früher gab es sogar die srtm-files pro Bundesland.

DAS war benutzerfreundlich!

Wenn du ganz Deutschland willst, dann kannst du das ganz einfach
erreichen, indem du beim Herunterladen 17 Häkchen setzt.
Dir scheint das aber zu viel Arbeit zu sein, und deshalb willst du
allen, die nur Teile der Deutschlandkarte brauchen, die ganze aufs
Auge drücken.
Halte ich für sehr kurzsichtig.

Gruß
Manfred

[Victor Shcherb]

There is a big problem with big maps and we should stay away from it. If can make device prepared and with 2GB of whole Germany, it would be a different story. Anyway we have a format so we can combine as many maps as we want and keep same performance (I hope). 

The reasons why we don't do it :

1. Some parts of map are more frequently updated than others (your local area or destination area).

2. It is easy to generate and to replace. Also our server can afford parts much easier than one big country.

3. Some parts are very stable (like SRTM data) and some parts so big (like SRTM) so user can select what he really wants to download. 

If you are downloading from mobile internet (that happens) it is a huge difference.

There are drawbacks but different than you mentionned : 

1. Address search is not unified.

2. It is hard to guess what area you want to download (if the country consists of regions) if you know only destination place.

Victor

2012/6/21 fuggi <webm...@w-mf.de>

[fuggi]

@Victor: Please find my comments below.

Am Donnerstag, 21. Juni 2012 22:53:15 UTC+2 schrieb Victor:

There is a big problem with big maps and we should stay away from it.

Which one?
 

If can make device prepared and with 2GB of whole Germany, it would be a different story.

So why is any other software manufacturer providing such files for Android?
 

Anyway we have a format so we can combine as many maps as we want and keep same performance (I hope). 

The reasons why we don't do it :

1. Some parts of map are more frequently updated than others (your local area or destination area).

2. It is easy to generate and to replace. Also our server can afford parts much easier than one big country.

3. Some parts are very stable (like SRTM data) and some parts so big (like SRTM) so user can select what he really wants to download. 

If I understood correctly, what you are basically saying is in all three points that it costs money in terms of resources. You could provide these large files to OsmAnd+ users only (and maybe raise the price for it a little).

If you are downloading from mobile internet (that happens) it is a huge difference.

I'm afraid I do not agree.
 

There are drawbacks but different than you mentionned : 

1. Address search is not unified.

Ok, that's one more.
 

2. It is hard to guess what area you want to download (if the country consists of regions) if you know only destination place.

That's basically what I mentioned already.
 

Victor

2012/6/21 fuggi

[Yves]

There is also other technical issues not osmand-related with large files.
Next generatiom srtm files must be smaller than 1gb for me to generate them on a 16gb ram PC (osm xml creation step).
In some cases, countries or regions will be cut in quarters NE, NW, SE, SW.

And a 2gb file is a big file. Storage is cheap, but transfer is long, even with WIFI.

Fuggi, have you tried generating obf files for Germany, for instance?
Yves

fuggi <webm...@w-mf.de> a écrit :

[Gints Polis]

I think there is nice workarond for this. Make map as small peaces but give option to see it as one peace for country. If user select Germany all peaces get downloaded.

[Gints Polis]

fuggi you can also make your Germany.obf file and put it in market for reasonable price :)

No lincencsing issues there right?

Gints

2012/6/22 Gints Polis <polis...@gmail.com>

--
Ginc

[Shorty66]

In my point of view, the best option would be, to have whole-coutry maps for only parts of the vectordata.

I mean, if you could save all the roads and adresses in one map, and have the building-groundlines in another you would get a lot smaller maps.
That way, you could easily save each map for the whole country and still update some maps more often than others. After all, there are some map features which dont get updated that often (forests, lakes, ...) and others which might need an update every month. I dont think, that the difference in update frequency between the regions is that big - at the moment, you will need to update each region about as often as the others.

This could also make rendering faster, or at least more user specific, as the user could decide which features are rendered first, if at all.

I think that feature-specific maps of the whole country are a lot better option than fully featured region maps.

[andre van atten]

+3
Adress index and roads/path map  in first file , POI index in first or second file, topo in next and contour lines apart .

Andre

Op 23 jun. 2012 16:41 schreef "Shorty66" <chris...@googlemail.com> het volgende:

[fuggi]

@ Shorty66 and Andre.oid:
Yes, this sounds great. Purpose-specific maps for whole countries which are still relatively small, because they do not contain all element categories. Like maps for car navigation which contain only road, address, and POI indexes. I guess that would help a lot users. Particularly as long distances can be covered by car.

Am Samstag, 23. Juni 2012 16:41:03 UTC+2 schrieb Shorty66:

In my point of view, the best option would be, to have whole-coutry maps for only parts of the vectordata.

I mean, if you could save all the roads and adresses in one map, and have the building-groundlines in another you would get a lot smaller maps.
That way, you could easily save each map for the whole country and still update some maps more often than others. After all, there are some map features which dont get updated that often (forests, lakes, ...) and others which might need an update every month. I dont think, that the difference in update frequency between the regions is that big - at the moment, you will need to update each region about as often as the others.

This could also make rendering faster, or at least more user specific, as the user could decide which features are rendered first, if at all.

I think that feature-specific maps of the whole country are a lot better option than fully featured region maps.

Am Freitag, 22. Juni 2012 07:43:00 UTC+2 schrieb gints:

fuggi you can also make your Germany.obf file and put it in market for reasonable price :)

No lincencsing issues there right?

Gints

2012/6/22 Gints Polis

I think there is nice workarond for this. Make map as small peaces but give option to see it as one peace for country. If user select Germany all peaces get downloaded.

2012. gada 22. jūn. 03:11 "Yves" rakstīja:

There is also other technical issues not osmand-related with large files.
Next generatiom srtm files must be smaller than 1gb for me to generate them on a 16gb ram PC (osm xml creation step).
In some cases, countries or regions will be cut in quarters NE, NW, SE, SW.

And a 2gb file is a big file. Storage is cheap, but transfer is long, even with WIFI.

Fuggi, have you tried generating obf files for Germany, for instance?
Yves

fuggi a écrit :

--
Ginc

[David White]

Le 24/06/2012 13:54, fuggi a écrit :
> @ Shorty66 and Andre.oid:
> Yes, this sounds great. Purpose-specific maps for whole countries
> which are still relatively small, because they do not contain all
> element categories. Like maps for car navigation which contain only
> road, address, and POI indexes. I guess that would help a lot users.
> Particularly as long distances can be covered by car.
>

Ahem, didn't we have separate files for POIs a bit more than a year ago
when they got merged?

David

[Victor Shcherb]

Yes we did, it was terrible maintenance by the way :) If you think of size of the files 75% is map data! So I think everyone who download 75Mb will accept to download 25Mb more and get everything on board. However now routing data is kept separate (which allows us to calculate routes by the way)  but it also occupies space.

I think I have great idea (but few people on that forum will apreciate it ;)) exclude Map data. It sounds strange but for routing it is not needed ;)  Data in routing chunk is enough to render routes, POI - nice to have when you are searching hotel/bar/..., Address is needed to find place.

:)

2012/6/24 David White <dgkw...@gmail.com>

[Manfred]

What shall we do with the drunken sailors (plural !)
;-)

In German such ideas are called "Schapsidee" (liquor ideas)

Regards
Manfred

On 25 Jun., 00:03, Victor Shcherb <victor.shch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes we did, it was terrible maintenance by the way :) If you think of size
> of the files 75% is map data! So I think everyone who download 75Mb will
> accept to download 25Mb more and get everything on board. However now
> routing data is kept separate (which allows us to calculate routes by the
> way)  but it also occupies space.
>
> I think I have great idea (but few people on that forum will apreciate it
> ;)) exclude Map data. It sounds strange but for routing it is not needed ;)
>  Data in routing chunk is enough to render routes, POI - nice to have when
> you are searching hotel/bar/..., Address is needed to find place.
>
> :)
>

> 2012/6/24 David White <dgkwh...@gmail.com>

[Victor Shcherb]

:) Actually that idea was before. I've heard from many people that rendering is too slow for routing, my answer was - well you see much details. And you will be surprised : some people don't these details for navigation (that's true because many details you can't detect something  quickly as well). So basically different type of roads (bridge/tunnel) and road barriers is more than enough. 

Of course you are loosing beauty : field, forest, rivers, buildings... . You know it is a compromise :) I think I definitely do it sometime in future because it will be blazing fast. 

Victor

2012/6/25 Manfred <alfman....@gmail.com>

[Shorty66]

What we did have was seperate map, poi, address and transport data.
Of course map data accounts for most of the size.

My point was to seperate useful map data (mainly streets) from less useful data (buildings, lakes, forests, location icons...).
In Cities, buildings account for about as much data as the streets. In landscapes, forests and other landmarks account for a lot of data. I would be suprised, if streets alone would take up more than 50% of the file size.
You could save even more space, if you would seperate streets by size: Have only streets suitable for cars, no bicycle or pedestrian ways, in one file. Add address and routing data to that file and you have all you need for car navigation.
Have smaller paths, buildings, lakes, and so on in another file.

Just put together what is used for a certain task. For car navigation, you just dont NEED to have the buildings. But you need to be able to navigate from one region to another.


Ps: Manfred, you might be to simple minded for this topic.

[Pavol Zibrita]

Wasn't for that the renderer xml file?

Best regards,

Pavol

[Shorty66]

Its not about HIDING information, but saving space. Have smalle files to download.
If you just turn of the rendering, you still have to have the whole file.

If you make seperate files for seperate tasks you can have whole-country-files and still dont get too large files.

[Victor Shcherb]

Pavol : probably mean rendering_types.xml and that's right. So user can do it. But back to my mind no one even try to investigate how much we can win dropping forest or lakes .... 

I think a raw simplification can be done because roads are simply necessary without roads you don't have a map at all (except seamaps) :) So splitting them into 2 is good representative idea. If you think files are 2 fat and lazy, try out only roads and feel the difference. However the idea is incubator :)

Render.xml can speed up rendering if you omit too much details but still will be performance lack comparing to small files.

Victor

2012/6/25 Shorty66 <chris...@googlemail.com>

[Manfred]

Hi Shorty

One of us seems to be ;-)

Regards
Manfred

P.S.: The smallest files are those with no content.

> > 2012/6/24 David White <dgkwh...@gmail.com>

[Webmaster of W-MF]

I agree, whole-country maps for certain tasks like car navigation could be appropriate for the average user and would probably be small enough as long as only relevant data is included. I loaded 1 GB of state maps and was still able to let a short route be calculated. However, rendering such files manually isn't user-friendly at all and by no means something the regular user should be bothered with.

Nevertheless, I think this should only be an interim solution until OsmAnd is able to handle memory space efficiently. After all other navigation apps on Android (not using OSM maps) can handle large whole-country map files and calculate long distance routes. Which is definitely the most user-friendly way meaning as less user activity as possible is required.

Am 25.06.2012 17:40, schrieb Shorty66:

What we did have was seperate map, poi, address and transport data.
Of course map data accounts for most of the size.

My point was to seperate useful map data (mainly streets) from less useful data (buildings, lakes, forests, location icons...).
In Cities, buildings account for about as much data as the streets. In landscapes, forests and other landmarks account for a lot of data. I would be suprised, if streets alone would take up more than 50% of the file size.
You could save even more space, if you would seperate streets by size: Have only streets suitable for cars, no bicycle or pedestrian ways, in one file. Add address and routing data to that file and you have all you need for car navigation.
Have smaller paths, buildings, lakes, and so on in another file.

Just put together what is used for a certain task. For car navigation, you just dont NEED to have the buildings. But you need to be able to navigate from one region to another.


Ps: Manfred, you might be to simple minded for this topic.


Am Montag, 25. Juni 2012 00:03:34 UTC+2 schrieb Victor:

Yes we did, it was terrible maintenance by the way :) If you think of size of the files 75% is map data! So I think everyone who download 75Mb will accept to download 25Mb more and get everything on board. However now routing data is kept separate (which allows us to calculate routes by the way)  but it also occupies space.

I think I have great idea (but few people on that forum will apreciate it ;)) exclude Map data. It sounds strange but for routing it is not needed ;)  Data in routing chunk is enough to render routes, POI - nice to have when you are searching hotel/bar/..., Address is needed to find place.

:)

2012/6/24 David White

Le 24/06/2012 13:54, fuggi a écrit :

[kaka]

How can i display offline map in OSMand , i have already downloaded offline map country.obf file but it's not rendering the offline map.

Can you please let me know what is the issue?

[Sebastian Spaeth]

Am Montag, 25. Juni 2012 19:59:59 UTC+2 schrieb Victor:

Pavol : probably mean rendering_types.xml and that's right. So user can do it. But back to my mind no one even try to investigate how much we can win dropping forest or lakes .... 

How much simplification of ways is being done at map creation time? I have just audited my local area, and pedants have redrawn private swimming pools that are 2 meters in diameter with +30 nodes. Not to speak of simple circular roundabouts that were drawn using 50 nodes. Houses that had every balcony modeled... etc...

I have the feeling that if we applied a simplification mechanism (drop nodes if they are not interesting and don't change the overal shape too much, e.g. JOSM has such a tool), we could potentially save plenty of space without loosing interesting information.

spaetz

[Webmaster W-MF]

Very good point!

[Stephan75]

Hey kaka,

it would be nice if you give us more information about the things you
have done before to load and display offline maps and what kind of
settings you have selected inside Osmand app.

Have you already downloaded the World Basemap as an *.obf file? If
yes: does it show?

What obf file have you already downloaded from inside Osmand?

What is displayed if you choose the search function of Osmand for POI
or adresses?

Stephan

[Victor Shcherb]

To not go that discussion very deep. We do 2 kind of simplification :

1) Douglas-Peuker algorithm

2) Cutting coordinates precision, we use 1m precision if I'm not mistaken.

Of course for base levels we do very strict cuts.

In new maps we use Douglas-Peuker algorithm on all levels and also handling geometry quite good.

If you zoom in such areas you will see how it looks like

Best Regards,

Victor

2012/9/10 Stephan75 <der.steph...@googlemail.com>

[Narendra Singh]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 1:26 AM, Stephan75 <der.steph...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hey kaka,

it would be nice if you give us more information about the things you
have done before to load and display offline maps and what kind of
settings you have selected inside Osmand app.

Have you already downloaded the World Basemap as an *.obf file? If
yes: does it show?

Yes i have downloaded but not showing.

What obf file have you already downloaded from inside Osmand?

India_asia.obf

What is displayed if you choose the search function of Osmand for POI
or adresses?

Only Map
Stephan

 

On 8 Sep., 07:08, kaka <nasi...@enbake.com> wrote:
> How can i display offline map in OSMand , i have already downloaded offline
> map country.obf file but it's not rendering the offline map.
> Can you please let me know what is the issue?

--

---

Regards,

Narendra Singh Rajpoot

Software Engineer. 
Enbake Consulting Pvt. Ltd.

enbake.com
Mobile: +91 988-887-6361.

Phone No.+91 176-253-1306.

[Sebastian Spaeth]

Am Montag, 10. September 2012 22:17:31 UTC+2 schrieb Victor:

To not go that discussion very deep. We do 2 kind of simplification :

1) Douglas-Peuker algorithm

2) Cutting coordinates precision, we use 1m precision if I'm not mistaken.

Thank you, that were very helpful pointers.

Sebastian