It seems pretty clear that street-level imaging on OSM is pretty lacking, unless you only want to see highways.
I’m looking to start mapping street-level images for my city, but it seems like there are three players (integrated in the OSM editor), and I don’t know which to commit to:
-KartaView
-Mapillary
-mapilio
My gut is to go with the one with the largest user base (Mapillary), but they are owned by Facebook and who knows what direction they will take in the future or what our images will actually be used for in the long-run.
Karta seems dead.
And Mapilio seems like a knock-off of Mapillary, but with a much smaller user base and an uncertain future.
Are any worth investing hundreds of hours of time to?
Presumably this is meant to avoid using Google Streetmaps? The concept of using something Facebook/Meta-owned instead of Google makes no sense to me in this context since Google is okay in terms of quality and shares all the major downsides with Facebook/Meta.
It’s about the licensing (I believe). Google doesn’t allow you to use their images for other mapping services, while the other ones do.
That’s why I’d like to at least make these images available to other mappers.
On a privacy front, both are horrible companies. LOL
Google Maps: you have to pay to use their images
Mapillary: sure it’s Facebook BUT all the images are just regular CC-BY-SA license… so you can do the normal CC-BY-SA things you want with them… including downloading them and hosting them somewhere else even.
Sure Facebook is evil, but in this department that’s not a problem…One big benefit of having street-level images is that it makes mapping much easier. In terms of company ownership, yeah they’re both not great companies. However, I’d rather have two evil companies competing than one evil company with a monopoly.
And keep in mind: it’s two evil companies BUT the images they’re hosting are all CC-BY-SA licensed. So you can do a bunch of things with them and none of those companies can/will stop you.
I think this is different from the usual “big evil company bad, locking users in” mentality that we have around a lot of things like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc…
Atleast here the ‘content’ is open and available to use.
(I still think it’s good to have our own servers, fyi)
@Showroom7561 You could add the emerging #GeoVisio / #Panoramax to the alternatives to Mapillary, KartaView, and Mapillio: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GeoVisio.
Looks interesting, but it’s not baked into OSM, so the usefulness for mappers would be severely limited.
*yet
it’s being developed by OSM FR. So it’s DEF going to get implemented into osm tools down the lines. Geovisio is pretty barebones atm.
But the idea is similar to lemmy and mastodon and other federated services. Instead of having one giant server like mapillary, each community can have it’s own server and in the future they could federate together.it’s being developed by OSM FR
We’ll, that certainly changes things! Looks like I’ll be keeping an eye on the project after all 😀
None of them is “baked into” OSM, they are available in the iD editor, which is currently the default editor on the openstreetmap.org website.
- You can access the OpenStreetMap database in a lot other ways not just via the main website
- You can edit the OpenStreetMap database with a lot of other programs, not just the default iD, via the main website. Me personally rarely edit there (JOSM ftw!), so it was a bit confusing you call it “baked into”.
Don’t forget, OSM is a geographic database, not a direct competitor to services like Google Maps.
Yes, what I mean is that the default editor has these street-level services already there for mappers to use, so they have an advantage.
Mapillary, for example, is also the only street-level option in OSMAND, so even users who aren’t mapping can use the data easily.
So, if I were to commit to a service to add data to, I would want it to be the one that would get the most user exposure by default.
“Baked-in” might not have been the best way to describe it, but if it’s available in the default editor, then it narrows down my options.
I like Mapilio. However the main drawback for me is the OSM ID editor integration isn’t as good as Mapillary and its AI detection of bicycle parking isn’t as good either. But it’s early on and they’re still working very well overall so it’s worth it for me.
- in Mapilio’s defense, they only launched their integration this month. It might take some time to get up to the same level
- Mapillary had a whole system for verifying AI detections but that went away when Meta took over and basically forced Mapillary to revamp their entire server infra.
The tool still exists but doesn’t work because it would have to be modified to use the new api.
(I’m in contact with Mapillary’s people with a potential solution)
I used to upload photos to Mapillary, but after takeover by FB I deleten my account.Now I still haven’t found reliable option to upload street images.
i mean I get… but… the images are still CC-BY-SA, if anything: since the met takeover you’re allowed to use the images commercially without any license. That wasn’t the case before.
i’m not pro meta. But I don’t think they’re doing anything evil in this department…
You can always do more than one… There is a blo post about someone who mapped their entire town. Took them some time to do it. They uploaded to Mapillary and another, don’t remember which.
@bbbhltz Are you maybe referring to this blog post about capturing all the streets of Brussels in 360° pictures?
https://openstreetmap.be/en/2023/07/23/stéphane-streetview-brussels.html
YES and https://panoramax.fr/ is the other imagery website I was trying to remember! Awesome.
