Holy shit im impressed by this project! Vela is degoogled gmaps, like newpipe is an alternative for youtube. Mighty impressive what they have done so far, seems like a new project, keeping my eyes on this one!
Edit: lts ofc entirely AI generated…
Yeah, but so far I haven’t had to provide any information to it whatsoever other than location access. For finding businesses and stuff like that, great stuff.
If you use live traffic re-checks, it pings google every few minutes, providing your updated position. And when it’s off, I think it still sends Google your initial position and route? But I’m not sure that can be turned off completely.
Yeah, it pings Google for almost all of it. But for a quick “where is X store” and traffic if, for example, going to the airport and my wife made us late (it never happens, it’s just an example 😏), I’m not too concerned. I have been using OSMAnd+ exclusively for a few years now, but this is something very useful for my needs.
I’m guessing that, since I’m on GrapheneOS, there’s not much, if anything at all, that they can tie to my person.
What’s the difference between Openstreetmap and Graphene’s geocoder? I have the later, i think it’s the default.
And yeah, ditto for me, I’ve been using comaps until now, but being able to search shops without resorting to the full invasion of gmaps is neat indeed.
The GraoheneOS one is a reimplementation of the stock Google play service, while OSM is entirely community driven. I chose OSM in my phone for that, but in all honesty, you should be fine using GrapheneOS’s all the same.
This is fucking gold. Thank you so much.
Paper map?
Comaps works well for me. If it’s not comprehensive enough, contribute! OSM is crowd-sourced.
I’ve tried several over the past few weeks. There aren’t any that can even do the basic job of mapping from point a to b consistently for some reason. Mapquest came the closest, but 3 issues.
- It won’t stay in landscape mode unless I put my tablet on Dex
- It often can’t find addresses based on business names, and sometimes not at all.
- It doesn’t have wide enough categories to find a good amount of places if you don’t know the address or name of what you’re wanting
I like the interface, it looks nice, but it’s missing key map things, that should be the basics over things like a unicorn icon, which is cute, but useless.
That can be a good strategy, and please, if you can, once you find a place in GMapsWV that isn’t on OSM, add it to OSM so the map becomes better for everyone and we soon won’t need GMapsWV.
Thanks for the recommendation for GMapsWV. I didn’t know about that, and have always felt very uncomfortable when using Google Maps to find restaurants and such that aren’t always listed in OSM.
I had this talk with a friend the other week, but I can’t recommend enough that if something OSM based isn’t showing correctly, you can always add it in once you find the right answer. For example, if it doesn’t have hours listed for a business, I’ll go to their website and copy that data in, or if the address doesn’t show up right, I’ll edit the building with the correct address. I found the other day that the address for my apartment was listed over a garage up the street instead of my building and I just removed the one and added in the other.
I completely fixed my neighborhood of 800 homes. took me a week. I drew in the house shapes and the heights, turned the row home blocks into individual linked blocks with exact addresses and accurate sidewalks.
I’ve never added in height before. Does it just look for number of stories, or how did you find that info?
When you make an area->structure in osm, you can add it in the height meta in meters.
When an app uses the OSM data to draw a 3d structure, it can use your height data. (and most appear to)
I meant more how did you find the height of the structures? Is it listed in a property database somewhere or are all the houses roughly the size of yours so you just used that as a base?
I live in a neighborhood with 3 house styles; each has a fixed number of floors. The townhomes all have 8’ ceilings, a basement, 1st, a second floor, and an attic or loft. All basements are walkout so i count them. I-joists are about 18 inches. So the townhomes are ~ 11 meters.
The single family are basement, 1st, and second, with 10" main floor and 8" second floor, then they have 16’ attics, which puts them ~ 13m
The apartment complex has 5 fixed floors. It was trickier because I don’t know the internal structure, nor the height of the decorative crowns, so I took a Google Earth look at the side of the building, drew a 45-degree line down from the top, and measured the bottom of the triangle
It’s also better if you know how to get there, its directions are typically very poorly optimized (although you’ll get there eventually).
Trying to learn, what is the advantage of GMapsVW versus opening Google Maps in a mobile browser?
Quoting their github page
- Clears private data on close
- Blocks access to Google trackers and other third-party resources
- Restricts all network requests to HTTPS
- Allows toggling of location permission
I use CoMaps and Vela Maps.
I can never find anything on OSM based maps by themselves. My current method is to search via the Apple Maps web beta then use geoshare to copy the location to CoMaps for turn-by-turn. I have magic earth installed as a fallback if I have problems with comaps.
Oh wow that’s an excellent app, now I don’t have to suffer when friends send me google links
No. Most aren’t able to do basic navigation to addresses of people. I’d like it to be different but for me CoMaps and the other ones aren’t useful (yet)
I’ve generally been able to with Organic Maps. If the street address won’t get me exactly to them, I’ll add a mark right at their place on the map and route to that. That almost always works.
Probably because the area youre in is not mapped out, however the routing engine is pretty much on par with the ones by Garmin and others
Roads work but I do prefer entering a destination instead of going to a city and then having to figure out where the street and streetnumber are.
Especially since I only use navigation if i don’t already know where something is.
I’m not sure how it stacks up with the rest, but for web: https://mapcarta.com/
“Explore the globe with Mapcarta—the open map that unites the world through the collective knowledge of OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other open projects.”
I love Osmand+. it’s so much more than just google maps. it also has public transport, but it’s in beta state right now.
good or better then google maps, no, they’re are a trillion $ company with major resoirces
I use OSMAnd+ its a little bit shit but ot gets me by. I also edit a little bit of Open Street maps in my area to help
This right here; if I can ever manage to get my transmission fixed, I can start recording my DoorDash trips, again. OSM is painfully lacking info in my city.
Time to get some oil on your hands!
Err probably not. But what transmission and what are the issues you’re having? Might be something much simpler than you think
CoMaps, which uses OpenStreetMap. StreetComplete gamifies adding data to OpenStreetMap.
Sometimes Magic Earth.The only time i use google is when i want street view.
Cartes is probably the closest thing that I’ve found (besides Apple Maps or Bing Maps).
- You can share links with anyone, and they don’t need a particular app to open it.
- The interface will be familiar to Google maps users.
- It supports leaving reviews for locations.
- It will pull up Wikipedia information and photos if any have been uploaded to Wikimedia or Panoramax.
- It’s really good for public transit routing.
- It’s okay for planning driving routes, but for turn by turn directions you’ll want to use CoMaps (which Cartes has a link to open up the route there).
Is this web based only or is there a android app, can’t seem to find it on any app store.
Omg why haven’t I heard of that one before ???
Thanks it sounds really good
Looks great but the lack of mobile app is a deal breaker :/
Why the fuck did we ever start using links for places?? We already had a decent universal system: COORDINATES!
Interesting. I really need one that does public transit.
Funny how this one has random snippets of French in the UI.
It’s a French project, I guess it’s translated in French before English. Non-English speakers are used to seeing snippets of English in translated UIs but I understand the other way around is unusual
Clearly the French have their priorities straight.
Croissants clearly need to be before any meager restaurant or coffee shop.
I read enough French that I didn’t notice at first, but then I was like “wait that said ride for 2 arrêtes…”, and chuckled.
They are still looking for translators if you have some time available. They are on codeberg
