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Hi. I am confused with and I don't understand the zoom levels' generation. More precisely - what are the criteria for objects (for example, area objects) to appear or disappear in the zoom levels. For illustration, access the link http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=6/50.345/-99.55 and so zoom out one step. Many large lakes will disappear while much smaller islands don't. If I repeat the experiment with other apps in the Slippymap (like the Cycle map, Transport map ...) I am getting even more confused. Even just pointing to some related documentation would be much appreciated. Thanks.

asked 04 Dec '13, 11:27

sanser's gravatar image

sanser
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accept rate: 5%


The features that show on each zoom level are controlled by the stylesheets. For example, the stylesheets controlling the "Standard" layer are found here:

https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto

The strange behaviour that you are seeing here is because lakes are only shown from zoom 6. The lower zoom levels (0-5) only show water defined by coastlines. But here one lake has been mapped as a coastline, and the other as a lake (with natural=water tags), which is why one disappears and the other doesn't.

In future, I would expect the zoom 5 to take into account very large lakes, but that's not something that's likely to happen soon. As for the tagging, it's important that people stop tagging large lakes with natural=coastline since that's incorrect.

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answered 04 Dec '13, 13:19

Andy%20Allan's gravatar image

Andy Allan
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question asked: 04 Dec '13, 11:27

question was seen: 2,530 times

last updated: 04 Dec '13, 13:19

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum