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How come, that Düsseldorf, Germany, (capital of North-Rhine-Westfalia, 690,000 inhabitants) ist only visible after three Zooms, but minor cities in NRW like Remscheid or Mönchengladbach or Wuppertal are already there? Wie kommt's, dass Düsseldorf als Hauptstadt von NRW mit 690.000 Einwohnern erst ab der dritten Zoomstufe suchtbar ist, während kleinere Städte Remscheid oder Mönchengladbach oder Wuppertal sofort zu sehen sind?

asked 20 Jul '14, 22:53

D%C3%A4%20Chronist's gravatar image

Dä Chronist
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accept rate: 0%


Essentially the effect you are seeing is just coincidence.

The "standard" map style relies purely on the builtin label placement algorithm in the renderer and does not take relative importance in to account (may this be population or other metric). In other words if the renderer runs out of space placing the labels (given the large number of cities in the area around Düsseldorf this is guaranteed to happen at certain zoom levels) some of the labels will be dropped.

There is an ongoing discussion on improving this behaviour by taking some kind of further data in to account, however this has not come to a conclusion yet. Mainly because this is not a simple question and a single metric, for example population, is not enough to solve the problem.

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answered 21 Jul '14, 07:49

SimonPoole's gravatar image

SimonPoole ♦
44.7k13326701
accept rate: 18%

edited 21 Jul '14, 10:31

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question asked: 20 Jul '14, 22:53

question was seen: 2,239 times

last updated: 21 Jul '14, 10:31

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