|
Who/what and how often renders Open MapQuest base map? It's very pretty. Or maybe, as someone wrote, just looks more familiar to a North American user. Is it possible to add it as one of the choices for the base map at osm.org? |
|
The Open MapQuest tiles are rendered by the company MapQuest who are a subsidary of AOL. Since about a year they have increasingly started to use OpenStreetMap data and have brought a variety of different services out based on OpenStreetMap. The open tiles are one of those offerings ( http://devblog.mapquest.com/2010/07/09/mapquest-opens-up-uk/ ). The tiles are (as far as I know) rendered with the same technology (Mapnik) as the osm.org map, but uses a different style sheet, that was designed by MapQuest to look similar to their commercial map style. The style has been published and is available under an open license. The tiles are typically updated every 15 minutes from the latest OSM data and they should have sufficient server capacity. More information about it can probably be found in some of the blog posts on the MapQuest developer blog I think what you are saying is that if I implement my own tile server (I wasn't planning on it), I can use their style sheet to generate maps that look like theirs. Any way of using their style sheet or their tiles into osm.org? It's not guaranteed that anyone other than me would be in favor, I'm just curious if it's doable technically and license-wise. Thanks!
(15 Apr '11, 05:36)
ponzu
It's pretty straightforward to create your own slippy map page using OpenLayers, and then you can flip between the maps of interest. You'll need a local Apache server (one comes with OSGeo4Win) and take one of the OL examples as a starting point, and add MapQuest as a provider. I used this one: http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/spherical-mercator.html. It's particularly useful to flip between Bing & OSM at the same zoom level.
(15 Apr '11, 12:15)
SK53 ♦
2
It would be possible to add MapQuest tiles to osm.org. There is also a debate going on in one of OSMF's working groups to determine what the policy is for adding external tile layers to osm.org. So at sometime in the future MapQuest-Open tiles might show up on osm.org.
(15 Apr '11, 15:53)
apmon
Awesome. Thanks, all!
(15 Apr '11, 22:05)
ponzu
|
