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Hello there, looking at a region in a higher scale, many features have no name shown. Only zooming in a lot, thereby loosing any overview, the names appear. How can I make OSM make location names appear already in higher scales, i.e. less zoomed in? In case this is not possible, how can I file a feature request? thx...

asked 05 Oct '21, 19:47

d_le_nen's gravatar image

d_le_nen
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Can you give a link to an area where you're seeing this and some examples of the features? That would allow others to determine whether the features themselves haven't been mapped appropriately, whether things are working as designed, or whether there's a bug.

(05 Oct '21, 21:29) alester

Thx for getting back.

Take basically any map.

As an example:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/359266867#map=15/40.6432/-73.2955

There is an island called "oak island". You don't see its name, until you zoom in until the island is completely filling the screen (zoom=15) and you lost all overview. In Zoom level 13, or even 12, where you have some overview, no island has a name visible, while there would be enough space for names to be shown i m o.

As another example:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=berlin#map=11/47.3709/11.1909

In the middle is the village Leutasch, the name of which you see in zoom level 12 and higher, but I'd like to see it already starting with zoom level 10.

So I have 2 suggestions:

  1. Make users able to choose, at which zoom level location names become visible.

  2. Show location names on mousover().

cheers ...

(06 Oct '21, 13:12) d_le_nen

Better use this as second link: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/47.3709/11.1909

The first link is also somewhat ambigues but it serves its purpose.

(06 Oct '21, 15:04) TZorn

The map renderings available at OpenStreetMap.org use pre-rendered raster images. That is, the server uses pre-determined rules to decide what to display at each zoom level and then generates static image files that are shown to you. Since these are static images, there isn't a way to show a different thing for each user, or have fancy actions like mouseover for map features. There's work under way to make a dynamic rendering (similar to the way Google Maps works), but that's still a work in progress.

For the islands in your first example, the information regarding each island is currently mapped as a single node. The map rendering rules have apparently been set up to only show those starting at z16. Since a node doesn't give any clue to the rendering server of how big a given island is, the map maintainers had to choose a zoom level to use as a default. A better way to map these would be to have the name and place=island tags on the actual island outline, and then the map rendering would be able to display the name at appropriate zoom levels based on the size of the island. If you look at this area where the islands are mapped in this way, you can see that the larger islands have their names visible much earlier than the smaller ones.

With the village example, the map maintainers have decided to only start showing names for villages starting at z12. They've likely chosen this as a compromise that they've found works best worldwide. If they have things showing up too early, the map could become very cluttered.

permanent link

answered 06 Oct '21, 17:11

alester's gravatar image

alester
6.6k266100
accept rate: 28%

Thx for the exhaustive answer! I see the behaviour in your example and it does make sense to me. I was thinking that names were objects of their own in an overlay div or some such thing, which would make displaying them more comfortable.

(06 Oct '21, 19:26) d_le_nen

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question asked: 05 Oct '21, 19:47

question was seen: 1,360 times

last updated: 06 Oct '21, 19:26

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