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

Hi I have spent several days adding meadows and habitats to my area's OSM. Having finished that I would like to know please how to get the sort of OSM map I see in various outside applications to my computer so I can make use of it. Having downloaded a bounding box and JOSM I find nothing like what I see on these other websites using OSM as a base.

But even before that wherever I look at OSM of my area at various altitudes I see blocks of colour missing, there is a big rectangle that relates to nothing on earth cutting across meadows leaving parts without colour. Also there are some random areas without colour eg the west half of a meadow bisected by a line (path), the meadow being one "area". When I zoom in all the colours are there,and at different altitudes the affected areas colours appear or disappear. This looks to me like a bug.

This is where it is Search Results Results from Internal 53.57836, -2.32773 Results from OpenStreetMap Nominatim Old Hall Farm Lane, Black Lane, Radcliffe, Bury, Greater Manchester, England, M26 4FW, United Kingdom

The offending rectangle is tallest on the N-S axis and lies to the west and south west of Elton Reservoir. The colours change with altitude, only being in full colour when near to ground, which, alas, is too close to take a screenshot or pdf of the map I need, which is the open land triangle.

Thank you so much if you would like to assist please.

asked 21 Oct '22, 23:30

David%20PB's gravatar image

David PB
11113
accept rate: 0%

edited 22 Oct '22, 11:27

It'd be helpful if you could link to an area where you've edited things, and also mention the names of some of the OSM-based websites, as people might know how long they tend to take to update.

(21 Oct '22, 23:50) SomeoneElse ♦
1

"When I zoom in all the colours are there, and at different altitudes the affected areas colours appear or disappear. This looks to me like a bug." This is quite common when an area has been updated recently. Different zoom levels update on different schedules, and even within a zoom level you might be seeing some cached tiles from before the changes (the "big rectangle" sounds like it might be a result of this).

(22 Oct '22, 11:08) alan_gr

I have added the location by editing my post and hope this is useful, thanks. I don't see a way to reply to commenters, but will try coping and pasting these links. I trust that is ok.

The big rectangle relates to a number of 100m squares of the national grid I think, in a big rectangle. Not something I can see a genuine editor using.

I have been looking on the iRecord website and the changes have been mostly very quick, almost immediate. But the big rectangle appears there too, as it would.

https://help.openstreetmap.org/users/387/someoneelse https://help.openstreetmap.org/users/14272/alan_gr

(22 Oct '22, 11:32) David PB
(22 Oct '22, 12:12) nevw

Fingers crossed then. I hope to produce a lovely footpath map of the area (crediting OSM). As an ecologist I needed to correct what is there at the same time so differentiating between the types of grassland. The OSM categories are not really an ecological tool. But in this case the fields were last categorised I think when a large area had been ploughed and reseeded. Gave the impression of being arable fields for a while, but farmer was actually putting more flowers back into mix. BUT We left as farmland those fields where the farmer treats the grass as a crop, is heavy on introduced grass, and has invested time in removing flowers. Still I am really please I found OSM and thanks people for contributing to my thread.

(22 Oct '22, 12:38) David PB

alt text I've taken a screenshot of the affected area, and it looks like alan_gr is exactly correct here. A horizontal or vertical line like that usually indicates that one tile has been updated and an adjacent tile not.

It'll sort itself out shortly (probably in hours or minutes).

Incidentally, if you're making a point of the distinction between farmland and meadow I'd definitely suggest looking at the subtags that can be used with those. See here and here in the wiki.

permanent link

answered 22 Oct '22, 12:12

SomeoneElse's gravatar image

SomeoneElse ♦
36.9k71370866
accept rate: 16%

One more thing - if you're interested in mapping this sort of area you might want to have a look at this map (disclaimer - I created that).

It uses farmland and meadow subtags to render e.g. "farmland that is predominantly used for pasture" as different to arable farmland. You may also see updates quicker there too.

(22 Oct '22, 12:16) SomeoneElse ♦

I'd heard about your detailed mapping of this area at the weekend from another mapper: a very useful thing for someone with detailed knowledge of the area.

As others have said this is an artefact of how tiles are updated.

I always find it useful if I'm unsure something has been tagged properly to cross-check with either SomeoneElse's map (link provided in his post) or the Humanitarian layer which usually update more rapidly. Another factor which often occurs is caching in the web browser which can obscure that the servers have actually updated.

I'm pretty certain iRecord uses native tiles from the official OpenStreetMap servers, so the appearance will be the same. (I presume as iRecord only shows small map snippets and has a low usage relative to other applications, that it has never triggered any issues about using OSM tiles).

One mapping note: some of the linear areas mapped as scrub look like hedgerows. You can map these explicitly as hedges either as areas, or as linear ways with an appropriate width tag. I'm not sure if the standard map will show barrier=hedge if mapped as an area. You can also use dominant_taxon to distinguish, say, Hawthorn from Blackthorn hedges (also can be used on scrub & wood polygons). You can also map Phase 1 vegetation categories on your grasslands, or if really dedicated NVC. See this page on the wiki.

permanent link

answered 25 Oct '22, 10:37

SK53's gravatar image

SK53 ♦
28.1k48268433
accept rate: 22%

Follow this question

By Email:

Once you sign in you will be able to subscribe for any updates here

By RSS:

Answers

Answers and Comments

Markdown Basics

  • *italic* or _italic_
  • **bold** or __bold__
  • link:[text](http://url.com/ "title")
  • image?![alt text](/path/img.jpg "title")
  • numbered list: 1. Foo 2. Bar
  • to add a line break simply add two spaces to where you would like the new line to be.
  • basic HTML tags are also supported

Question tags:

×55
×1

question asked: 21 Oct '22, 23:30

question was seen: 853 times

last updated: 25 Oct '22, 10:37

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