OpenStreetMap and kosmosnimki.ru: mix, but not shake

Today, around lunchtime, on the site kosmosnimki.ru there have been dramatic ideological changes . The site has a detailed map of the Republic of Belarus. But it was not made by cartographers from commercial companies, but by ordinary people - participants of the OpenStreetMap project, and, unlike commercial vendor cards, is updated not once every six months, but in real time.

Translating this project into reality, we tried to take into account the accumulated experience and wishes to the OpenStreetMap cards, which were repeatedly expressed in various forums, and even here, in Habré.

Of the many visible changes in comparison with what can be seen on osm.org:

• the color scheme is radically different and as close as possible to that already used at kosmosnimki.ru, verified by professionals;)
• in order to see the names of settlements like villages, now it is not necessary to bring the map as close as possible;
• Lakes and other water bodies are signed;
• visually distinguishable neighborhoods with different types of buildings (multi-storey / private), as well as the type of building - residential, non-residential, garage ...

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A bit of technical magic, from what was considered by some to be unattainable with the current toolkit:

• streets, cut into many pieces, are signed once, along the entire street, and not each segment separately;
• multilevel junctions consisting of multiple bridges and overpasses are drawn on top of each other in the correct order.

In OpenStreetMap there is a principle of using data that is amply described on the IRC channel with the phrase “you can mix, but not shake”, and GeoMixer technology helps to fully implement it: commercial vendor cards and open maps are neatly superimposed on each other, while their vector and raster representations are easily separable. This allows you to use OpenStreetMap data in conjunction with data from other companies without violating license agreements.

And of course, what a modern web map will do without interactive: if you hover over the points of interest on the map, something pops up above them.

I hope you will like it. Maybe you know some special places on OpenStreetMap on the territory of the ex-USSR that are already drawn better than the map that is on kosmosnimki.ru? Or maybe you draw them right now? :)