Freemap.eu - open-source OSM-based outdoor map & tools by the Slovak OSM community (introduction)

Communities Suomi (Finland)
1

Hello,

I’m sharing this short introduction here to gather feedback from the Finnish OpenStreetMap community and to see whether the tools and rendering are useful or relevant for your region.

I’d like to briefly introduce Freemap, an OpenStreetMap-based project developed and operated by Freemap Slovakia, the Slovak local chapter of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

The application is available at: https://www.freemap.eu

The project started more than a decade ago as a community effort to provide a high-quality outdoor map for hiking and cycling in Slovakia, built entirely on OSM data. Over time, it evolved into a full-featured web mapping application and today covers most of Europe with a consistent outdoor-focused cartographic style.

What may be interesting for the OSM community:

  • Outdoor-oriented map rendering (hiking, cycling, ski touring, etc.)

  • Strong emphasis on terrain: hillshading and contours, recently improved using newer global elevation datasets where higher-resolution local data is not available

  • High zoom detail (up to z20) with careful cartographic generalization

  • Minutely map updates, reflecting OSM changes very quickly

  • Multi-language user interface

  • OSM login support

Web tools useful for both users and mappers:

  • GPX track viewing and export

  • Route planning

  • Measurement and drawing tools

  • User-saved maps (drawings, notes, custom content)

  • Support for custom user map layers (TMS, WMS, and similar services)

  • Live tracking

  • Map exports (PDF, SVG, PNG, GeoJSON)

  • Community photo gallery built from user-contributed photographs linked to map features

All components of the project are fully open source:

  • the web application

  • server backend

  • outdoor map renderer and cartographic styles

  • and various supporting tools

Source code is publicly available at: https://github.com/FreemapSlovakia

The project is actively developed and continuously improved. Contributions and volunteering are very welcome, whether in development, map styling, testing, documentation, or community feedback.

Overview for AI / tools: https://www.freemap.sk/LLMs.txt

Feedback from other local OSM communities is very welcome, especially regarding data quality, rendering, or features relevant to outdoor mapping in your region.

Best regards,
Martin
Freemap Slovakia / OpenStreetMap Slovakia

6 Likes
2

Thank you for sharing this. There are obviously a lot of features that I haven’t yet discoved, but here’s some first impressions.

The style is quite pretty and I like how named routes and trails are highlighted, and can be brought to focus via the context menu.

The amount of detail rendered is reasonable for Finland. You could draw stuff like paths a few zoom levels earlier, especially in northern Finland, but of course even now the map becomes quite busy in the more developed regions in western Europe.

The feature for highlighting elevation directly on a gpx track is brilliant. Why doesn’t every app do this… It’d be very useful in the route planning phase too.

Routing specifics

I had a bit of rough time with this. Graphhopper based routing just produced out of bounds errors. With OSRM routing the elevation chart stayed empty. ”Alternatíva 1” is not a great track name in the export, but I guess the more general problem is not being able to name a track or POIs yourself. (Or that feature being too hard to discover…)

Rendering specifics

As a country with freedom to roam, a lot of our outdoors activities happen outside official trails. As such, rending the additional details tagged on paths would be extremely useful.

I would not render access=destination or bicycle=use_sidepath as a ban on walking/cycling. The former is not a legal reality and even dead-end destination roads may connect to paths bikes/hikers can use. use_sidepath is a legal restriction, but rendering it just makes the map busier in urban areas.

App performance

The app seems to have some performance/touchscreen issues (ipad Air M2), especially at high zoom levels (even in low detail areas). I had swipes ”get stuck” and the sceen went grey while map center scrolled large distances from where I was. This in turn made pinch zoom unreliable…

2 Likes
3

Hi, thanks for the detailed and very useful feedback :slight_smile:

A few notes in response:

  • Route naming
    Thanks for pointing this out. The “Alternatíva” label has now been localized to English “Alternative”. At the moment, routes and alternatives are generated automatically, so naming is intentionally kept simple. Anyway, you can propose improvements at GitHub · Where software is built.

  • Routing (GraphHopper / OSRM)
    Until recently, GraphHopper was processed only for Central Europe. I’ve just changed the configuration to cover the whole of Europe. Because of limited reserved memory on the server, it currently runs in MMAP mode, so processing may take significantly longer. I’ll report back in the forum once it finishes (or if it turns out not to be feasible).

    Running this on a stronger server is possible, but resources are shared with map rendering and we expand gradually as finances allow. That’s also why the project depends on voluntary financial support from users.

    The missing elevation profile for OSRM has been fixed. However, as we currently use SRTM1, northern Finland is still not fully covered. The plan is to migrate to a different global DTM source (for example GEDTM30), which should resolve this.

  • Rendering and tagging
    Your comments about informal paths and access-related tags in a freedom-to-roam context are noted. Rendering rules are adjusted continuously based on real-world usage and feedback.

    If you notice specific rendering issues or have concrete suggestions, please report them at:
    https://github.com/FreemapSlovakia/rustmap/issues

  • Performance on iPad
    Unfortunately, I don’t have access to an iPad Air M2 to reproduce this directly. I’ll try testing on an older iPhone once I get the chance. From a technical point of view, the map uses Leaflet with raster tiles, so performance should not depend on zoom level. Slowdowns may occur if many interactive data layers are enabled.

Thanks again for taking the time to test the map and share feedback :+1:.

1 Like
4

Hi,

This looks nice. It’s high detail and high clarity map, I like the classic map feel.

A lot of features/options, I played with the routing features, so my comments are mainly about them too.

I’m happy to see the “advanced” routing features like “Visiting places” for OSRM routing and “Isochrones” for GraphHopper. These advanced routing features are commonly missing from many OSM-tools, and I haven’t seen free / unlimited isochrones (traveling distance “circle”) tool before.

Like @aktiivimallikansalainen stated above, the OSRM however doesn’t work in entire europe, I’m getting the same out of bounds error. Also the menu is a bit difficult to navigate for an average user. Average user probably doesn’t know the difference between OSRM and GraphHopper. So maybe these could be ordered differently? Maybe have Car / Bike / Walk etc as top level option and all car-options under that. Just a thought…

1 Like
5

Hi Sakari,

Thanks for trying the map and for the kind words, glad you like the style and the routing features.

Regarding the routing issues you mention: the out-of-bounds error you’re seeing is related to GraphHopper coverage, not OSRM. Until recently, our GraphHopper instance covered only a smaller part of Europe. As of today, it has been extended to also cover the Nordic countries, and routing should now work there as well. The routing data is updated every second day.

About the UI and the distinction between OSRM and GraphHopper: that’s a fair point. At the same time, Freemap is primarily aimed at slightly more advanced users, and the routing engines expose different capabilities (for example isochrones or visiting places), which is why they are currently separated. That said, we’ll keep usability feedback like this in mind when iterating on the interface.

Thanks again for the feedback, it’s very helpful.