Hello
I wonder if there are any published examples in OSM where a user (not an editor) can change at which scale street names become visible.
For a little background, we are part of a public organisation in UK currently using google maps to map our local training areas. AFAIK google maps cannot meet the requirement above, we’ve been thinking about switching anyway so, if it’s possible, it really would clinch it, I think. I’ve been looking at the professional services available for OSM but would like to get an idea if it is actually do-able before we start going down that road.
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Unknown to most users but the main “product” of OpenStreetMap is the database, not the map.
The process going from the database data to a map is called Rendering. See Tile Server Software for software that you can use for that. With that you can get also the freedom to determine on which zoom-level street names become visible.
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I don’t think that the vast majority of OSM based maps can support that. All the maps I know show pre-rendered PNG images (called tiles) or other formats.
Vector based maps may support that, they get rendered (painted) on the fly and with the support of your browser (Javascript)
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This is relatively easy to achieve with vector maps. With vector maps you only have to modify the map style definition, but you don‘t have to provide the rendered maps yourself, as these are rendered on the client.
Check out the Maputnik map style editor. Go to Open and select one of the pre-made map styles that is closest to the look you’d like to achieve. As an example I picked “Zoomstack Road”.
In the left hand panel you see all the style rules that render one map element such as roads or buildings. In the middle you see all the style setting details of the selected rule.
Zoom the map until the road labels become visible. Click on a road label. A popup shows which style rules apply to elements at this position:
road names sounds good, so click on that. In the middle panel the style details for road names are displayed. You can change the minimum and maximum zoom levels and lots of other settings.
As you can see, there are a lot of settings and options and design choices to be made if you want to rework a map style. But for simple changes like turning off some map elements or changing the zoom levels when they appear, it should be doable.
If you are looking for a commercial provider, maptiler offers a map customization tool, a full-fledged style editor as well, and can host the map style for you in the end as well.
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