Hello,
In adding node / point features at and near our astronomy club’s facilities, I’ve noted that some such features (such as an emergency marker, sundial, defibrillator and fire hydrant) that appear in the Editing window don’t appear on the ‘main’ OSM map itself; if I click in that area on the OSM map with the “Query Features” button, these features are listed but no symbol appears.
See for example: Node: BRI004 (12819145586) | OpenStreetMap
It’s not just features that I’ve added, another example is a point / node feature added by someone else at: Node: GNP053 (11668421364) | OpenStreetMap.
Thanks, John Cleverdon
The “main map” is just one representation of OSM data, known as OSM Carto. There’s plenty of other options around there, and it’s primarily used for edit feedback, not end user use.
Not everything gets rendered on there, and that’s okay.
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Why are nodes / points beneath area features?
ones you listed are not “beneath area features” they are not rendered at all in this map style, and would not appear also if they would be sole marked object in a given area.
AFAIK this map style does not display any points below area features.
For giggles I had a go at rendering the area with something that might show a few more POIs:
Even the fire hydrant appears if you zoom in enough:
(the sundial’s missing, but that’s likely a bug at my end)
This was created using scripts from here and here and this style.
Thanks for the feedback; I had been assuming that all features would be shown on the “standard” layer but obviously this isn’t the case.
I’ve noted that the defibrillator and fire hydrant appear when scrolling through the other layers (eg. Humanitarian & CyclOSM) but not the emergency marker or sundial (clock), when not trying the scripts.
Many years ago, there used to be two maps available on osm,org - one was the style that evolved into what is now called the “Standard” style, and the other was something called OSMarender which didn’t look very nice (and I’m being charitable there) but did try and show many more features. An map that tries to show everything will look horrible and not be very usable, though many people (including me) would argue that showing things as you zoom in allows many more things to be shown at higher zoom levels.
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Andy, with a background in cartography, I agree with your comment “that showing things as you zoom in allows many more things to be shown at higher zoom levels”. An example are the Vicmap topographic maps, go to: https://www.land.vic.gov.au/maps-and-spatial/maps/how-to-access-a-map and scroll down to “What will my map look like” for maps of Heathcote at different scales.
I’ve got both the OSMAnd and Vespucci apps on my phone, and I note that the latter downloads / shows features such as I’ve mentioned that don’t appear on any of the OSM map layers on the OSM website.
Bear in mind that OSMAnd and Vespucci are designed with editing in mind. Editors have to biased towards “showing all the things”. Of the different “map-oriented” renders on the front page, I feel that Tracestack Topo is striking a good balance between showing things and avoiding clutter; the default OSMAnd map is pretty ugly as it tries to show lots of things with minimal visual coherence.
It’s unfortunate that the front page doesn’t serve zoom levels higher than 19 - this does restrict what can be physically be fitted in.
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