Why are single picnic tables rendered at further out zoom levels than whole outdoor seating areas?

Why are single picnic tables rendered at further out zoom levels than whole outdoor seating areas that are will probably be bigger and possibly contain several picnic tables? this makes no sense, it should be the other way around.

Can you link to an example so that people can have a look at what might be going on (other tags, clashes between icons, or just a bug in a particular rendering style)?

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is the picnic area mapped as area or as node? The former is preferable, because it conveys the size of the feature and allows for dynamic rendering according to the size on the map.

I know about the clash between icons. It cannot be the reason all the time. Here the Summerfield Pub has a seating area with picnic tables. One at the front and another at the back. The seating area only shows up on the closest zoom, some of the picnic tables show up at the closest three zooms. OpenStreetMap

There are a lot of icons there. However, at locations with less icons, still the outdoor seating areas only show up on the one closest zoom, but picnic tables up to the first three zooms. See Ringway centre, and Sidcup place.

It doesn’t seem to be down to it being too cluttered, I’ve never seen a seating area appear above the first zoom ever. In my head it would be logical for a seating area, which is normally many tables and chairs to appear at more zooms than a single table?

Thank you for the reply

Hi carlwev, welcome to the forum. The reason why picnic tables are rendered prominent is because picnic tables as described in the wiki are standalone objects, in most cases located in the nature or a park. The prominent rendering makes sense cause many people are searching for such facilities when planning an outdoor walk.

In an outdoor seating area attached to cafes, restaurants and the like you will not find picnic tables in this sense. These areas are equipped with tables and chairs for gastronomic purposes which normally are not separately mapped (table by table) but tagged as seating capacity of this seating area. As these outdoor seating areas often are found in very densely built up areas they cannot be rendered too prominent as otherwise the map could become unreadable.

To solve this issue I would recommend to remove the picnic tables from the outdoor seating areas and tag the seating capacity instead.

For further details have a look at:

Tag:leisure=picnic_table - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Tag:leisure=outdoor_seating - OpenStreetMap Wiki

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On OSM Carto, tourism=picnic_site is rendered from z16, and leisure=picnic_table is rendered from z17.

Oudoor seating usually accompanies a cafe or similar. Cafes are rendered with logo and name from z18, so it makes sense to render the outside seating also from z18. I don’t know why these particular zoomlevels were chosen, though.

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Precisely for this reason, because the outside seating is part of the cafe, for example, it does not make sense to render it at the same zoom level z18.

In my opinion, it also makes no sense to mark each table within an outside seating area belonging to a café or pub as a picnic table.

Btw, in my opinion it also doesn’t make sense to mark individual trees with natural=tree and the crown circumference with natural=wood at the same time.

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