OpenStreetMap satellite view?

OpenStreetMap under the hood is simply a database of key–value pairs assigned to nodes, lines, polygons, and “relations” between those three.

yeah i suspected as much

so this might sound wild at first but i think it makes sense to compare the data structures of a project like OSM to a computer game like minecraft. basically, in the minecraft world, there's 3 separate types of data storage:

• chunk storage is a 3-dimensional array that just stores the type of block found at each x,y,z-location. as such, reading the array (and taking the block with the highest z-value that is not air) gives you an aerial view. this is comparable to a photograph (aerial view).
• structure storage. this tells you, for example, if you have a chest, what is inside it. this assignes function to physical space, similar to how OSM assignes meaning (house, street) to a chunk of physical space. This is where the "relations" between x,y,z-nodes and polygons comes in.
• the third type is storage for movable objects, such as players moving around in the world; since they are not fixed objects, they cannot be assigned simple static x,y,z-coordinates so easily. but i think for OSM there's no good analogy.

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Edit: And yes, OpenMapTiles is a separate thing, and any of its aerial imagery would also not be its own. It’s prohibitively difficult for but a few select organizations to maintain aerial imagery like that. You can read more here.

I'll read the link later, thank you.!

taken with satellites. You'd have clouds in the way, very low resolution, and other issues. The higher quality ones are aerial images and this is what people are usually looking for. There are a couple sources listed at https://osm.wiki/Vertical/_Aerial/_Photographs

Getting these to display in an application depends on the application, and there is no "OSM application" except for maybe the iD editor. Everything else is developed by third parties. 2/2

@gandalf_der_12te

OpenArealMap

*OpenAerialMap

ooh, thank you!

OsmAnd is not OpenStreetMap. Its a third party client to the OpenStreetMap data.

OsmAnd can have aerial imagery, Configure Map > Map Source ( > Add More ) > Microsoft Hybrid

For my country this is basemap.at and it would actually be an interesting project to aggregate such things in one UI, but I am not aware anyone has done that yet.

thanks, in fact i wouldn't even care so much about the UI app itself, but about having that satellite data in case somebody wants to do something with it.

i understand that there's a whole lot of technical hurdles in the way, such as: who hosts the data? who updates it? who sanitizes it? who carries the server costs for the storage space and network load?

it would just be very interesting to understand the underlying technology needed to build such an open map service. i'm thinking, we have the fediverse for communication; there's servers and clients. what would an equivalent map service look like?

@schnurrito @gandalf_der_12te an 'open mosaic' has been done multiple times however a) it is a lot of work and cost even if the imagery is "free", b) while there is a lot of high res (that is 30cm or better nominal resolution) data available most of the world isn't covered.

yeah i have thought about collecting all publicly accessible aerial views and putting them on some kind of disk for backup.

the issue is, just to map all of germany would take 3 TB of storage space if you make photos with 30 cm per pixel. for the whole world it would be 3000 TB and i don't have that amount of storage space.