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Comment by anvaka | Hacker News Reader

Hey there, I'm the author of the tool!

Just wanted to thank you for the comments, feedback and shares! I 'm very happy!

PS: If you liked that project you may find my other stuff interesting: https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanvaka%20min_retweets%3A... - it's just a hobby but I love it :D

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I like the interaction design a lot while loading the data.

The first time it took very long and after a while it said 'still loading'. Then after a while 'sorry this is taking so long'. And then 'trying another server'.

This is great interaction because the user knows what is going on and the app is still busy.

Great job!

Small feature request: Being able to rotate the image. For some cities, the "canonical" map is not vertically aligned with north (e.g. Barcelona, in maps usually the coast is horizontal, so north is pointing top-right).

This tool has some insanely good performance -- kudos! What did you build it on?

Thank you!

The rendering is done with WebGL. I wrote a silly 2d renderer to learn more about the platform, and never documented it. Thought it would not be very useful.

Ended up using it in a lot of tiny projects, but didn't have chance to document it yet. Here it is https://github.com/anvaka/w-gl

I don't know if open street data let's you monetize like this, but consider adding a link to Shutterfly or some similar site that would let the user get their road network of choice be printed out on a mug or t shirt.

A site featured on hn a few weeks ago which showed height renderings of various locales let you do something like that.

Do you remember the site that was submitted?

Peak map: Visualize the elevation of any area using a ridgeline chart

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21968874

Oh! This one is fun :)!

Bonus points if you let me add UTM or Lat+Long coordinates to have marks appear for the peaks I've bagged on the peak map. Then I can buy a mug or print a poster that lists all the peaks I've bagged or intend to bag.

This is already incorporated into the site. After the roads render, click "Customize", then "Onto a mug" and a link to zazzle.com will open to order a mug.

That one is also from anvaka :)

Funny. I wonder if the similar visual styles led me to connect the two despite not even remembering what exactly the terrain height mapping one was.

Now I feel kind of silly suggesting to this person a great idea that was actually...their own.

OpenStreetMap data license (ODBL) allows any use of renderings as long as attribution is present, and that modifications to the data have been made available under ODBL.

Can you export it to SVG? I can see this really helping Wikipedia editors.

Done!

Thanks!

Your projects are awesome anvaka! Please continue doing those!

Sincerely thank you. I'm so happy to know this!

Yeah it's really nice! :) However i think there should be an option to disable showing sidewalks for pedestrians, so only roads for cars should be seen then. It would be nice to see where you can drive your car ;)

Very cool! It would be nice to be able to group multiple cities in one map. Greater London and the City of London are listed separately so Greater London has a big hole in the middle.

Yes, this would be great.

Well done. If possible, can you add functionality for:

- Pre-saved color swatches to cycle through, like those at color.adobe.com/trends

- Custom cell phone cases. A bunch like casetify offer affiliate revenue.

I like the minimalism of it. That said, I'd be happy if you exposed road segment classes (I believe OSM maps have that) for styling to give main streets or highways a bolder tone.

Kudos :)

Tokyo (massive map) seems a bit buggy, and there's several distinct groups of roads loading. Awesome tool nonetheless!

It seems they're islands that are also part of Tokyo. From[1]:

> Also within the administrative boundaries of Tokyo Metropolis are two island chains in the Pacific Ocean directly south: the Izu Islands, and the Ogasawara Islands

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo

What are the copyright terms on these maps? What if someone wanted to use these on custom t-shirts and posters to sell?

The OSM data license would still apply here, meaning you must attribute them [0].

As for the visuals of this map, chances are the MIT license for the repository applies to it as well [1] [not a lawyer].

0: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ#3a._I_would_li...

1: https://github.com/anvaka/city-roads/blob/master/LICENSE

Would you happen to support Canberra, Australia? Or is there a way to request a city if it's not listed?

Try "Australian Capital Territory". The search is using some sort of metadata from OSM, which is mildly quirky.

I found this bug too!

Should work a bit better now

It's pretty cool mate. Gonna make a wallpaper with it.

Yay! I'd love to know how it goes! I'm myself not sure what would be the best resolution and line thickness to do wallpapers. If you find something appealing - please share?

Would love to see a version that renders train/street car tracks

Or bike lanes!

There are some bike apps that can do this though. With GPS support for navigation :-)

It already renders bike lanes - it displays all highway classes, from freeways to walking trails.

It's interesting to note the size of the download for a city. Guess it's related to the complexity of the road network, not necessarily the number of roads. Interesting to think about the "entropy" of a city's network and compare between cities. For instance, Sydney AU is 25Mb, but NYC is only 11Mb. Even tho population of NYC is ~e x Sydney.

Check out Sao Paulo - it was over 500MB! Was very impressed that the map still rendered and was responsive on my 4 year old laptop too.

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