Lomaps Online - zoom level rules for peaks

Alan G shared this problem ago

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I have the following issue with the online Lomaps. This does not happen for offline maps - Lomaps Offline, OAM maps etc using Lomaps theme Hike&Bike or Voluntary themes - or other online maps I have used or looked at like plotaroute and brouter etc. , just online Lomaps - but this is the only map available in the Web Planner.

I find the selection of labels displayed on the map particularly for peaks, for each zoom level, does not make much sense, certainly for hiking, especially when plotting a route.
Starting from the lowest zoom level, as you zoom in, the features which are first labelled are not those which I'd expect - the important ones (peaks) are often missing and less well known features are instead labelled. Zoom in further and the lesser features remain displayed, and eventually major features (peaks) might appear at various levels. Sometimes they do not appear at all at any zoom level. This makes plotting a route awkward as it can be difficult to know where you are on the map, as the well known reference points are often not visible, or appear at seemingly random too high zoom levels. Often you have to keep zooming in and out to re-check where you are.

To try to be a bit scientific about it, as an example I've attached a list of the peaks over 2500ft in the English Lake District comparing the zoom levels at which they appear in Lomaps online and Lomaps offline using the Hike and Bike theme. I've highlighted in yellow items which cause difficulties. LoMaps offline is OK and consistent, whereas Lomaps Online has a lot of problems, in my opinion. Nothing appears until level 14 and many very well known peaks only appear at high zoom levels. e.g. Helvellyn and Scafell at 17, Bowfell at 18, Blencathra at 19, Old Man of Coniston never, and many others.

Is there anything that can be done to improve this , given that all other maps handle this properly ?

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Petr Voldan ●

Hi Alan,

thank you for the detailed description and for your research.
Unfortunately, we are a bit limited by the source data we use to create the maps and cannot distinguish important peaks from less important ones. Some markers may be missing due to collision with other markers. However, some labels do not appear at all - even in very detailed zooms where no other labels are present. We will check this and try to improve it.

Thanks, Petr

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Alan G ●

Hi Petr,
I had a closer look at the missing captions, and it looks to me that there is a pattern to all the missing peak captions. Here's a theory, might be wrong, but here is what I see .....

- What I referred to as minor features, which display properly are OSM nodes with tag k="place" v="locality" and are shown in roman (upright) font.
- The peaks, which have the problems, are OSM nodes with tag k="natural" v="peak" and are shown in Italic font.
- Cliffs are OSM ways with tag k="natural" v="cliff" and are shown as lines with small triangles along.

It looks like:
- The "locality" nodes appear between zoom levels 14 and 16 and the caption is always shown and can overwrite a cliff line on the displayed map.
- The "peak" nodes appear between zoom levels 14 and 19 but the caption cannot overwrite a cliff line. If the font size at a particular zoom level causes the caption to collide with the cliff then the peak caption is not shown. Rarely it is partially shown with some truncation/corruption.

I've checked those items I marked in yellow in the spreadsheet and they always have a cliff very near running roughly North South, so that the caption collides with the cliff. As the zoom level changes and the font size changes if there is space for the caption then it appears. Hence why some peaks never appear, and some appear only at higher zoom levels, and some appear, disappear then reappear as you zoom in, depending on the exact relationship between the peak and cliff line locations and the font size at that zoom level.
There are also some collisions between captions but these are much rarer.

Not sure if you have control over the rules behind this but if so would it be possible to check the priority of the "peak" captions and "cliff" lines, compared to those of "locality" ?

If the above is correct then if "place/locality" takes priority over "natural/cliff" then I can't see why "natural/peak" should not also.

Thanks

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