I just realized that OsmAnd has 3D buildings now!
Okay, I know "now" is a couple months out-of-date, but I didn't know this until today, so I figured some other people might not either.
I have both OsmAnd and CoMaps, and I generally prefer OsmAnd for its extensive customizability, Carto render, and the fact it can be kept more up-to-date. So it surprised me it didn't have the option to view 3D buildings, since OSM for a long time now has kept track of information like building levels (building:levels), height (height), and even building parts with varying levels and heights. OsmAnd introduced this with Version 5.3 on April 21 for Android and April 24 for iOS.
Note that there are many towns and cities where this data either doesn't exist yet or is incomplete, but even then, buildings will default to building:levels=1 in terms of the heightmap, so it'll still give you some "texture", so to speak (and show where you can personally improve the map if you contribute).
This was one of the few things on OsmAnd I was really missing from CoMaps, so it's great to see it!
Edit: Looks like there's a "level of detail" suboption for building part levels, i.e. where different parts of the same building can have different levels.
I'm hoping that all my work on StreetComplete with the "How many levels above the basement does this building have?" quest is helping here...
Looks like I've done 283... not a massive amount, but every little helps :)
Nah, I think that's pretty major. I'm so thankful to people like you who round out the map; to me, StreetComplete users are just as needed as JOSM power users.
@TheTechnician27 Why does it have to include subscription options? Like I ain’t paying 6 euros a month to have frequent map updates and weather.
If you are an OSM contributor you can have the map updates for free
@Niquarl
Or if you install OsmAnd from the F-Droid store.
They suck at marketing. They should have named that differently, like Supporter Subscription or something like that and a description that explains that running the project has costs and support is appreciated.
@warmaster Yes, but that should be voluntary, not force me to pay to get determinate features.
Also, how do they keep paid options if the software is open source?
@mattiz6276 @warmaster Why could there not be paid options?
This is a question aimed at motivating some research on this topic. I'm sure there are good blog articles about this from opensource and ethical points of view, I just cannot find one that does not seem to be recent SEO-slop :)
@richlv @warmaster Of course it’s needed to pay for some features because they include high server usage, but what if I want an alternative that is completely free?
Are there valid alternatives to OSMAnd that include a bunch of its features (already tried CoMaps)?
@mattiz6276 @warmaster My alternative is being an active mapper ;)
https://osmand.net/docs/user/plugins/osm-editing/#free-map-updates-for-mappers
@richlv @warmaster Geez, I didn’t know that! Luckily I’m an active mapper too (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Mattiz6276).
That still doesn’t solve the other features being locked. If I give money to a project, it should be voluntary, not forced to unlock features. At this point, it feels like corporate software.