Embrace the new streets-v2 tileset

We released our original tileset (streets-v1) some years ago and now it's time to do some breaking changes ! We are always open to feedback to improve our maps.

Better language management

Remember in June, when I announced the feature of maps in your language. We only had 7 languages available, now we're down to 10 in streets-v2. We have added Japanese, Korean and Russian. Of course, if your browser is in one of these languages, you will see your maps in this one.

In addition to that, we have better handling of translations for map objects that are not in the Latin alphabet. It allows for example for all districts of Beijing to have a version using Latin script on a French map.

Better 3D building

With a vector map, you can display buildings in 3D. In streets-v1 we had a basic building management which simply allowed the base of the buildings to be extruded. Now we go further and have added the different parts of the buildings for a much more interesting display.

Various improvements

Water pool: In the south of France, it is not uncommon to see many swimming pools from an aerial view. These pools were often far too visible which made the map not very pretty. We have changed the threshold for their display in streets-v2.

Roads & rail: This is more like a bug, some roads disappeared when they were shared with rails. We made two changes here, display the two elements separately (road + rail) and then improve the display of rails above roads in our styles from the lab.

House numbers: We often see house numbers in our maps, they are most often near the door (this is the most used way here in France). But this is not the only way to describe street numbers, they can also be at building level.

Landuse: We have added more items that will be rendered as an industrial zone or park. This will give a more interesting ground cover and make it possible to know what type of building is present (shopping center, park ...)

Private Road: These elements are not yet visible, but the data is already present in our tiles. We are able to know if a road has private access or not.

Waterway tunnel: They will be soon rendered for our styles from the lab.

Vector tile size reduced

One of the things that is important to us is performance on the server and client side. This is why we want tiles that are served quickly but also light, especially for smartphone using 4G.

A member of the OSM community (Tobias Zwick) did a comparison of map providers and concluded that Jawg had the lightest tiles. We didn't stop there because we were able to reduce them even more.

Next step ?

Now that streets-v2 is available, we're going to deprecate streets-v1. It will be available until Q1 2021. We will now reduce streets-v1 tiles update before removing it from our plans.
For Lab users and tailor-made plans, you don't have to change anything, everything is automatic. If you had created your own style or if you are not using our online services, you will need to make changes. We are available to perform this migration with you.

Road shield: We will improve road shield in a near future. This will bring US highway shields in a first place.

Pier: They are missing in our maps, piers are common in harbor area and are very useful. We will work on this soon.

Special thanks to Tobias Zwick, the author of StreetComplete, who took his time to evaluate our services and give us feedback. We will obviously continue to improve our services.

Need more information about streets-v2 ? Checkout our new tileset documentation.

See you soon.