Hi OsmAnd developers,
I wanted to get back to the quality problems around hillshades addressed 5 years ago which have not really changed, at least not in my areas. There are weird artifacts at the edges of hillshade tiles and overall the hillshades are quite blurred. Compare this example of OsmAnd hillshading <https://app.box.com/s/pdz4nibi3imn20uwuh3ww1gjpatomgcs> with what is possible based on swissALTI3D hillshading at map.geo.admin.ch <https://app.box.com/s/tqdjiu0sa0tx1buyaep44pcamymiptmd>. Of course, the swissALTI3D hillshade files are too heavy to store hillshades of entire countries on a mobile phone. But when I reduce the quality of the swissALTI3Dhillshade <https://app.box.com/s/dqlo0lrkb3smx8hr5klq3hgmalwnr5z8> of this example to only 1% of its quality <https://app.box.com/s/pojnul7ub20fcau7hp4xbnbfaxbayyb4> the result is still way more detailed than the soft OsmAnd haze. Especially where there are sharp mountain ridges, the gentle transition of OsmAnd is weird. See for instance the ridge at the right-hand side of the screenshot (Schindelberghöchi to Habrütispitz). In the OsmAnd screenshot it looks very soft and is partially not visible at all. Here a view from Schindelegg towards Schindelberghöchi <http://www.dplate.de/photos/toggenburg/20171104/wanderweg-schindelbergh%C3%B6chi_023.jpg> showing that it is a sharp ridge. The uppermost 100m of the slope to the right are almost vertical rock. In the example the 1% quality hillshade JPEG is 6.7 KB in size and covers 4.77 km * 2.17 km = 10.35 km2. For the 41,285 km2 of Switzerland 26.1 MB of these 1% quality hillshade files would be needed. This is *less storage need* than today's OsmAnd hillshade tiles consume. The current OsmAnd hillshades for Switzerland weigh 46.6 MB. So, there is clear room for improvement. I would love an improvement around hillshades. Thanks for considering. Peter -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Osmand" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osmand/8e48334d-64ca-49b3-bc72-08a273688a35%40googlegroups.com.
