NIA must update the version of the maps that they use for Ingress and other games.

We know that Niantic decided to use the Open Street Map for their main game, Ingress. After the first few months of the transfer, I tried to edit data from OSM according to the original conditions in the field, but when OSM regularly updates and changes their data, but not in Ingress games or others Niantic games, the Map version is still the same.

So that there are several road conditions that are not in accordance with the original. And this is very dangerous for players who don't really know the location they are visiting. For example, there are some roads that do not exist but appear on the map (Scanner).

So my question, why is the map system not updated regularly according to OSM updates?

Comments

  • SoylentGrienSoylentGrien ✭✭✭✭✭

    Some edits I personally made to OSM in 2017 after Ingress moved the base map have still not been imported into the app.

  • Jac1891Jac1891 ✭✭✭

    I think it could be some "fusion" problem between the map and the game. They probably connected the two layers in a particular way and an update of the underlying map is problematic.

    However, in Florence, I didn't notice your problem. I hope it can be solved quickly!

  • Yes indeed, some major countries did not find a problem because of the large community of OSM contributors. But in my country, the OSM community's contribution is not that big. so there are cases like this.

    Some roads were found to disappear and did not match the original location up to a few hundred meters away. annoying while playing.

    I tried editing but it turned out that no changes had occurred on the scanner, such as being set to display the map version when Ingress first moved to OSM.

    Yes, hopefully, there will be a response from them about this case.

  • McReesingtonMcReesington ✭✭
    edited June 2019

    I would love an update for both games, and have got the impression that they don't do it often to discourage OSM abuse, though the update rate has been so slow to the point of being non-existent for many players who will pick up the game and put it back down in that time.

    I drew in the swimming pools and houses 5 days apart, and unfortunately the games took data from within those 5 days, so for the past 1-2 years in Pokemon Go, there's been a whole bunch of weird blue shapes which look like a map glitch across an entire region, with just the pools and no houses.

  • EthernEthern ✭✭✭

    I do think they should do the map synchronization job at least monthly. Since Ingress was switched to OSM, the map data of my local region in OSM has been greatly improved by many new contributors. I would definitely want to see this improvement being reflected into Ingress map.

  • Yes, I agree with you @Ethern, If the synchronize job took to much data from OSM and it makes the system down, so make it quarterly or twice in a year. It's better than nothing.

  • PSratPSrat ✭✭

    Not just the map itself... Portal addresses are very lacking in many areas (and countries) because Google Maps doesn't always use the official map authorities. Here in Norway, that means that Google apparently don't receive updates, only receive partial updates or even misplace road names...

    Agents should have an option to change the address information, not just map location. Alternatively, Niantic could receive official addresses from official sources instead, based on portal coordinates.

  • @PSrat I think the problem isn't Google map after NIA decide to move to OSM than use Google Maps API (too expensive for every single data In and Out), OSM community not big like gmaps, so it makes sense if many wrong data like wrong address, wrong road path and etc.

    But, maybe If the map in scanner got update, the problem with data will be covered with new data from the Community of OSM.

    Maybe this discussion can go up to the next AMA Session. We Need more information about the dev reason to use OSM map and why they don't update it periodically.

  • PSratPSrat ✭✭

    If OSM data can be used for all information instead of a mix of OSM and Google, things here in Norway would be much better if the data could be retroactively applied to portals automatically or through portal edits. OSM use official map data as one of their sources, with additional reliable sources, similar to Apple's map.

  • @PSrat Maybe you can check the portal address data with those in OSM if there are differences you can contribute directly (edit) to OSM (OSM usually takes more than 1 day to display edits). But it will still be useless if Ingress does not update the data to the latest OSM.

    But the funniest part of Intel is still using the Google map API rather than using OSM.

  • I think they use outdated OSM maps to prevent cheating in Pokemon GO. Even when they make an update they don't use the latest data so you can't make fake edits even when you guess the next update.

  • @JustusHase the best guess is just for data usage limit, because we know that Niantic has millions of users so if Niantic decides to use the latest updates from OSM and niantic decided to update the data in a short period, for example every 3 days, it's afraid it will burden OSM itself.

  • The whole OSM Map is only about 40 GB. It would be no problem from this perspective if they update it every day.

  • LemoMcLemonFaceLemoMcLemonFace ✭✭✭✭

    So 40gb

    Update 3 games.

    Force players to download updates relevant to their location (that will exceed 40gb by an order of x).

    Are you going to pay for the extra bandwidth usage, server processing etc?

  • GeorgOhmGeorgOhm ✭✭✭

    Nice request!

  • ArtilectZedArtilectZed ✭✭✭✭✭

    Map data is streamed when you do the client load for Ingress, and I would be surprised if it wasn't for PoGo/HPWU as well. Updating the OSM data daily would be crazy, but once or twice a year would be nice.

  • It's been since December of 2017 since they've updated it.

    OSM editors are basically free labor for NIA that they are taking no initiative at utilizing. It's really disappointing. The last news they gave us on updating their OSM visuals (the backend is updated) was "Not sure. No timeline set".


    This was months ago.

  • EngrishEngrish ✭✭✭✭

    I miss the times when I could look at my scanner and see buildings all over. Be able to tell what direction I actually needed to go instead of guess because of drift or my app zipping me 10 ft or so in random directions. Wish NIA would go back to google maps. They use Google maps for OPR, Intel and Mission Creator......

  • This is indeed frustrating when using the in-game (Prime in my case) map for navigation. I have an example where the scanner still shows an old "only there whilst the estate was being built" road which has long since been closed off in reality. OSM itself has also long-since been corrected for this.

    Images:

    I edited the scanner image to add road names if you zoom in, near the two Red X's that show where those roads actually end.

    In OSM (desktop, but same on OSM+ Android app):



  • That's what I mean in this case. For good reason, we need the OSM map with the latest version, and for further NIA must update the map version twice a year at the minimum.

    @RedSoloCup sorry for tagging, maybe you can read this complaint after your vacation, I didn't have the chance to send this to the last AMA.

  • When I first saw the OSM map on scanner it was about 4 months old. After some time it got another update I think. However, there's been no updates for more than a year.

    Google increased their prices, so more and more company switched to OSM or other alternative maps. I don't know if Nia gets the data from directly OSM or from Mapbox as it relies heavily on OSM data and has Unity plugin. Anyway, total OSM data is about 80 gigabytes in OSM format and 45 gigabytes in PBF format. Anyone can download it and render. There are online services which download the data weekly and convert it to another format like Garmin or other navigation device formats. And they do this with a single server. So I'm sure Niantic has the capability to update its maps using their server farms. So maybe there is a decision not to update the app frequently; I don't know why...

  • No clue why they are using a database that's over two years old, but they insist on refusing to tell us why...

  • Maybe that it was abused by players in pkmgo, OSM edit need no permission. But ingress portals' review are seldom influenced by map data, I hope they update regularly for better exp.

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