Hide railway=platform with location=underground, tunnels and covered=yes

[kocio-pl]

Related to #2504, #2037 and #1659.

Changes proposed in this pull request:

• Hide railway platforms which are located underground, because they eclipse station buildings too much and this is rather indoor feature (see https://www.openstationmap.org )

Test rendering with links to the example places:

Warsaw
Before

After

Berlin
Before

After

[daganzdaanda]

This PR seems to hide more than just the "location=underground" platforms. See https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/918697 for a level 2 platform that is not visible anymore.

But generally I like the idea. It's a hard decision to make - more mapper feedback vs. a more usable map. IMHO we can't continue to show everything anymore. We should hide nearly everything that is not on the ground level (using the "level" tag). Maybe there will be some way in the future to turn on some indoor / level-by-level / 3D features on the main map.

[kocio-pl]

Thanks for spotting it! Do you have an idea why is that? Hm, maybe we just need to include platforms without location tag (NULL checking). The fix should be quite simple then.

I don't know if there are underground platforms, but if yes, that should help also:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/138141251#map=18/40.75063/-73.99338

I hope to hide more underground features, but have no idea how to code it (see #1977).

[kocio-pl]

Looks like it really was the missing null checking, updated renderings:

Warsaw Central Station
Before

After

Warsaw Śródmieście Station
Before

After

Madison Square Garden (USA, NY)
Before

After

Berlin Hauptbahnhof
Before

After

[kocio-pl]

I'm still not sure about levels, but I was told that tunnel=yes is also worth hiding and I have found that there are ~1700 such railway platforms.

[kocio-pl]

It looks like platforms in tunnels should be hidden too (the code has to avoid catching them also by other layers) to avoid mess like these:

London, platform under ground and on the ground:

Before

After

London, many underground platforms:

Before

After

[kocio-pl]

The same for covered=yes - basically anything that is not in clear view creates a mess:

London, covered station platforms

Before

After

[mueschel]

This hides all platforms with the tag 'covered = yes' completely. In several cases I checked, this results in a platform completely vanishing without any object drawn instead. Examples:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/49212472

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/196930811

This complete hiding of platforms is definitely worse than having a platform covering a small piece of roof.

[kocio-pl]

I don't think it's definitely worse. If it's covered fully, one should add the covering object. If it's partially, one need to set covered=partially.

I still see no better way to avoid clutter while at the same time promoting more precise tagging for covered=*.

[mueschel]

I think that platforms (even underground ones) are a very important feature. In fact, much more important than the roof covering it. If I'm not familiar with a station, I have to identify the platforms, but I don't need to know where roofs are.

In many cities it's important to know where subway platforms are - just having the station node and (if lucky) some subway_entrance is not sufficient to find the best ways (and this style is "the way" to look at OSM data for most users). I fear that this decision leads to platform areas marked as highway=pedestrian just to make them visible on the map again.

I know it's a short coming of the renderer to not be able to arbitrarily set the order of rendering or transparency in every individual case, but platforms are just too important to remove them.

[kocio-pl]

In many cities it's important to know where subway platforms are - just having the station node and (if lucky) some subway_entrance is not sufficient to find the best ways (and this style is "the way" to look at OSM data for most users)

I think this is exactly what is needed - to know where the station is and where are the entrances (this is the closest thing for subway routing - once you pass them, you have the easy way to the platform). That's why I've also made stations to be dark brown to be easier to spot as buildings.

The platforms are part of internal station plan, so if they are visible, then we can show them of course, but if not, they are secondary feature which creates a lot of clutter and shape distortion (shops can make a clutter too, but they don't eclipse station shape and they are much more general feature, and we can't detect when they are part of the station).

I fear that this decision leads to platform areas marked as highway=pedestrian just to make them visible on the map again.

This is always valid consideration, but I feel that the universal style is not a QA tool, rather general overview.

I've made this change as a last minute addition, but the more I think about it, the more I appreciate it.

[dieterdreist]

2018-06-12 10:39 GMT+02:00 mueschel <[email protected]>:

I know it's a short coming of the renderer to not be able to arbitrarily set the order of rendering or transparency in every individual case, but platforms are just too important to remove them.

it is not a general shortcoming of the renderer, but a deliberate decision of this style not to use transparency (because it leads to hard to predict colors) and not to respect explicit layer tags in all cases.

[lakedistrictOSM]

@kocio-pl Was this supposed to hide both areas and lines or just areas? I ask because https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/48837616 isn't hidden, yet has a location=underground tag.

[kocio-pl]

I would be happy to hide also such lines.

[famo]

I would be happy to hide also such lines.

@kocio-pl Is there already an specific issue for this, where we could track this?

[kocio-pl]

Yes, look at #3336.

[dieterdreist]

I believe the underground platforms are very important and it’s a pity to hide them completely, we should rather discuss how to show them in a way that layering becomes clear and you can understand that it is an underground feature.
Covered platforms should be shown.
Most of the before after rendering examples are worse without the platforms and cluttered anyway due to the concentration of POIs in the stations

[mboeringa]

I believe the underground platforms are very important and it’s a pity to hide them completely, we should rather discuss how to show them in a way that layering becomes clear and you can understand that it is an underground feature.

Honestly, if you truly believe these features are important, you should be willing to use a dedicated indoor renderer that is capable of showing indoor leveled stuff in a meaningful way:

https://www.openstationmap.org
https://openlevelup.net/

If you are not willing to use those, than I believe that this kind of stuff isn't really that important to you in reality, and it is more of the typical "Oh, I spend some hours digitizing indoor stuff, and now it doesn't show up in the map".

There is only so much you can do in a 2D map, at some point it becomes nothing but a theoretical question.

[dieterdreist]

referring to indoor maps does not nail it, public transport platforms are not comparable to your typical indoor space, because the latter is typically only of interest to a much smaller group of people (those that want to enter the building) than a public transport infrastructure.

Are you seriously suggesting that all the examples above are better after than before?

IMHO the platforms are the most important part of these stations and hiding them leads to an inferior result