Google earth can show paths & tracks in 3d. As a walker or cyclist it is often useful to see the inclination or slopes of a planned route.

Transcription

1 OSM 2 Google Earth OSM 2 Google Earth... 1 IMPORTANT LEGAL WARNING... 2 Introduction... 2 Getting Started... 3 Showing OSM files on Google Earth... 3 Editing Lines... 3 Adding new polylines... 4 Editing Polygons... 4 Adding new Polygons... 4 Editing POIs... 4 Adding POIs... 5 OSM Data not rendered in Mapnik... 5 Rendering the Invisible... 5 General Observations... 6

2 IMPORTANT LEGAL WARNING For legal reasons do not use satellite images from Google Earth to add or change pois,highways & polygons etc as this will compromise the OSM database! As a precaution OSM2GE a) distorts all line,polygon and poi coordinates b) draws pois,lines and polygons from a considerable height. When you zoom in they just float away. c) all POIs are rendered as text with an unknown offset and without icons to pin them down. Introduction To ensure Google Earth is not used to support OSM various means of distortion have been introduced other current packages can import osm to GE without any safeguards! So, what is the point of importing distorted data to Google Earth? Google earth can show paths & tracks in 3d. As a walker or cyclist it is often useful to see the inclination or slopes of a planned route. Using Google Earth you can at a glance amenities which are not normally (or only at a low level) rendered in Mapnik. OSM2GE provides an automatic search url link for each POI. Contour lines can be imported and shown on Google earth.

3 Getting Started First ensure that the folder containing osm2ge.exe has a subfolder /system. Place the default folder inside this. The default folder contains default pois,polylines and polygons. Showing OSM files on Google Earth Load an osm file, preferably one that less than 12 mb as Google Earth might start to struggle with larger this depends on your graphics card, processing power and memory. The program will parse your osm file this might take a few seconds - and then appear on Google Earth. You must have Google Earth installed. The program can be downloaded free from : Unclick the tick box if you do not wish polylines,pois or polygons to be parsed. Editing Lines To change the default colour,width and opacity of each highway type click on the highway. You can hide highways by unticking the visibility box.

4 Not all lines may be rendered see Rendering the Invisible. Click the Show only me box to only render this type of highway. Adding new polylines Trams, for instance, are not found in the default polylines list. However, to render them in Google Earth, select a blank line at the bottom of the polyline list and enter railway for type and tram for name. Add new polylines by replacing blank lines. Editing Polygons As above, click on a polygon type. It is advisable to set your own opacity level. Buildings are set 5 metres above ground level. Adding new Polygons At the bottom of the list you will find blank polygons which can be replaced. There is no need to specify amenity/leisure/landuse etc. Editing POIs As above, click on the POI. You can change font colour and size but unfortunately not the font-type ; you are at present stuck with Google Earth s default font. To avoid clutter, you may wish to untick the visibility box for a range of POIs. Or, click the Show Only Me box. Click on the colour swatch to change colour.

5 Adding POIs Any POI not listed will not be rendered. However, you can edit the name of any type and POI ie biergardens are not included. Simple select a POI which you re not interested in and change it s type and name. There is one POI called (highway) Exit. Select this and change the highway into amenity and Exit into biergarten. Make sure your labels and tags correspond with those found in the OSM Map Features page. So, biergarden will not show up. Also, check your spellings. OSM Data not rendered in Mapnik Some lines or polygons will be ignored by Mapnik, often because they are incorrectly tagged. OSM2GE will list these separately. However, there is no reason why they can t appear in Google Earth. Example 1 Embankment man_made is not included in the default list. Just add a new line with type= man-made and name=embankment Example 2 Area: yes Name supermarket Try adding a new polygon with the name supermarket Example 3 Highway:shortcut Again, this tag is incorrect but add a new line with highway as type and shortcut as name for it to appear in Google Earth. Rendering the Invisible Example 1

6 Farmyard is spelt wrongly so it will not be rendered. Correct the spelling and it should work. Example 2 Walls,fences etc are not included in the lines list. They can still be rendered in Google Earth by replacing one of the insignificant lines. General Observations 1) If Google Earth seems a bit sluggish, more than likely the osm file contains numerous buildings. Set the building polygon s visibility to 0. This should speed up the process. 2) Some osm files contain contours, ie those created by Groundtruth. These, now, can be rendered. Use the elevation or ele polyline tag to set colour and width.

7 3) When selecting the override option for POIs, the program links all found pois to a Google Search url. For example: It found a café called The Yellow Hat and it has also detected that your osm tile centers around a town called Bridgeton. When in Google earth, find reference to this café and click on the linked name in panel on your left. Click again on the link on bubble which appears on Google Earth and this should create a Google search pinpointing the café in Bridgeton. Nick Willink, May 2010