I’m sorry but as a pilot who routinely uses airport diagrams what specific weakness are you seeing? As you are probably aware, not all maps are intended to have some beautiful aesthetic. This map is quite akin in style to the layout of airport maps (diagrams) published for actual pilot use.
As a frequent flyer on small aircraft (nearly all of one side of my family has worked in aviation: cessna, boeing, piper, beech, embraer) - this looks nothing like the charts I'm used to viewing.
That doesn’t answer the question: what is wrong with the map? As a non pilot I can’t say that I find an airport diagram from the FAA more insightful: https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2302/00375AD.PDF
I am a pilot, and I compared the FAA diagram of SFO that you pointed out with the openairportmap.org one. Looking at the map itself:
* Taxiway labels aren't very readable, and I need to zoom in quite a bit for them to even be consistently displayed.
* For that matter, the yellow lines seem to cover a lot of things that aren't taxiways, and seem to extend into non-movement areas (areas outside the purview of ground control/tower), and for that reason, they make the actual taxyways harder to see.
* The runways are labled in a way that requires consulting the compass rose to interpret - "10L/28R". "10L/28R" is the name for that strip of tarmac, but when you're landing with a heading of 284º, it's called "28R" and when you're landing the other way, it's called "10L". Compare that with the FAA diagram, which labels them clearly at the landing side of the runway, the same way the numbers are painted on the ground.
* The openairportmap diagram lacks runway length and width.
* OpenAirportMap lacks the location of the displaced thresholds on the 28 and 1 runways.
* OpenAirportMap lacks the location of the runaway airplane catchers (EMAS) at the ends of the 1/19 runways.
* OpenAirportMap lacks any field elevation information
* OpenAirportMap doesn't have an indication of north, or of the magnetic variance.
* SFO doesn't have a VOR on-field, but if it did, it's location would be printed on FAA map, but not openairport
* The FAA map has the ATIS (weather), Tower, Ground Control, and Approach Control frequencies listed on it.
Overall, I would say the openairport map is not useful to a pilot. Which I think goes to the GP's point: "what is the goal of this map?" It's not to help a pilot.
First, "this is not for pilots", it probably can be.
Second, the layout/design is not helpful, seems to be mostly nit picking (which is good).
Third, the data is wrong.
The data can be corrected on http://osm.org by anyone, so that means your first objection is true. The design and layout can of course be corrected over time, depending on how many people care about mapping/visualizing them. The question is can you land an airplane with this map, this will be tested in flight sims that will use the same data.
So I do not know the goal of this map, but I have entered data about airports in to Openstreetmap and I most certainly did not do it for pilots. This was ten years ago I see that the amount of data has grown incredibly, So there must be people that care about it. That makes me believe that all your objections will be solved. Except the first one I listed since we can't have an fully loaded passenger plane land based upon my data.
This obviously isn't for pilots (as a pilot you don't want to use information that anyone can edit at anytime). It's just a different way of highlighting lots of airport-related information that is available in OpenStreetMap, which is a cool thing to do.
Clearly nobody is going to cancel their Foreflight subscription for this. But the point is that the map is short on aesthetic details because its goal is to allow visualization of a complex dataset, namely airport surface features.
If you’re a Cartographer and have made thousands of maps surely you know that some maps are for different audiences and use cases. This might just seem odd to you because you haven’t used this information in a manner laid out here, but trust me that it’s valuable!
It shows airport data from OpenStreetMap. It's posted on a site targeted at software developers. Is it that much of a stretch to conclude it's for use by people interested in machine-readable data on airports?
>>Unless you somehow prefer reading raw xml instead of maps.
Pretty sure I clearly stated this looks nothing like the charts im used to. Further real world comments above explain why this map is to put politely, lacking.
Major major difference between maps and data. Perhaps sitting in on Geog 120 or whatever it is wherever you are, would be wise. Hop in a seat of a Cessna 150 would too.
I'm confused why it shows detail like holding position markings, but not taxiways or hot spots. And it conflates locations using different hold short markings (ILS and runway).
In Frankfurt at least I see the ILS critical areas tagged with "holding_position:type: ILS". For instance south of arrival end 25C. Looking at aerial imagery these do correctly align with the ILS and hold-short markings.
Edit: it does appear that hold lines are mis-tagged in some spots, e.g. north of arrival end 25C.
It's just showing OpenStreetMap data. Anyone can edit and add data. The data that's in there is just what enthusiasts have added in the past 20 years. If no one added it, it's not there. You can add data if you like.
It is a visualization of community-sourced (OpenStreetMap) data on airports. This data is clearly supported as Frankfurt does have many surfaces labeled. Working towards making this data available is useful even if every single item isn't there.
I wouldn't necessarily say it is. It's an automated visualization of machine-readable data on airports. If you were processing this data, you'd want a visualization like this.
