v45.0-alpha1

[westnordost]

🍰 Overlays!

Make every survey unique! How? Dedicate each to updating a different aspect of the map by activating a different overlay, respectively!

This is for advanced users who want to be more efficient in adding and maintaining certain data area-wide. Read more in this blog post!
For now, there are only overlays for street lighting and for sidewalks, more will be added over time. 🎉 (#2461, #2506, #3920)

New Quests

• What kind of memorial is this? (Complete memorial quest [add memorial=sculpture] #4102, What kind of memorial is this #1572), by @matkoniecz, thanks @kmpoppe, @naposm, @FloEdelmann

Enhancements and Fixes

• Other small enhancements (Enable "Last recently used" button for single sidewalk surface quests #3919, ...)

---

This discussion was created from the release v45.0-alpha1.

[jacobwhall]

I can't wait to give overlays a try. It was interesting to read about how local data analysis sped up the time to download quests. Thank you Tobias!

[rugk]

Awesome updtae and looks like a great feature! I canÄt wait to try it out!

However as for your quest guidelines, I donÄt get one point:

Not a quest: Usually eligible data should either be recorded and displayed in an overlay or as a quest.

Are not your examples/implementations contradictions of that? They are both a quest and an overlay, i.e. the lit and sidewalk quests can also be answered as quests, too?
I also don't see any reason to make them mutually exclusive, how one wants to record the data mostly depends on whether the user wants to map all (normal mode) or focus on something specific (overlay).

[matkoniecz]

Though for lit and smoothness where consistency in data (at least local) is much more useful I would be fine with quest removal.

[mnalis]

@matkoniecz for me it would still suck even if only such a subset of quests I'm interested in were removed 😢. Perhaps in your area the map is mostly solved so you'd use overlay mostly for verification-only where it would be noticeably less problematic; but in my case it is mostly in areas with very little (if any) detail.

So if they were removed as quests, I'd still have to solve lit overlay, then switch to smoothness, then solve that, then switch back to lit, then solve that, then switch to smoothness etc. - and doing it every dozen seconds ad infinitum would be horrible user experience (I can speak only for myself, of course; although I can't see how it would not be a serious downgrade for anybody in same situation - i.e. being interested in solving multiple overlays in areas where they are mostly unsolved).

Especially when I'm not on foot with lots of leisure time (where it would still be very annoying and a waste of time compared to current situation, but at least doable), but instead in a moving vehicle (like a bus/coach), which would practically guarantee I'd need to make several trips to solve quests which are important to me (like lit and smoothness). The problem gets even more compounded when the way is split into many smaller segments (as it happens often here), because there is then a very limited time to answer any quest/overlay.

[matkoniecz]

@mnalis no, in my area lit is also mostly not done - but here value of solving quests in isolation from existing data is much lower.

But I also see why you would prefer to keep it.

[mnalis]

And while I agree that consistency of data is important, I find it much less problematic if some segment of the road is mapped smoothness=good while most others are mapped as smoothness=excellent (e.g. due to different mappers subjectivity), then if there were no smoothness data at all because I couldn't enter it because the functional smoothness quest was removed and overlay concept was too troublesome / time consuming to use (due to need to constantly switch between different overlays).

Also, if quests were removed when similar overlay was implemented; (and we noted that overlays are directed more at advanced users), doesn't that mean that majority (i.e. not-advanced users) would then be deprived of solving those important things (to them) at all? Wouldn't then every new overlay that was added actually push StreetComplete more and more to advanced-users-only tool, as more and more functionality would not be available to majority of its (current) target demographics (i.e. non-advanced "quest-only" users)?

I think users who want simplicity should be allowed to solve the quests in the simple way as they did before; even if they would miss some context and thus perhaps sometimes give less-then-perfect answer. The more advanced users could then come after them and tweak/unify it (kind of like TaskingManager mapping/verifying - even if nobody ever verifies, the mapping part is hugely important. Of course it would be better if verified, but...). Simplicity is what made SC popular; and while I'm all for expert-enabled SC edition, I do not think it should come at the expense of common ("simple") users of SC.

[rugk]

I find it much less problematic if some segment of the road is mapped smoothness=good while most others are mapped as smoothness=excellent

I agree here. Tend to think it from the data consumer's view, I guess having 90% correct data (smoothness=excellent) and having 10% data that varies a bit (smoothness=good) is likely not a big problem, given your routing algorithm is anyway limited (in what time or so it estimates, due to many factors) and this minor mistakes will not make such a big impact.
Having no data at all may have an impact though as only an average can be used.
But that's just my guess.

In addition to what has been said, I guess I would be fine with disabling quests when you opt-in into overlays. Given overlays are for advanced users only maybe they could be disabled by default (though promoted e.g. with an achievement or a button on the home page which enables it), then:

• user enables overlays -> gets the question (or just information?) that/whether the corresponding quests would/should be disabled
• this automatically disable the corresponding quests
• users could re-enable them in the settings

I agree housenumbers should always be kept as a quest as it is rare and quite worthwhile to survey.

---

Also, maybe in general a way to quickly switch overlays (including the "default view") on the home of SC is needed, because I could imagine myself wanting to check each view/overlay, just to see whether there is something red and it thus makes sense to map/look into that.

[matkoniecz]

I an testing layer functionality and I must say that it is amazing and really useful!

[matkoniecz]

@westnordost Is overlay functionality stable enough to get PR/commits? Or are you still tweaking it heavily (I plan to work on the most important of improvement ideas recently posted).

Also, are you planning to add surface overlay? Or rejected it for some reason? Or prefer to avoid adding new layers for now? (surface layer seems quite promising to me, for multiple reasons)

[westnordost]

It's stable as far as I am concerned. Today I went on a 600-quest-long survey and tested it heavily. I found one small issue and fixed it.

[westnordost]

I was thinking about a smoothness overlay. It would heavily profit from this feature as the smoothness is heavily dependent on how the surrounding roads are tagged for comparison - both to have consistent tagging and as a decision aid which is the most fitting. These two are so important IMO (after shortly testing out the smoothness quest) that the smoothness quest is the first candidate for complete removal in favour of an overlay that does the same, in fact.

Now, the smoothness quest, as currently implemented, is only asked for a very limited number of surfaces (asphalt, concrete, compacted, paving stones), because we only have descriptions + images for that. Plus, a smoothness can only be defined after the surface has been defined. It would be a little disruptive to only show anything for that overlay if the surface is defined and is one of these values.

This is why I thought maybe there could be a surface+smoothness overlay. So there is one button at the top to select the surface, and if one of asphalt, concrete,... etc. is selected, another will appear below where the smoothness can be selected.
(Only) issue that the color palette would be quite big. First for smoothness (greenish to orangish), but then also for where smoothness is missing because it cannot be selected (maybe brownish colors) and then also for paving stones, asphalt etc. where no smoothness is set yet.

The value of a just-surface-layer is also not very apparent to me. It does not seem to help the surveyor find the most fitting value, the value selected is not really dependent on how things have been tagged surrounding it (unlike lit, smoothness) and the quest already shows every single way where the information is missing - unlike the sidewalk or cycleway quest, where for certain ways, it is not asked.

[matkoniecz]

The value of a just-surface-layer is also not very apparent to me.

Mostly for verification. I keep encountering tracks tagged with completely wrong surfaces, and this is often clustered - but checking all of them in Vespucci is too time-consuming and too annoying

[westnordost]

Okay. The reason why I mention this smoothness(+surface) overlay is because it's the question whether a "just surface" overlay makes sense if there is an overlay for smoothness+surface.

[westnordost]

I figure, even if (the decision would be that) a "smoothness" overlay would also allow to tag the surface, that isn't really a barrier to have an overlay to "just" tag the surface. Users interested in mapping surfaces shouldn't be pushed to also supply the very subjective smoothness tag.

So, I think if you want to add such a layer, feel free to do so. (But maybe first finish the parking condition stuff?)

[mnalis]

Could we do something before (non-alpha) release about modified hamburger menu? As the (often-used) Scan for quests here is now much harder to click correctly - see #4130.

I could probably do a PR for easier options (like moving team mode to settings, or around, or as another icon) if @westnordost would choose what would be acceptable?

[mnalis]

How about making the the square grid 2x3 instead of current 2x2, and putting Team mode back there as a square as it was (leaving one square free for future feature, as it was before initial team mode implementation)? That would be consistent with previous behaviors, while not having usability drawbacks that current v45.0-alpha1 has? Would you accept PR for that?

[westnordost]

Well that was the state before, and it looked ugly.

[mnalis]

It worked fine, though. We could also make Preset quick change to fill that empty square in 2x3 grid, which has been requested several times before. That would additionally both fix the ugliness, and make many power-users happy. Would you accept that?

[westnordost]

Right now, no. I am not prepared to acccept any micro-optimizations in UI regarding overlays because I want to first get users accostumed to it and then later we can review how the UI can be re-worked. Also potentially on a larger scale.

[mnalis]

I have no problem with Overlays UI being fluid while its being worked on (it is to be expected); my issue is that current hamburger form (which contains much more than Overlays - specifically very often used Scan for quest here) is IMHO serious UI usability regression compared to previous version (v43.2), so I just wanted to help there before it is dropped on unsuspecting users.
I plan to anyway fix it for my fork in some way as it bugs me a lot, so I'd though to offer PR here too if you'd like some of suggestions - so that work doesn't have to be done twice. But if I read that right and you're firmly unwilling to reconsider any UI change in hamburger menu currently, I understand and will stop bugging you about that subject. ❤️

[boothym]

ITO World used to have something like this on their website where you could browse for various things like speed limits, surfaces as well - is it possible for this overlay to be used outside of StreetComplete or on its own page?

[westnordost]

I know, I remember. It was part of the inspiration for overlays, too bad it does not exist anymore. It is not possible to use StreetComplete overlays outside the app on Android (e.g. on a website). I would say the modern day replacement for ITO World maps are either of

• https://mapcomplete.osm.be/ (e.g. street lighting theme )
• https://www.mapcontrib.xyz (e.g. sidewalks theme )

The former has more active development, I think.