osmscout-server VS eraser-map

Pure Maps with OSM Scout Server for offline mapping and geolocation

- build a minimal web page showing a Leaflet or a MapLibre widget, connected to a backend built using a compiled language like C++ or D, itself connecting to OSM Scout Server to provide the tiles. Or to OSM Scout Server directly if it is possible.

The last option is probably the most lightweight solution, provided you probably have a browser already running on your phone. I'm not saying this out of my ass by the way, I'm building an SMS app using Svelte for the user interface and D for the backend connecting to the modem and managing the SQLite database. It's way faster than chatty.

[1] https://openrepos.net/content/rinigus/pure-maps

[2] https://rinigus.github.io/osmscout-server/

There are on device or even in browser renderers that only need remote or locally stored vector data to render the map. This moves the burde of rendering to user devices that should be more than capable for this today (especially if you use a GPU renderer) and makes you server into just a dumb data pipe that should be able to scale much better & more cheaply.

One such renderer available via Qt/QML:

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/location-plugin-mapboxgl.html

Alternatively you can have a local daemon running that does the tile rendering on your device from offline data packs. This way even "legacy" apps requiring simple bitmap tiles will work without (major) changes. One such project providing this (among other APIs) is OSM Scout Server:

https://github.com/rinigus/osmscout-server

(Former Mapzen employee here).

I _think_ you're talking about Eraser Map(https://github.com/mapzen/eraser-map) right?

It was awesome! It's the closest I know of to "Google Maps, but open source and based on open data". It was an app built for _end users_, not OSM editors. And it worked pretty darn well. When it didn't, any problems could (at least theoretically) be addressed with improvements to OSM data or the Mapzen open-source projects.

There was a team of at least two people working on it full time, plus lots of work on the design, product, and integration with geocoding, routing, transit etc. The multi-modal (switching from walking to transit to car, etc) transit directions were particularly awesome.

I used it as my daily driver for much of my navigation around NYC, and as time went on only had to fall back to Google Maps maybe 25% of the time, usually for missing POI data.

Unfortunately I think it's one of the few Mapzen projects that hasn't seen new life after the company shut down, and like you said it would take quite a bit of work (read: money) to keep it going. It might be possible with some work to find grant money through a couple organizations. The OSMF has done some awesome work lately with the micro-grants, but this would definitely be a level we haven't seen (yet).