Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway9d0291 | Hacker News Reader

It's highly variable and depends on region but I've found that particularly when it comes to hiking trails, OpenStreetMap blows Google Maps out of the water. In my area there are tons of little paths in the forests that are on OSM and none of the other mainstream mapping services.

On Android, OSMAnd is really good and there's also Maps.me. There are open-source versions of both on F-Droid as well.

View on HN

I don't even bother using google maps for european alps, only for car navigation (online). Its vastly superior, so many hiking trails and other interesting things (like abandoned buildings/temporary sheds) are well documented, and usually pretty accurate. I've done tons of hikes to places I've never visited before, met nobody and just planned whole trip based in presence of those trails. Not a single disappointment.

Personally I use View Ranger on Android which is free and uses OSM maps. I 'preload' it offline by just looking at the whole area online (maybe there is some preload of a block/circle but I've never needed that, its default cache is enough for even 2 week hiking). I don't even bother with GPX trails, just follow the visible trails and decide on spot.

Thanks for the tip! Just looked at OsmAnd for Yosemite and it's definitely much more useful than Google Maps.

> On Android, OSMAnd is really good and there's also Maps.me.

Imo if you're a outdoor user on Android you should try out Locus Maps. I've used them with the downloads from openandromaps. Imo no other program comes close in terms of capabilities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com