Other Osmdroid vs. Google Maps

[udg]

Hi all,

I've got little to no experience on the subject, so I'm asking here for some good advice.
I read this post from warwound that makes me prefer Osmdroid, but let me give you an idea of what I need.

My app should be able to show my current position along with a few POIs based on some selection criteria.
These POIs are common to all the users but they're not conventional POIs like restaurants, museums..so I will design and manage a specific DB for that.
I need the ability to tap on a POI to show detailed info about it.

It doesn't matter whether maps are available only working on-line, but obviously an off-line mode could be a plus.
It would be nice to highlight the path between current position and chosen POI.
POIs could be indicated by a single communal icon but using different icons for specif groups of POIs should be better.

In the past I used an intent to launch GoogleMaps when I needed to show a place on a map, but now I need a closer integration within the app that, BTW, I'm still conceiving..

I'll read with great interest your comments, hints and notes about past experiences with those tools.

Thank you.

 

[eurojam]

Hi udg,
I started develop some apps with both osmdroid & google maps-mainly self guided tour apps, so both have advantages and disadvanteges. I'll try to give a short summery of my experiences - without claiming to be complete and may be they are a result of not knowing all possibilties of the libs. so comments and hints are appreciated

osmdroid:
+ osm is great, free and growing
+ different mapstyles (Renderings) available (CycleMap, Mapnik, OSMPublicTransport) or use your own styles
+ possibility to give local tilesets to the app, so it will run without internet
+ possibilty to give your own tiled maps to the app, like historical maps
+ a lot of possibilities to interact with the api (thanks a lot to Martin), so it easy to integrate it in your app
- the standard tiles (Mapnik) are designed for webapplications, so OSM-labels are on high resolution devices nearly not readable
- geolocation and routing is just starting and there are only some possibilties at the moment (mapquest, which is also limited)

googlemaps
+ the leves of details are very good in my opinion
+ you easy switch between Satellite, street, hybrid and terrain
- interaction between your app and the map is not so easy. for example you can not give the marker a tag (to hold the id), you have to work with secondary structures like a map which hald the marker and the key, which is strange
- google is commercial and the requests are limited, also for routing and geolocation api, you don't know what the future will bring (I am optimistic)

even though the advantages of the osmdroid seems to be more, at the moment I prefere google for my self guiding tour apps.

stefan

 

[udg]

Hi Stefan,

thank you very much for sharing your comments.

Today I installed OSM and in much less than 1 hour I had my first app running!
I easily integrated Martin's example code in my project, modified the POIs file from his demo and started experimenting with more features. All that in minutes from OSM downloading. I am really impressed.
Surely it will get more complicated the more I'll exlore it and soon I'll meet the cons you cited, but, as for tonight, let me be really happy.

@warwound : Martin, if you will ever read this: THANK YOU!