My thoughts on the New Mapillary
Overall, this seems a radical change in approach with a lot of ramifications.
Pity I had just finished a new version of an Italian-language user manual.
I divide my comments in rough categories.
My comments are regarding my personal workflows and uses of Mapillary – I am not pretending that my evaluation be objective or generally applicable.
Neutral changes
Point clouds
Visualizing point clouds. I like the idea, but have no use for this in my context.
Positive changes
Age indication for traces
Optional colouring of age of traces is a feature that I wanted. May need some improvement in order to make sure that recent coverage stays on top at all zoom levels.
Location search
Finally a search function that works!
Negative changes
Conditions of use
I am not a legal expert, but simply reading them, gives me the shivers. I will have to talk to my solicitor in order to understand the implications, I suppose …
Traffic signs
Traffic signs now require (clumsy) individual selection of signs (which is not memorized)
I used to simply switch them all on when mapping in OSM (like shown in the second figure on this Mapillary help page, which seems to be out-of-date)
Also traffic sign detection in the images behaves strangely (some traffic signs are detected independently of selection)
Sequence editing
Sequence editing seems to have gone (apart from blurring):
- gone is the possibility of “normalizing” image directions
- gone is the possibility of deleting multiple images, like waiting at the traffic lights
- gone is the repositioning of wrongly placed image
- gone is the possibility to delete “bad” images for other reasons
Image download
Gone is the possibility to download one’s own images with the original EXIF data (in particular GPS data). I used this feature routinely to add photos to route descriptions on tour upload sites (like komoot). After the tour I uploaded the GPX track plus photos that I selected typically from my Mapillary upload whilst also using the photos for OSM mapping corrections. I still can download an image, but need to re-add manually the GPS coordinates to place it correctly on the map.
A minor snag with the new image downlaod: the image download size depends on whether you are in map view or image view mode.
Object detection
Object detection in the images behaves strangely (some objects are recognised independently of the selection)
I cannot find any more a way of visualising all object types at once in a given image as shown on this Mapillary help page (first image on the page).
