Add the Esri imagery as "best" for Estonia (EE)

[SviMik]

Currently, the "best" imagery for Estonia is:
https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-index/blob/gh-pages/sources/europe/ee/EstoniaOrtho%28Maaamet%29.geojson

However, it is in EPSG:3301, which is not supported by the iD editor.
After some discussion with iD guys we came to a possible solution that more that one imagery can be marked as "best".

I did a quick check, and found that Esri imagery look exactly same as EstoniaOrtho(Maaamet).geojson but has a projection that works in iD. Could you add Esri to EE and mark it as "best" please?

[grischard]

We can't currently mark one source as 'best' by region - it's all or nothing, everywhere or nowhere, best or not. How clients should handle more than one 'best' layer is undefined.

Am I understanding what you're suggesting incorrectly?

[bhousel]

@grischard - see openstreetmap/iD#6736 (comment)
For some reason there are 2 "Estonia Ortho (Maaamet)" sources - A TMS one and a EPSG:3301 one.

They mostly just want the best: true moved to the TMS one so iD can use it. We can probably remove the EPSG:3301 one entirely, if it's the same imagery.

[SviMik]

The TMS one looks really bad in iD for some reason! I don't know if it's just me, but it looks like jpeg with 0% quality, barely can see anything. I would consider removing this completely if other people see the same thing.

We can't currently mark one source as 'best' by region

It's really sad then. Any suggestion how to solve the problem? iD is showing Bing in Estonia by default, and it's a really awful source for Estonia comparing with Esri. If really nothing can be done, maybe just clone Esri, name it Esri (Estonia), and put it as best for this region?

[grischard]

Well ideally I'd like to have something where editors request only local imagery, see #586. But that doesn't help you out a lot here.

I don't want to fragment the ELI global layers into potentially hundreds of local layers. The global geojson is already approaching 2 MB, making editing expensive and slow for editors on limited connections.

If Esri is the same as Maaamet but better, we could actually remove Maaamet completely.

[SviMik]

I'm afraid removing Maaamet wouldn't solve the problem. Let's not remove anything if it doesn't solve anything.

And we still need ideas how to make Esri the default source for Estonia.

[Nakaner]

The Estonian issue exists in some German states (Rheinland-Pfalz, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Thüringen) as well. Because the ESRI layer contains aerial imagery by surveying agencies in some regions, it is the best available layer there although it an average or low quality layer elsewhere. It would be nice to have ESRI used as "best" layer there but to prefer something different where ESRI shows DigitalGlobe imagery only.

[simonpoole]

[note this is the umpteenth issue on this topic, maybe it would be time to introduce a tag for these]

@Nakaner nobody denies that it would be nice to have a more flexible way of indicating what imagery is best (because as said the topic is not new), however it is not something that we can directly implement in the source configurations in this repo (any such solution will probably reference or import the definitions from here though).

It will likely need a separate database driven facility that somebody needs to develop, maintain and operate. Nobody has to date volunteered to do that.

[SviMik]

I don't want to fragment the ELI global layers into potentially hundreds of local layers. The global geojson is already approaching 2 MB, making editing expensive and slow for editors on limited connections.

What if we trade one local imagery (say, Maaamet TMS) to a copy of Esri with best: true option for Estonia? The resulting database will remain the same size. How does that sound?

[grischard]

@SviMik you mean just swap the URL?

[SviMik]

clone Esri, name it Esri (Estonia), and put it as best for this region

I mean that.

[grischard]

As I said, I don't want to fragment the ELI global layers into potentially hundreds of local layers. The global geojson is already approaching 2 MB, making editing expensive and slow for editors on limited connections.

Since Maaamet is the same as ESRI but in worse quality, the best thing to do would seem to be removing it completely. The local community can contact new mappers to encourage them to use ESRI if they don't.

[Pikse]

I think setting TMS ortho (also) as "best" would be desirable. Compared to Bing imagery, that iD editor currently shows by default in Estonia, TMS isn't off by several meters and it still has considerably better quality. (Ideally someone could also contact Maa-amet and ask if they could add TMS tiles for a couple of more zoom levels beyond level 18.)

Or alternatively, maybe the third version of "Estonia Ortho (Maaamet)" that was deleted in #587, could be restored and be "best". This "duplicate" version in fact had different projection "EPSG:4326", that should be supported by iD editor too. This WMS version (along with other Estonian sources currently defined) though displays slightly off compared to TMS, at least in JOSM.

As for deprecating/removing Maa-amet sources in favour of Esri, I think this is not desirable. Eventhough Esri currently seems as up-to-date as Maa-amet, the latter is expected to be more up-to-date when new imagery is released and Esri hasn't replicated it yet. It also isn't clear if or how often Esri plans to acquire new imagery from Maa-amet.

[Pikse]

It also isn't clear if or how often Esri plans to acquire new imagery from Maa-amet.

Currently the latest Maa-amet imagery is from 2020/2021. While Esri still has Maa-amet imagery from 2018/2019 (for zoom levels or parts of the country where Esri does't use imagery from some other source).

So I think we shouldn't set ESRI as the "best" source for Estonia, and instead in afore-mentioned pull request I've proposed the following: adjust WMS URL for current "best" source, so that its projection would be supported in iD editor.