+Geocaching HQ Posted January 17, 2023 Share Posted January 17, 2023 Release Notes (Geocaching® app & website: County lines on map) - January 17, 2023 With the latest release, we are rolling out county lines on the Geocaching map on Geocaching.com and the Geocaching® app. The county lines are based on OpenStreetMap data: Website search map (map style: Geocaching) Website browse map (map style: Geocaching) App map (map type: Premium Trails map) Rollout begins today and the county lines are showing on the website search map. (If you don’t see them right away, you might need to clear your browser cache or do a hard refresh.) However, for the website browse map and mobile app map, the rollout will take a couple weeks, during which time some areas/zoom levels will refresh before others. Additionally, we added details to highlight airports as potentially restricted areas. Nicole (nykkole), Product Manager, is watching this thread to answer questions whenever possible. Any posts in this thread should relate to features in this release. Comments unrelated to the release may be removed. Please direct unrelated comments to other appropriate threads. Thanks! 2 3 Link to comment
+ADKer Posted January 17, 2023 Share Posted January 17, 2023 I was just wishing that county lines would show up yesterday! Thanks for turning this around so quickly 1 Link to comment
+hzoi Posted January 18, 2023 Share Posted January 18, 2023 (edited) 21 hours ago, Geocaching HQ said: With the latest release, we are rolling out county lines on the Geocaching map on Geocaching.com and the Geocaching® app. I have wanted this since (checks date I started geocaching) February 2007. Very glad to see, thanks!!! Edit: hmm, @nykkole, while this is working on the search map, it's not working for me on the browse map. Example: when I open up the geocaching.com map for GC1D197, there should be a county line going right by the itty bitty island the cache is on. The dashed boundary line is visible on the search map but not on the browse map. Search map screen shot Browse map screen shot Same issue for German counties, looking at the different maps for GC1M9PQ, which should have the Landkreis (county) line running right through its symbol on the map: it's there on search map, not on browse map. Edited January 18, 2023 by hzoi Link to comment
nykkole Posted January 18, 2023 Share Posted January 18, 2023 1 hour ago, hzoi said: Edit: hmm, @nykkole, while this is working on the search map, it's not working for me on the browse map. This is expected since the rollout for this feature is a bit different from other rollouts: 21 hours ago, Geocaching HQ said: Rollout begins today and the county lines are showing on the website search map. (If you don’t see them right away, you might need to clear your browser cache or do a hard refresh.) However, for the website browse map and mobile app map, the rollout will take a couple weeks, during which time some areas/zoom levels will refresh before others. I believe the mobile map is actually the one that will take the longest, the browse map should be done updating sooner. Link to comment
+hzoi Posted January 18, 2023 Share Posted January 18, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, nykkole said: This is expected since the rollout for this feature is a bit different from other rollouts: I missed that bit. Thanks for the update! I also notice that the search map actually includes airports, and not just the green space in between runways, so that's also a welcome improvement. Edited January 18, 2023 by hzoi Link to comment
+JL_HSTRE Posted January 18, 2023 Share Posted January 18, 2023 Seems to be working for me on the Search map. I do wish Golf Courses were not such a similiar shade of green to parks, but Google Maps does the same thing. Link to comment
+HuggableHamster Posted January 19, 2023 Share Posted January 19, 2023 How exciting! I see on project-gc it says they also use OSM so I presume they will be the same? County County in Project-GC refers to the largest administrative divisions of a state/province/region of a country. Geocaching.com does not show counties, Project-GC uses Administrative boundaries from OpenStreetMap via OSM-Boundaries and for some countries official government data to determine the county of a cache. Link to comment
+monsterbox Posted January 20, 2023 Share Posted January 20, 2023 4 hours ago, tbbiker said: I like the county lines and would like it more if the names of the counties were listed along the borders. Will that happen? Works for me using the OSM maps :-) 1 Link to comment
+Pleu Posted January 20, 2023 Share Posted January 20, 2023 16 hours ago, HuggableHamster said: How exciting! I see on project-gc it says they also use OSM so I presume they will be the same? County County in Project-GC refers to the largest administrative divisions of a state/province/region of a country. Geocaching.com does not show counties, Project-GC uses Administrative boundaries from OpenStreetMap via OSM-Boundaries and for some countries official government data to determine the county of a cache. That should not be presumed because it will depend on your area. If you're in the US, sure probably. If you're in Canada or the UK it's unlikely to be the same borders. Generally the answer for if they will match will be "it depends". For some countries, like Sweden were I live, we don't seem to be getting any county-lines at all on the Geocaching.com map, even though they are fetched from OSM at Project-GC. Link to comment
+HuggableHamster Posted January 20, 2023 Share Posted January 20, 2023 Ah boo, that will be less helpful. Link to comment
+Arne1 Posted January 25, 2023 Share Posted January 25, 2023 District boundaries are terribly inconsistent and chaotic on maps. For example Czechia, in the basic view there are some areas whose borders don't tell me anything. Areas generally used and defined in the GC system as "states" appear only in a larger zoom. Borders of areas corresponding to German or Austrian "Landesbezirk" do not appear at all. A similar situation appears in Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia and Albania. In Bulgaria, the division is shifted by one level, the basic areas similar to "State" appear only when counties are shown in the neighbouring states. Similarly in Croatia, Slovenia, Finland. A specific problem is Serbia and Kosovo. On the map (it is the same on Google maps) they are correctly two separate states, but Geocaching does not recognize Kosovo and still assigns it to Serbia. Link to comment
+Mysterion604 Posted January 28, 2023 Share Posted January 28, 2023 Does this extend to municipal or regional boundaries within Canada? Link to comment
nykkole Posted January 28, 2023 Share Posted January 28, 2023 With this implementation, we have turned on the “administrative boundaries level 6” within the OpenStreetMap (OSM) tiles that we use. For some countries, this will show counties or county equivalents (e.g. “Landkreise” for Germany, “départements” for France). Due to the way OSM handles boundary levels, these lines either don’t exist for some countries (e.g. Netherlands), or denote other level regions (e.g. “kraj” rather than “okres” for Czechia), or have more complex rules (e.g. UK: “Two-tier non-metropolitan counties, metropolitan counties, unitary authorities”). See documentation here. 1 3 Link to comment
+Viajero Perdido Posted January 28, 2023 Share Posted January 28, 2023 In case anybody is tempted to "fix up" their country of interest in OSM, please consider the "admin levels" in OSM to be read-only. They're not really, but please, unless you're an expert. OSM mappers who truly know what they're doing (and this doesn't include me when it comes to this) will notice and strike up a discussion, what are you doing? I do see county boundaries showing up in Canada. (Name along the boundary would be nice, but hey.) 3 Link to comment
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