Panoramax
Panoramax | |
---|---|
Author: | Panoramax Team |
License: | MIT License |
Platform: | Web |
Version: | 2.6.0 [1] (2024-05-17) |
Website: | Panoramax.fr |
Source code: | https://gitlab.com/panoramax |
Programming languages: | JavaScript and Python |
"The free alternative to photo-mapping territories"[1] |
Panoramax (wikipedia) is a federation offering geolocated street-level pictures. Pictures are offered through a decentralized architecture, with a set of free and open-source tools. In other words, it is "like a self-hosted Street View"[2] that does not impose its own app and gives you the right to fork the server.
The main selling points are:
- self-hostable, as a public instance or in your private org
- free-licensed server (unlike Mapillary or Mapilio)
- freedom to choose or develop your favorite client app
- federation through a meta-catalog, which gives a single entrypoint to all publicly available servers
Instances
These are the publicly available instances, where anyone can view pictures or contribute:
- https://panoramax.openstreetmap.fr by OSM France
- In the short term, OSM FR can host pictures from the outside of France, but worldwide coverage is not sustainable in the long term, due to storage limits (and costs). Therefore, it is preferred that other local communities set up their own federated instances.[3]
- https://panoramax.ign.fr by Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière
The meta-catalog list all pictures available across public servers: https://api.panoramax.xyz/
Software
As Panoramax is a federation, the main matter is to agree on standards. Servers have to offer their pictures through a STAC API. Beyond that, any compliant server can be a part of Panoramax.
Main software used for Panoramax is listed below.
Server-side
All servers are running under the Panoramax API, which is fully free and open-source. It's a Python and Flask API, relying on a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS. It handles users, as well as uploading and serving of pictures.
Client-side
Many clients can be made available for Panoramax, as long as they accept STAC and/or WFS servers. As of now, the following clients are available:
- Panoramax website, the front-end of public servers
- Panoramax web viewer, a stand-alone JS viewer
- STAC-compatible clients
Work in progress:
- iD support is now available for beta testing here. It was originally requested here and is currently a project in GSOC 2024; see the current state of implementation in the iD wiki on Github and this OSM diary entry by Juicio.
- QGis plugin: https://gitlab.com/panoramax/clients/qgis-plugin
- A plugin for JOSM has been requested here on the JOSM issue tracker.
See also
- panoramax=* - Associate a Panoramax picture to an OSM feature.
- Panoramax
- Official Panoramax website
- Panoramax on GitLab
- Android mobile app for taking & uploading pictures (v1.0.0-beta pre-release on 26 June 2024 - please provide feedback)
- Panoramax talk at State of the Map Europe 2023 for the slides and the talk on YouTube
- List of OSM-based services
References
- ↑ https://panoramax.fr
- ↑ https://gitlab.com/panoramax/server/api
- ↑ Message from the OSM FR infrastructure maintainer, in #panoramax_fr:matrix.org, on Aug 26, 2023; message in #panoramax_fr:matrix.org, on Aug 25, 2023.