Satellite/Aerial Imagery Layer Mismatch

[magic-ian]

I noticed that Bing, DigitalGlobe, Esri, & Mapbox satellite/aerial imagery, don't quite match up when layered on top of each other. I'm opening this issue to hopefully have these layers match up more accurately in the editor.

Typically, it's just that they are just off by a few meters from each other, but sometimes as well, it's due to paralax from the angle the shot was taken at (more noticeable with multi-story buildings).

This doesn't matter so much on the scale of just ensuring that the ways are mapped and connected, but makes a noticeable enough difference for micro-mappers, that it may not be worthwhile micromapping things that call for more accuracy like sidewalks, bike lanes, building outlines, fences, if you have to move them all later, or fine tune the shape.

[bhousel]

This is definitely an unsolved problem.. Some work started on #4166, which would users see that an imagery offset exists, and possibly automatically apply it.

From conducting training with new users, I've seen that this is one of the biggest issues that confuses them.

[bhousel]

osmlab/osm-planning#18 has some more thoughts. I'd really like to build something to solve this!

[jodastephen]

Could I gently encourage some progress on this issue? I recognise its a hard problem, and that the imagery database is imperfect, but it does at least offer some kind of solution.

The problem I'm facing right now is that new high quality imagery (Bing) has been added in my area (London), but it is not aligned with the previous best imagery (Esri). And although its not totally clear, I think GPS better matches Esri too. As well as the thousands of buildings/addresses I've added in the last year :-). I'm using JOSM and have setup a published offset, but iD users are coming along and readjusting by the 3m difference:

Its great that iD has an image offset feature, but (and its a big but) the offset is not remembered between editing sessions (based on my tests in Chrome). This means I'm essentially asking the other author to manually add an offset in each editing session. Which is pants.

As a minimum, is there a way that iD could remember the offset used when last editing an area? (It seems to remember which image source is used)