the marble (map) replacement dilemma

[Linus Torvalds]

On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Lubomir I. Ivanov <neolit123 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> here is a comparison between ESRI (from my test app) and google maps:
> http://i.imgur.com/9iYjlqD.jpg

Judging by that, I'd say that the ESRI data is certainly "good enough".

It's better than the google data was just a few years ago, I suspect.

> google seem to support at least one more zoom level and an overall
> cleaner picture.

Yeah, google has been getting better satellite data just this year,
and that's obviously not even counting the areas where they have
really good low-altitude data (ie denser areas with small-plane
photography).

And they went through another satellite data improvement a couple of years ago.

> but the ESRI implementation inside QtLocation supports offline mode.

The ESRI data seems good enough. It did sound like you had worries
about the actual implementation?

> so Marble seems to have the best of both worlds for now - google tiles
> and offline support.

Yeah, but Marble has been a big painpoint too. So practicalities of
actually implementing this and maintaining it should be pretty high.

One thing that would be good - and that Marble doesn't do all that
well - is to have better integration with the outside world. For
example, I've occasionally wanted a "escape to real google maps" just
for things like location sharing (and you mentioned streetview earlier
- not an issue when you're on a reef in palau, but it *is* a potential
issue when you're looking at the parking lot of a shore-dive).

So Marble has its good sides, but it has certainly its own share of
painpoints too.

                Linus