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OSM map layer in EO Browser

  • April 26, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 134 views

Hello everyone,

EO Browser and Sentinel Playground are great. I have a question about their map layers:

In EO Browser, there is some map source that includes topography and water features, but not most other OSM data. As a result, when looking at natural environs, like The Sierra-Nevada mountains in California, I easily get lost: there are few labels on anything, or trails.

The Sentinel Playground uses a richer set of labels, so more features are marked, but I can’t (or don’t know how to) toggle the imagery so that I can see it after the satellite data loads. So I do an awkward practice of panning rapidly and hoping for a slow load so I can get a sense what I’m looking at.

My current workaround is to have a second mapping program open and then to feed coordinates directly into EO Browser so I don’t get lost, and carefully use lakes and topography data to figure out what I’m looking at. Sometimes I’ll also load a GeoJSON to help.

Is there a better way to go about this?

Thank you for your time.

2 replies

Dear,

thanks for your feedback. We indeed use two different background map providers in EO Browser and Playground both using a slightly different set of maps/settings.

For your described use case you could

  • in EOB: Try the location search (if you are not using that already)
  • in Playground: You can disable the satellite imagery layers in the top right corner by clicking on the small satellite and then the selected layer.

I hope that helps!

Best,
Daniel


Nice tip, for Playground. It never occurred to me that the radio buttons had a “deselect” state.

And yeah, I already use location search in EO Browser, though I’ve found coordinate paste more handy given I have a decent computer companion map.

Thanks for considering my question. I’ll probably switch to playground for the map layer.