Panoramax

Panoramax
Author:	Panoramax Team
License:	MIT License
Platform:	Web
Version:	2.7.0 [1] (2024-10-10)
Website:	Panoramax.fr
Source code:	https://gitlab.com/panoramax
Programming languages:	JavaScript and Python
"The free alternative to photo-mapping territories"

This article is a stub. You can help OpenStreetMap by expanding it.

Panoramax 360° photo showing the contributions of zorglubu in France. CC-BY-SA-4.0

Panoramax 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" 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 organisation
• 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

Some services store in-app uploads on custom Panoramax servers, which means that photos are accessible not only through an in-browser slippy map (i.e. the default Panoramax frontend), but also via the federation API, the Panoramax API, and the STAC API.

URL	Region	Publicly viewable	Publicly editable	License	Other notes
https://api.panoramax.xyz	🌐 Global	Yes	No	Mixed	The meta-catalog list all pictures available across the public federation. After uploading an image, you may have to wait some time before it is visible on the meta-catalog.
https://panoramax.openstreetmap.fr	🇫🇷 France (and outside for tests)	Yes	Yes, with OSM-account	CC-BY-SA 4.0	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.
https://panoramax.ign.fr	🇫🇷 France	Yes		etalab-2.0	by Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière
https://panoramax.mapcomplete.org	🌐 Global	Yes	Yes, but only via https://mapcomplete.org, requires OSM-account	CC-BY-SA 4.0	Images uploaded in MapComplete are stored here

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
• Panoramax-js, a Typescript library with which one can upload images to a Panoramax instance and with some other API calls made available; developed and used by MapComplete
• MapComplete, an OSM editor and viewer, lets users browse nearby pictures from Panoramax and also upload pictures to Mapcomplete's own Panoramax instance
• iD support with ability to filter by capture date, contributor and image type has been implemented, see screenshot below

Work in progress:

• New features for iD will be available for testing here. iD support was initially requested here and was then a project in GSOC 2024; see the current state of implementation in this OSM diary entry by Juicio.
  • First pull request, already merged
  • Second pull request, work in progress

• QGis plugin: https://gitlab.com/panoramax/clients/qgis-plugin
• A plugin for JOSM has been requested here on the JOSM issue tracker.

Third-party viewers

• In MapComplete, click a map feature, then click "Browse nearby pictures" in the panel at the right. This includes the pictures from the Panoramax meta-catalog - so not only the pictures that were uploaded to MapComplete.

See also

OSM wiki

• panoramax=* - Associate a Panoramax picture to an OSM feature.
• Panoramax talk at State of the Map Europe 2023 for the slides and the talk on YouTube
• List of OSM-based services

Wikipedia

• OpenStreetMap

External Websites

• Official website
• Meta-catalog for all photos available
• Panoramax on GitLab
• Android mobile app for taking & uploading pictures (v1.1.1-beta pre-release on 11 September 2024 - please provide feedback)